Claimed by the scarred Alpha

SÉVERINE

I pressed myself flat against the wall the moment I heard their voices.

I didn’t fixate on what was being said. My rage came from the fact that he spoke to her with kindness.

The door at the top of the basement stairs sat heavy and cold at my back. I’d been standing at it for three minutes, maybe four, with my hand on the handle and every reason to go through. Instead I stood there like an idiot, listening to footsteps come closer from the other side.

I pulled on my magic before thought fully caught up with instinct. It spread from my sternum outward, that familiar weight of invisibility settling over my skin like a second layer of cold. The cloaking held. It always held.

Then I pushed myself to the side as the doors opened.

They stepped out together.

I watched them.

I should not have watched them the way I did. It was a choice, staying still long enough to observe rather than simply wait, and I made it fully aware of what I was doing to myself.

Étienne walked with that careful, slightly uneven weight on his leg. It definitely came from how he threw himself off that room with no care in the world but her.

But there was something different in his posture. He was less rigid than I’d grown used to seeing when he moved through corridors where anyone might see him. And Margaux walked close enough to him that the space between them felt deliberate rather than accidental, chosen the way people choose warmth without admitting they were cold.

She said something low. He answered.

He answered without first measuring whether or not it was safe to respond.

That was the thing that sat wrong in my chest like a stone.

I knew how Étienne moved through conversations. I had watched him do it for long enough to map his patterns with some accuracy. The pause before answering. The slight rotation away from the other person’s body when something landed too close. He was not doing any of that. He was just talking to her. Like it was easy. Like she had already gotten herself past every wall before he had noticed her coming.

They passed me and kept walking.

I let the magic go when they rounded the corridor bend and disappeared.

My familiar dropped from wherever it had been and settled on my shoulder in his new preferred form, its shell twitching faintly against my neck.

"They look so lovey-dovey," he said.

"Who cares." I turned back toward the door. "That is not what we are here for."

"I’m just vocalizing my observation."

"Since we are speaking about observations, you were the one who told me about the boy in the cage." I pulled the door open and started down the stairs. "The one with a relationship to that bitch. That is what I’m here for. Keep any of your other stupid observations to yourself."

"I’m right, though."

"You usually are." I did not say it warmly. "But like I said, it doesn’t matter. You should know now that I fully intend to fight fate and the goddess if she will not hand to me what I deserve. So what did you find?"

"He is connected to her by fate. A purple string joins their hands. Like you and Étienne."

Interesting.

The stairs down were narrow and the light came in thin, spaced intervals from brackets bolted into the stone. The air changed as I descended, turning cooler and damp. It was that specific underground smell of spaces not meant for long occupation. I had been in enough places like this to stop noticing it somewhere around the age of eleven.

I heard the sentinels before I saw them. Three sets of quiet movement, the shift of weight from foot to foot, the muted sound of someone clearing a throat. When I stepped off the last stair and into the corridor below, they turned toward me with the alertness of people who had been bred to take out threats as quickly as possible.

Their distress however softened when they saw me.

That part still surprised me sometimes. Not because I had done anything to deserve it, but because it was useful, the way people defaulted to relaxation at the sight of a familiar face. They bowed, the motion near-simultaneous.

"Luna Séverine." The one in front spoke first. "What brings you down?"

"I was looking for Theo." I kept my voice mild. "I heard he was here."

"You must have just missed him." He straightened. "He left a short while ago."

"I see." I let a beat pass. "Who was he speaking with down here? I heard he caught some intruders."

"You’d have to speak to him directly about that." Something careful entered the tone of the sentinel speaking to me. "I apologize if it sounds rude, Luna. It is just that it’s part of the job description. We have to keep things hush."

"Of course." I nodded like I found this entirely reasonable. Then I paused. It aas calculated but I had to make it look short enough to seem natural. "Still... I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem for me to go down there and take a look. Given my position."

The words did not come out as soft as I’d wanted them to. I was not particularly skilled at engineering softness under time pressure, so I abandoned the attempt and came out with it directly.

"I want to see the intruders."

The sentinel’s expression shifted. "That’s not something we can accommodate without the Alpha’s word. His standing order is that no one comes through without his written note or his spoken approval. No exceptions except for Beta Laurent."

"I am his Luna to be." The patience I had arrived with ran out quickly. "That ranking sits above Laurent’s. Considerably above. I am sure."

"Respectfully—"

"He let that false bride of his through." I cut in even though my voice stayed level, even if it was only through conscious effort. "She came down here without issue. I wonder why."

"Beta Laurent accompanied her at the time." He was saying but then he paused. I saw a slow blink glaze his sight and it was like something shifted behind his eyes. "But you would have seen the Alpha if—"

He stopped.

I watched the realization move through all three of them like a current through standing water. Fast, and then total. Their hands went for their holsters in the same second.

Lucky for me, my familiar moved faster.

The unseen hands came from nowhere, latching on, and holding their arms away from the guns with the kind of grip that came from a power that did not get tired. The sentinel in front of me stared at his own hand with an expression that had gone fully past fear and arrived somewhere quieter and more animal.

"It’s you," he said. "You’re—"