Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

I watched Étienne slip out of the dining room behind his adoptive father, Alpha Dorian. Theodore’s apparition drifted after them, circling Dorian’s shoulder with the quiet patience of something waiting for its hour to strike.

I turned back to Céline.

She offered me a smile stripped of warmth, the sort that signals a silent pact but withholds comfort. I met her eyes for a heartbeat, then glanced beyond her to the second apparition, the one that had hovered behind her chair all through dinner.

It waved at me, and the moment that it did, I looked away.

Dorian’s voice floated in from the corridor, summoning Céline. She stood with the calm deliberation of someone who had rehearsed this moment and already chosen her response. Then she vanished, leaving the dining room to dissolve into the softer sounds of people drifting away.

Shanelle appeared at my side before I could even begin to make sense of the evening.

"That was completely fucked." She said it low and direct. "I am so sorry."

"Chris is pardoned." I kept my voice level. "We got it handled."

"This is not about Chris." She turned to face me properly. "That whole thing was designed to humiliate you. Every second of it. They wanted you on your knees, and they got it, and I am not going to sit here and pretend that is acceptable." She pressed her lips together. "When we leave tomorrow, you are coming with us."

I glanced across the room at Chris. He had not budged since we returned from the kitchen, his gaze fixed on me, unwavering.

"Shanelle..."

"I do not care, Margo. Make something up. That you are homesick or..."

"Leaving would not change anything," I cut in.

I knew her heart was in the right place. But I had to come back to reality.

"It would change everything, Margo. You would be home. You would be safe. You would be with people who actually—"

"I am Valcourt now."

She stared at me. "Fuck that."

"Shanelle."

"No." Her voice had climbed slightly. "When we get back, I will make sure everyone knows what is happening here. I will make sure they understand how you are being treated, and then nobody will stand for—"

"You cannot be that naive."

The words escaped sharper than I meant, but I let them stand. She stared at me as if I had struck her, and I met her gaze, pressing on because the truth needed air and I was done pretending honesty was cruelty.

"If Beaumont ever intended to stand beside me, they would have gone to war rather than hand me over," I said. "If not then, they would have called off the wedding the second they saw the red dress demand, war be damned. But... they did not. They stood there and let it happen. Hell... my wedding dress was sewn by one of our very best." I looked at her steadily. "I cannot hold a grudge for that because I partly made this choice myself, too, to save the border villages. What is left is to make something of the bed I am in."

"Margo—"

"It has not been all bad," I said. "Today happened because the Alpha wanted to make a point to Chris. The humiliation of it was yours, not mine alone, when you watched it."

I heard Chris’s sharp intake of breath.

I knew those words would sting. I spoke them anyway, because truth mattered more than their comfort. They had arrived with righteous anger blazing in their chests, and righteous anger was a noble burden—until the consequences came, and then it was the very thing that got people killed in another’s house.

Shanelle’s face cycled through emotions before settling on a look of horror, the kind born from a realization you could never unlearn.

"Margo—"

"I guess you will not understand it," I said, more gently. "Not until you feel it yourself. Though I hope you never do."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that when the wheel turns, no one is above the program." I turned away before the burning behind my eyes could become something visible. "Not even the most privileged among us. I woke up to that a long time ago. You need to do the same as well."

"I do not regret saving Chris," I said it to the room rather than to either of them specifically. "What use is my pride against his life? I know he would do it again and again for my sake without thinking twice."

"Margaux." Chris’s voice came from behind me. "Can we talk?"

"It is late." I turned toward the door. "Tomorrow, maybe."

His hand closed around my arm.

Not hard enough to hurt. Just enough to stop me.

I tried to pull away. His grip tightened.

When I looked at him, something flickered across his face. Hesitation. Frustration. The look of a man standing on the edge of a decision he wasn’t sure he could live with.

"Wait," he said. "Just wait, please—"

"Let her go."

Laurent’s voice drifted from somewhere to my left, low and quiet.

Chris looked past me toward him.

For a second, his hand remained on my arm.

Then his fingers loosened.

I felt the hesitation in it. The pause. Like letting go cost him more than it should have.

When he finally stepped back, his jaw tightened, and whatever he had been about to say disappeared behind it.

Céline stepped back into the dining room first, her expression carrying nothing readable. A moment later, Étienne followed, and I did not look at him directly. I walked toward the door.

"I am retiring for the night," I said, to no one specifically, to everyone, to the room itself.

I walked through the door before anyone could respond.

The corridor was cooler and quieter, and I moved through it with the focused attention of someone who knew they were about to fall apart and was trying to reach a private location first. My steps were even. My hands were at my sides. I was managing it.

"What is wrong?"

His voice came from directly behind me. I had not heard him turn around.

"I need a minute alone," I said without stopping.

"I would not have a problem with that." He fell into step beside me. "But there is someone in this estate who wants you dead, and they happen to prefer doing it when you are isolated."

I stopped walking.

I turned to face him, the burning behind my eyes intensifying. The corridor held the hush of late evening, the house winding down. I looked at him and felt eight years’ worth of emotion press against my chest all at once.

"I hate this," I said. "I feel exactly the way I felt that night." My voice cracked slightly on the last word, and I pressed my lips together and tried again. "When everyone I trusted stood in front of me and told me I had to let you go or fall beside you. My friends are in that room worrying themselves sick over me, and I am walking away from them because I am afraid of what they will see if I stay." I pressed my hand flat against my sternum. "I feel powerless. The same powerlessness I felt that night in the rain. And I cannot stand it."

My voice broke on the last word entirely.

Étienne closed the space between us and put his arms around me.

He stayed silent. He did not try to fix it or tell me my feelings were misplaced. He simply held me while I sobbed into his chest, stripped of dignity, raw with the honesty of someone who had carried too much for too long and finally could not anymore.

His hand moved to the back of my head.

I stayed there and let him hold the weight of it with me, and the corridor stayed quiet around us, and for that moment, in the middle of everything, it was enough.