Claimed by the scarred Alpha

VIVIANNE

I summoned Amara to my room while the last gold of the afternoon still clung to the edges of the day, refusing to surrender to grey.

She arrived swiftly, as always, gliding through the door with her hands folded neatly at her apron and her eyes scanning my face, already measuring the storm she might find. Years at my side had taught her to read the language of my silences.

"Sit." I gestured to the chair by the window and waited while she settled.

She rarely accepted when I offered a seat. Today, she took it without hesitation, and that simple act anchored me more than I expected.

"Tonight, when dinner starts, and the family is occupied," I said, keeping my voice low and even, "I need you to find Bastien’s personal Omega and get her out of the estate. Do not wait for the meal to end. The moment they are all seated and the first course is served, you move."

Amara held my gaze. "Where do I take her, Luna?"

"Far enough and out of Beaumont territory entirely." I reached into the drawer of my dressing table and pulled out the card I had been sitting on for so long. I had told myself I was keeping it for an emergency. Apparently, this qualified. "Give her this."

She accepted it with both hands, careful and reverent, as if she sensed its importance even if she could not name it.

"Tell her to buy herself a new life." I smoothed my dress, a nervous gesture with no purpose. "If she loves her family, she will vanish them too. New names. New ground. New world."

"And if she refuses, Luna?"

"She will not refuse," I said it with more certainty than I felt. "She is smarter than that. She has been living in this house long enough to understand what it means when a Luna herself is the one asking her to run."

Amara nodded. She turned the card over once in her hands, looked at it, and then tucked it into the pocket of her apron with the discretion of someone who had been helping me manage impossible things for years.

"Is there anything else?"

"No." I looked at the window instead of her face. "Just be careful. Do not tell anyone where you are going. Do not answer questions. If anyone asks, you stepped out for fresh air."

She rose and slipped out without a word. That was what I cherished most: she never made me repeat myself, never forced me to bear the weight of my own requests by holding my gaze too long.

The door closed, and I sat down on the edge of my bed.

My spine bent forward, a posture I would never permit outside these walls. I pressed my palms to my eyes until pressure drowned out everything else. The ceiling, the walls, the costly furniture that never belonged to me, all pressed closer, as they always did when I was alone, and the performance was over.

One girl. I was trying to save one girl.

It seemed so small, almost pitiful. One girl among the mounting casualties my brother had shattered, discarded, or hollowed out. But she was here, and I could not pretend I did not know. That had to matter.

I reached for my phone.

Margaux’s name sat at the top of my recent calls. I stared at it for a moment before I pressed it, listening to the rings stack up one after another until her voicemail swallowed the call without ceremony. I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it.

Maybe she was angry with me. That was the kindest reason, and I clung to it because the others were unbearable. She was angry, silent, but safe. She just was not ready to speak to her mother, and that was a truth I understood more than she realized.

The other possibility sat in the back of my throat like something I refused to swallow.

I set the phone down on the bed beside me and tried to think rationally. Visiting Valcourt territory under the guise of missing my daughter was not outside the realm of what a mother would do. It was actually the most natural thing in the world. Armand would not question it. Lucian would find it sentimental and predictable, but still hate the thought of it.

I was so worried about Margaux, and the thought that she could be going through hell at this very moment did not sit well with me.

But if I entered that estate and found my worst fear already realized, I would not be able to keep my mask. Plenty of years of practice, and still, I knew I could not manage it this time.

I stood. Moving helped. Staying still with my thoughts had never been a gift I possessed.

The corridor outside my room stretched long and silent in the late afternoon hush. Dinner was still distant. I scrolled to Shanelle’s name and called, needing something for my hands to do. Shanelle and Margaux shared every secret. If Margaux were only angry, Shanelle would know, and she would deliver the truth in her gentle, diplomatic way, softening the edges without ever telling a lie.

The line rang. I passed one of the corridor’s side alcoves where a small window overlooked the garden, and then I passed one of the Omegas moving in the opposite direction.

She was bundled in a thick hoodie, odd for the warm afternoon, the hood pulled so low I could not see her face. She moved with her head bowed and shoulders hunched, the posture of someone desperate to disappear.

I barely registered her at first. I was still listening to the ringing on the other end of the phone, already forming the first sentence I would say when Shanelle picked up.

Then I heard it.

A ringtone. Coming from the girl I had just passed.

I stopped walking.

The sound was soft but unmistakable, rising from beneath her hood, from the layers she wore like armor, from the person she was trying not to be. My phone and hers were ringing with the same call.

I turned around slowly.

She had already started walking faster.

A chill swept through my chest. I ended the call. She did not slow; she quickened, and that single, desperate acceleration told me everything I needed to know about who she was, why she was here, and why she hid her face in my house.

I followed.

She rounded the corner ahead, her pace no longer feigning calm. I matched her, years of moving through this house guiding my steps. When she broke into a run at the end of the east passage, I was close enough that it took only seconds to catch her.

My hand closed around the back of her hood.

She lurched to a stop.

I pulled the hood back and found Shanelle’s face, breathless, her eyes wide with the look of someone caught and already searching for any escape, however unlikely.

"What the hell?" The words came out quiet rather than loud. I had long since learned that quiet landed harder. "What are you doing here? Why were you running?"

Her hands shifted behind her back.

That small, instinctive movement turned the cold in my chest into something sharper, more dangerous.

"What are you hiding?"

"Nothing, Luna Vivianne. I was just—"

I did not let her finish. I reached around her, and she resisted for exactly half a second before she understood that resisting me in my own hallway was not a fight she was going to win. My fingers closed around whatever she was holding behind her back, and she let go.

I looked down.

The file was thick, its brown paper cover worn at the corners by years of handling. The name stamped across the front in faded ink sent a white-hot flash through my vision.

Archambault.

I dropped it.

It landed between us, and I stepped back, my voice sounding distant to my own ears: "What are you doing with that?"

Shanelle dropped to her knees. Her hands pressed flat against the floor beside the file, and she looked up at me with something raw and desperate living in her face.

"I can explain, Luna Vivianne. Please do not expose me. Please."

I glanced both ways down the corridor. Empty meant nothing here. Lucian had eyes in impossible places, lurking in corners you forgot and behind faces you no longer questioned. Many years beside him had taught me that the most dangerous words were the ones you thought no one heard.

I grabbed the file off the floor. I grabbed Shanelle’s arm and pulled her upright, and I moved us both back toward my room without another word, keeping our pace quick enough to be purposeful but not quick enough to draw attention from anyone we passed.

The lock clicked behind us, the sound heavy with meaning.

I turned to face her.

"What the fuck are you doing with those files?" My voice was still low, but she heard everything in it. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is? Do you understand what you are holding?"