Claimed by the scarred Alpha

CÉLINE

The estate was still standing. It hadn’t collapsed around me. Not yet.

I stood in the center of my study, listening to the strange kind of silence you got when you’re waiting for everything to fall apart. But unfortunately for me, there was no yelling from Séverine’s room. No fire racing down the halls. No commotion out on the grounds. Just quiet and the prickling sense that something should be happening, but wasn’t.

Either she was dead, or she’d run. There wasn’t much else left for her to do.

"Fucking useless bitch!" I called her out loud to the empty room and started packing.

I’d lasted this long by not waiting around to see how a crisis played out. The logic was simple, and I’d already run through it before Margaux was even gone from the room: My father would find out. Not if—when, and how, and what I’d have left to work with by the time he did. The only thing I could control was how much distance I put between myself and the fallout.

I wasn’t finished. I needed to remind myself of that. This was a retreat, not a defeat—and that difference mattered. I wasn’t about to let go of it, not now.

Not fucking ever.

I could write letters from anywhere in the world.

The elder’s circle was full of people who weren’t happy with where Valcourt was headed. There were wolves old enough to remember how things were before a stranger took over. I’d reach out to them one at a time, slowly, carefully, using messages no one could trace or mistake for what they were. I’d make the argument against a false heir, and I’d do it right this time. No more rushing.

I locked the study door behind me.

The secret passage was hidden behind the window alcove. You had to press certain points in the stone. It was just something I’d figured out years ago and never told a soul. One of the few clever things from my childhood I’d never had to regret.

It opened as quietly as ever.

I slipped inside.

The passage wound through the guts of the house, slipping down past the foundation and coming out somewhere beyond the east garden wall. I’d tested it a couple times this past year. Mostly just drills, and running through my escape plan in case everything ever went sideways. I knew every twist, every drop, every spot where the stone turned slick with dew.

But those rehearsals hadn’t prepared me for moving this fast, with my heart pounding and my legs shaky with adrenaline.

I took my first spill at the second sharp turn and forgot how steep it got there and how slick the stone could get. My knee slammed into the ground, but I kept moving, shoving the pain aside for later. Near the bottom, I slipped again and hit a patch where water had pooled, making everything as slick as ice. I caught myself on the wall, breath hissing through my teeth, and pushed on.

The exit was hidden under years of tangled vines and broad leaves, so much growth it was more plant than doorway. I jammed my fingers into the gap, yanking handfuls of green aside until bits of light began to cut through.

I shoved my way out into the afternoon air.

Only for me to freeze at the last second.

Five sentinels waited in a loose arc, standing like they’d known exactly where I’d come out, and had been waiting a good long while.

I looked at each face, reading their expressions, sizing up their stances, measuring the distance to the nearest gap. Old habits kicking in.

"Luna Céline." The one in the center—clearly in charge—stepped forward, with just a single, careful pace. "You are under arrest for the coercion and assisted suicide of the late heir Theodore Valcourt."

I actually laughed.

It wasn’t forced. That shit was real, and that almost surprised me more than anything else.

"You maggots," I said, with all pleasantness, "really think you’re going to stop me?"

I shifted. It hurt like hell.

Pain hit hard and fast. My whole body protested—. The muscle, bone, and every inch of me screaming as the shift tore through a body out of practice. I came out the other side already running, four legs where there’d been two, heading straight at the nearest sentinel. The only way out was through.

They did not hold back as they fired.

Silver burned differently than regular bullets. It did not just hurt; it spread, crawling through your blood and eating you from the inside out. Two rounds slammed into my left flank, but I kept going. Stopping meant dying. Sooner or later did not matter. Moving meant maybe I had a chance.

I burst through the edge of their circle, but I barely made it out.

And then the net dropped.

It crashed down from above, heavy and threaded with silver, tangling me up before I’d even taken three more strides. Everywhere it touched, it burned, so many sharp, hot points at once I could barely make sense of it. Silver always ruined the shift. My body snapped back, my bones grinding, muscles twisting, until I was just me again, on hands and knees in the wet grass, the net pressing its pattern deep into my skin.

I just stayed there, breathing hard.

The sentinels closed in. I heard the senior one muttering into his comms, but all I could see was the grass under my face, each blade pressed against my shaking palms. And then the tears came, before I could even decide whether to let them.

I wasn’t crying because I had been caught. Fuck that.

I was crying because I’d been so close. And close, in the end, was just another word for not at all. My whole life, I’d spent right on the edge of things I wanted, always close enough to see, never close enough to reach. The silver burned everywhere the net touched, the afternoon was shockingly cold, and nothing, absolutely nothing, had gone the way I needed.

A boot nudged my shoulder, testing whether I still had enough fight left in me. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Every breath scraped through my chest, and each tiny shift dragged another line of fire across my skin. My fingers dug into the damp earth until mud packed beneath my nails. Somewhere beyond the pounding in my ears, birds burst from the trees, startled into flight by the gunfire that had finally gone silent. The forest seemed to hold its breath with me, waiting to see if I would break first.

"Get her up," the senior sentinel said.