Claimed by the scarred Alpha

ÉTIENNE

"What are you doing here?" I kept my voice low and controlled. Not for Séverine’s benefit particularly, but because Margaux was still asleep three feet away and the last thing I needed was for her to wake up and walk into whatever this was about to become.

Séverine slipped further into the room. Her gaze flicked from Margaux to me and back, dissecting the scene with the sharp focus of someone who had already made up her mind before she even spoke.

"I heard you were hurt," she said. Her voice was careful. Measured in that way she got when she was holding something in. "So I came."

"I am fine."

"Are you?" It did not come out like a question. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at me steadily. "What about her? What were you doing with her?"

A knot twisted in my chest. I forced my face blank, even if she could not see me, and let my eyes flick to Margaux, still slumped in the chair, head lolling gently, untouched by any of this.

I needed her to stay that way.

"You are making a big deal out of nothing." I turned back to Séverine and lowered my voice further. "I noticed she had fallen asleep. I wanted to check she was alright. That is all."

"That is not what it looked like."

"Séverine."

"I have eyes, Étienne." She did not raise her voice, which somehow made it worse. "It looked like you wanted to kiss her."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then very deliberately chose not to engage with that directly.

All I really wanted was for her to hush before Margaux woke. I wanted to end this quickly, to get us out into the corridor where we could have whatever argument was coming. What I absolutely did not want was to stand here, my hand still tingling from her breath, and try to explain myself.

"You are starting to make a habit of this," I said instead. "And I am getting tired of it."

Her jaw tightened. "A habit of what, exactly? Noticing things?"

"A habit of jealousy."

The word landed, and she looked at me like I had just done something deliberately unkind. Maybe I had.

"Am I wrong, though?"

Her voice dropped, quieter now, stripped of whatever composure she had walked in with. This was the version of Séverine that appeared when she stopped performing and just said the thing.

"You jumped a building for her, Étienne." She said it plainly. Not accusatory. Almost worse than accusatory because it just sat there, factual and unanswerable. "That is why you have a bad leg right now. You threw yourself out of a third-story window because she was in danger." She paused. "You have never done anything like that for me."

My wolf stirred. Uncomfortable. Restless in the way he got when something true was sitting in the room and I was choosing not to acknowledge it.

I ignored him.

"I would do the same for you." I met her eyes. "I would do more."

Something flickered across her face. Not quite belief. More the look of someone hearing the answer they had longed for, but no longer knew how to trust.

"You cannot even have sex with me."

The quiet in the room after that was absolute.

I did not flinch. I kept my face still, the same way I had learned to keep it still through things that were harder than this, but my chest pulled tight in a way I could not entirely account for.

"Every time," she said. Her voice had gone uneven. "Every time you want something with me, it is like you have to prepare yourself to hell and back first. Like, I am something you have to convince yourself of." She looked down at her own hands for a second. "You cannot make me feel that way and then tell me I am the one making this into something."

"You cannot be serious, making that about you," I said quietly.

"Then who should I make it about?" She looked up. "Because I am just telling you how I am starting to feel."

I said nothing.

The silence between us grew until it became its own answer. I saw Séverine feel it, saw something in her eyes settle from hurt into a steadier, more frightened place.

"People are talking," she said finally.

"People talk about everything."

"They are talking about this specifically." She took a breath. "About you and her. and the worst part is I am starting to believe some of them." Her voice caught slightly on the last word. "I am scared, Étienne."

I did not have anything clean to say to that. She was not wrong to be scared. That was the part I could not argue with, and she knew me well enough by now to know the difference between my real silence and the silence I deployed to end conversations.

"Tell me now." She lifted her chin, and there was something brave in the gesture, the kind of bravery that costs something. "Am I losing you?"

I looked back at Margaux.

I did not mean to. It happened the way things do when you have spent all day resisting, and your body finally betrays you. She was still asleep, mouth softened, hands open in her lap, afternoon light spilling gold across the chair. I was looking at her, and I knew Séverine saw it.

I turned back.

"No," I said. "Never."

Séverine held my gaze for a long moment, searching it the way people did when they wanted the answer but needed to be certain it was real. Whatever she found there, or whatever she decided to accept, I could not entirely say.

She stepped forward.

Her hands came up to either side of my face, careful around the mask, as she ripped it off my face, and then she kissed me.

I let her.

For a moment, my hands stayed at my sides. Then I placed one at her waist, as expected, as the moment demanded. She kissed me like she was trying to resolve something, and I stood there, feeling the gulf between my actions and my thoughts, and despised it.

My wolf went very quiet.

Not the peaceful kind of quiet. It was mad.