Claimed by the scarred Alpha

MARGAUX

They’d dragged him into the square last. He was much smaller than his brother, bloodied from struggling against the chains that bound his wrists. His dark hair had been plastered to his face from the rain, and his shirt hung in tatters where someone had torn it. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

He’d scanned the crowd like he was searching for something. For someone.

His eyes found mine across the square.

I’d frozen. Something in his expression made my chest tighten and made me want to look away, but I couldn’t because he was staring at me like I was the only person there. Like the rest of them didn’t exist. Rain streaked down his face, mixing with blood from a cut above his eyebrow.

His dark grey eyes hypnotized me.

He hadn’t begged. He did not even cry. He hadn’t done anything except stand there and look at me with an expression I’d spent seven years trying to forget.

He looked betrayed.

Like he’d expected better from me.

They’d spared him that night because pack law recognized he was too young to have participated in his family’s treason. But sparing him wasn’t mercy. They’d stripped him of his name, his rank, his right to exist within pack territory. He was declared a rogue and immediately excommunicated as if he were contaminated by his family’s crimes.

I’d never found out what happened to him after that. Rogues didn’t last long outside pack protection. Most died within a year from starvation, violence, or the simple fact that wolves needed a pack to survive.

Sometimes I’d wondered if he’d made it. If he’d found another pack willing to overlook his history. If he’d forgiven me for standing there silent while they destroyed his entire world.

Mostly, I tried not to think about him at all.

The man at the gala tonight had reminded me of him. Something about his voice. The way he moved. The way those dark eyes were visible through the mask’s slits.

I shook my head, pushing away from the mirror. I was seeing things that weren’t there because my brain was trying to make sense of chaos by connecting dots that had no business being connected. Stress did that. Made you irrational.

I knelt beside my bed and reached underneath, my fingers searching until they found the small wooden box I’d shoved back there years ago. Dust coated the lid. I pulled it out and sat cross-legged on the floor, just staring at it for a long moment before opening the latch.

Letters tied with a blue ribbon filled the box.

My hands trembled as I lifted them out. The paper had yellowed slightly at the edges. The ribbon had faded from royal blue to something closer to grey. I knew without reading them what they said because I’d memorized every word before I’d hidden them away.

Letters from Étienne. Before everything. Before the executions. Before the world had taught me that caring about the wrong person could be its own kind of treason.

I untied the ribbon and unfolded the top letter. His handwriting looked rushed, enthusiastic, the way fifteen-year-old boys wrote when they had too many thoughts and not enough time to organize them properly. He’d written about a book he was reading. About wanting to show me this trail he’d found in the woods. About how he couldn’t wait until the summer festival when we’d have an excuse to sneak away from our families.

The words blurred.

I remembered standing in that square with rain soaking through my coat and Étienne’s eyes locked on mine. I remembered the moment right before they’d dragged him away, when he’d opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. When I’d shaken my head just slightly because speaking would have made it worse.

I also remembered what I had done before that night. Two days actually before that horrible night.

I had found Étienne in the solitary cell he had been placed in, just like the rest of his family. He had been desperate, asking me to speak to my father on his family’s behalf. Swearing they were innocent. Begging me to believe him.

The memory of my own voice made me sick. Sure, I had been spurred by my mother... Still... the words had been mine and mine alone...

"I reject you, Étienne Archambault."

Mother had said it was a sacrifice I had to make. The formal words that severed any connection between us. The sentence that would protect me from being associated with his family’s treason. A card that the treacherous Archambault family would never be able to use as a card because I had made it clear with my actions that I would choose my pack over whatever we’d been to each other.

He’d stopped begging after that.

I shoved the letters back into the box and slammed the lid shut. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely push it back under the bed.

Karma. Maybe this was karma.

Maybe the universe had been keeping score this whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to show me what it felt like to have your entire future ripped away by someone who was supposed to care about you.

My father had signed that contract without asking me because I was just one daughter and the pack was everything.

I’d rejected Étienne without hesitation because he was just one boy, and my survival was everything.

The parallel made me want to vomit.

I pulled myself up onto the bed and curled into a ball, still wearing my ruined dress, still tasting champagne and the seven-year-old guilt at the back of my throat.

The ceiling fan rotated above me in slow circles. I watched it spin and tried to remember how to breathe around the weight crushing my chest.

Two days until my wedding.

Two days until I became someone else’s problem, someone else’s tool, someone else’s sacrifice.

I closed my eyes and wondered if Étienne was still alive somewhere. If he ever thought about the girl who’d stood silent in the rain while his world burned. If he’d learned to hate me as thoroughly as I was starting to hate myself.