Claimed by the scarred Alpha

VIVIANNE

"I know." She pressed her hands together in front of her, steadying herself. "I know, Luna. But I need you to understand why—"

"Then talk." I set the file on the dresser without touching it again. "And do it quickly. And do not leave anything out."

She told me.

She told me about the message that had come through on Chris’s phone. About how he had gathered sentinels and crossed into Valcourt territory trying to reach Margaux, and how he had been caught, just as someone had wanted him to be caught. She told me about the deal that had been offered to him through the bars of a Valcourt cell. The files in exchange for his release. Shanelle as the delivery.

I stood very still through all of it.

"And you agreed to this?" I said it carefully, without inflection. "You walked into our archives, took a case file that has not been touched in goddess knows how many years, and you are carrying it across Beaumont territory to hand it to the Valcourt Alpha?"

"For Chris." Her voice broke on his name. "They have charges on him. There is no telling what will happen to him and even this pack if I do not deliver this. He only went there because he was trying to protect Margo. He thought she was in danger."

I looked at the file.

Seven years. For seven years, it had gathered dust in the basement archive, and I had been grateful for every one of them. What lay inside was not just a trial’s record. It was a map: every decision, every guiding hand, every name tied to the verdict, the execution, and the careful burial of the truth beneath it all.

If the right eyes read it with the right suspicions, it would look nothing like justice.

My mouth had gone dry.

I looked back at the girl, and she met my gaze with tired, frightened eyes.

"I know what I did was wrong, Luna Vivianne," she said. "But you have to understand why I did this. My brother was tricked into infiltrating Valcourt, and that Alpha probably now has several charges on his belt that he could charge Chris with, and even Beaumont, for my brother’s stupid actions. There is no telling what would happen to him if this file does not get to Valcourt."

"And what does the Valcourt Alpha want with this?" I heard myself say. "Why does he want this specific file?"

"I do not know. But Chris will never jeopardize this pack for his own freedom. I am sure we have nothing to fear."

The room was very quiet.

I stared at the file on my dresser, at the name stamped across it, and felt something deep inside me shift, like old stone finally giving way beneath a weight it could no longer hold.

"I do not know about that," I said.

Then something burned at the back of my mind. Something I had missed while I was caught up in that damn file and everything it meant for me.

Margaux... I looked at Shanelle in the eye. She had mentioned that Chris had gone off the deep end immediately for Marguax and that would not have been without reason. She had vaguely mentioned that it was a message from Margaux. But what could that have been, and how was it a trick even?

"What message did Margaux send Chris, and why did she not send that to me? She... she hasn’t been picking up my calls, which is why I was trying to call you."

"Margaux sort of told Chris that her life was in danger," Shanelle replied. "But it was a lie peddled by the Alpha of Valcourt. I do not know why. But he used Margo’s phone to send that message to Chris."

"That sounded like he wanted to set him off." It reminded me of someone I knew very well.

The words left my mouth before I had fully finished thinking them, and the moment they landed in the air between us, I heard what I was actually saying. This was not a trap set for a Beta’s son. It was actually a trap set for Beaumont. At least, it felt that way, and Chris was the vehicle. The file was the destination. Whatever the Valcourt Alpha wanted with those papers, he had gone to considerable lengths to get them, and men who went to considerable lengths for something always had a reason bigger than the thing itself.

I looked at the file on my dresser and felt my stomach turn over slowly.

"This should not leave the territory," I said. "We should involve the pack. Bring it to Armand, to the council. Something this sensitive being extracted from our archives and walked across—"

"No." Shanelle’s voice came out sharper than I expected from a girl still standing in the middle of my bedroom uninvited. She caught herself and softened it quickly. "Luna Vivianne, please. My father would hand Chris over without blinking. You know that. He has always valued his position over his children, and this would give him the perfect excuse to make an example of him." She pressed her lips together. "My brother’s chances go to nothing the second this becomes official pack business. This is just a stupid file."

I knew she was right. Anthony had always been the kind of man who loved his son the way powerful men loved things that reflected well on them, and Chris had started making that difficult for a long time now. The moment this landed on a council table, Chris became a liability that needed managing, and managing in Beaumont often looked like sacrifice dressed up in formal language.

Then there was Lucian.

I turned that thought over carefully. My brother would find out. He always found out. The question was never whether, only when and what shape the damage would take when he did. If he learned that the Archambault files had been pulled from the archive and were on their way to Valcourt, he would understand immediately what it meant. He would know exactly who had an interest in that file and why, and then he would start calculating how to contain it.

Containing things was what Lucian did. He was extraordinarily gifted at it.

"The only reason Chris would fold this fast," Shanelle said, and her voice had gone quieter now, almost tired, "and want this for the Valcourt Alpha, is because of Margo. I know my brother. He would not compromise this pack for anything short of her."

I had that feeling too. I had been sitting with it since she started talking, that particular pull of recognition that came from knowing someone’s patterns long enough to read them without being told. Chris had loved Margaux since before he understood what loving someone actually cost. Whatever that Valcourt Alpha had said to him, he had found the right lever and pressed it.

"You spoke to Margaux," I said. "How did she sound?"

Shanelle was quiet for a moment. Only a moment.

"Defeated," she said finally. "She sounded defeated. That is part of the reason I want to go. I need to see her, Luna Vivianne. I am very worried about her."

The word settled in my chest with a heavy thud. Defeated. Margaux had entered that estate with the stubborn, maddening pride that had driven me to distraction her whole life, and now she sounded broken. I did not want to picture what could have happened in a single day to bring her to that.

I did not let myself imagine it for long.

"When were you last able to speak to her?" I asked. "Not the message, not through Chris. When did you actually speak to her last?"

"Not too long ago." She paused. "She called me after Chris had fallen for Alpha Theodore’s trick. She sounded—" She stopped again. "She was trying to be calm about it, you know... the way she always tries to. But I could hear it underneath."

"Call her," I said. "Right now. I want to know if she picks up for you."

Shanelle reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone without question. I turned back to the dresser while she dialed, and I stood in front of the file for a long moment before I touched it.

I did not want to open it. I had not wanted to look at anything bearing that name for seven years. I had managed it successfully, had even convinced myself at certain intervals that the distance meant I had moved on from what happened. That was never true, of course. Moving on was something you performed for other people. What I had actually done was learn to exist alongside the knowledge without looking at it directly.

I lifted the cover.

The first page was the formal case heading. The date. The names of the presiding council members. The charge listed underneath in clean, official script.

My brother’s voice came back to me without invitation, carrying that particular certainty he wore like a second skin.

Anyone who has your secrets has you on a leash, he had said to me. These bastards have to die.