Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

I pulled back first.

It wasn’t what I wanted. That was the truth I couldn’t avoid, no matter how fast I tried to move on. Something wild and urgent rushed through my chest, heading somewhere I hadn’t allowed. All I could do was put space between us before it went any further.

I was to be sane. Why could I not be when she was close?

She looked at me.

I looked back at her, and it felt like we were back to square one. My confession complicated things. It was a stupid thing, too, because what could we ever be? Truly?

"This changes nothing," I said.

My words sounded steadier than I felt, and for that small mercy I was grateful.

"I... know," she said, lying through her teeth.

But how could I stare down and judge her?

We were both lying, and we knew it. We stood in the kitchen with the oven behind us, feeling the weight of what we’d done settle over us like a storm. Neither of us said anything, because calling it out would mean admitting the lie. Admitting it would mean facing the truth, and neither of us was ready for that.

I had just betrayed Séverine in the worst of ways, and though I was supposed to feel a great deal of guilt about it. I did not. I still wanted to be in Margaux’s orbit. I still wanted to taste her. But I was supposed to hate her. Like the air I breathed. She was supposed to repulse me. So why could I not channel any of that?

Why did I not want to? What was Severine to me now?

I... I had no answer to that.

I turned back to the counter, and so did she.

Things were awkward now. Given how much time the Wellington had to bake.

The kitchen wrapped us in a careful, electric silence as we moved around each other, wordless. It was not a comfortable silence, but it was not an angry one either. It was the silence of two people who had spoken something true and were now navigating around it with deliberate care. We moved like people crossing a dark room they knew by heart, determined not to bump into anything.

I checked the oven without looking at her.

She reorganized things on the counter that did not need reorganizing.

Twenty minutes slipped by. Then forty. The Wellington rested in the oven, becoming what it was meant to be, and I poured more focus into it than the recipe could ever demand.

When the timer sounded, I reached in without thinking, considering all I was really doing was distracting myself.

Pain exploded through my palm.

The metal rack branded itself into my skin with a vicious hiss. The dish lurched in my grip. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Heat shot through my hand, sharp and blinding, racing up my arm like fire finding fresh ground.

The dish hit the counter with a hard clatter.

I stared at my hand.

Angry red lines were already rising across my palm and fingers. The skin looked raw, almost glossy. A tremor ran through me.

And still, somehow, it felt far away.

The burn was real. I knew that. My body knew it. My pulse hammered. My fingers twitched uselessly at my side.

But my mind was somewhere else entirely, caught in thoughts that hurt worse than any oven rack ever could.

Margaux was beside me before I had finished setting the dish down.

She took my hand. And she did not do it gently either.

She turned my palm upward, studied the redness blooming across my skin, then led me to the sink. She ran cold water and held my hand beneath it, never once meeting my eyes.

"You do know I will heal, right?" I said.

"I know," she said. "But not fast enough."

After that, she kept my hand under the water anyway.

I watched her in profile. The intent focus, the faint furrow between her brows, the gentle way her thumb rested against my wrist without pressure. She was not putting on a show of concern. She simply cared, the same way she had knelt on that dining room floor for someone she loved. She never made a spectacle of what it cost her.

I looked away before she could catch me looking.

The Wellington waited on the counter, golden and perfect, carrying the scent of something achieved against the odds. I remembered her attacking mushrooms with the focus of someone confronting a real opponent, and felt something shift inside my chest that I chose not to name too closely.

We carried it back to the dining room together.

Father looked at the dish when it arrived. Then at Margaux. Then at me. Whatever calculation he ran behind his eyes, he kept the result to himself. He accepted the Wellington with the cold grace of a man who had gotten what he demanded and was choosing not to be impressed by the execution of it.

"Your Beta is pardoned," he said to Margaux, after a taste, without warmth and without ceremony.

She nodded once and said nothing, which was the correct decision.

Chris received the news with the wary look of a man who didn’t trust the gift but was smart enough not to say so out loud. Shanelle reached over and squeezed his arm. Across the table, Laurent held my gaze for a beat too long, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The table returned to some version of its earlier function.

Our Beaumont guests were still deeply appalled by what had happened, and Alpha Dorian was barely keeping his rage at my actions in check. But he had not exploded yet. Though I could tell that he wanted to.

After the meal, when the others had begun moving away from the table in various directions, Dorian’s hand found my arm.

His grip was light. He had lost the strength for anything else. But his voice had not lost its edge.

"Walk with me."

I walked with him to the corridor just outside the dining room. The evening light had faded into the dark blue of late hour, and the sounds from inside carried muffled through the door.

He stopped and turned to face me.

His eyes widened when he focused on my face, and he then spoke. "Where is your mask?"

Only then did I realize that I had forgotten my mask in the kitchen. Was that part of why he had been filled with so much rage?