Chapter 288: Fawn

MARGAUX

The arc marking Beaumont’s border rose ahead of me exactly where I remembered it, weathered stone carved with the family crest I’d grown up tracing with my fingers as a child on long car rides home from visits elsewhere. I hadn’t expected the sight of it to hurt this much.

I drove through it without slowing.

Isabelle’s body rode in the trunk behind me, wrapped completely in white cloth and packed with balms the Valcourt healers had insisted on, their careful hands doing what little they could to preserve her for the journey. I hadn’t looked at her again since Laurent’s people loaded her in. I wasn’t sure I could survive looking twice.

The gates appeared a mile later, iron and stone, with sentinels posted on either side with rifles slung casually over their shoulders, the posture of men expecting nothing more dramatic than a supply truck.

My car rolled to a stop in front of them.

One approached the driver’s window, his expression bored and professional, until he looked through the glass and saw my face.

He froze.

“Luna Margaux,” he breathed, stumbling back a step like the words themselves had physically pushed him.

“I’ve returned,” I said, keeping my voice level, “for my father.”

He didn’t move for a moment, clearly caught between protocol and shock, before he finally snapped into motion, waving frantically for his partner. The second sentinel jogged over, took one look through the window, and went equally still.

“We need to check the vehicle,” the first one said, recovering some professionalism. “We… we do not suspect you of anything, but it is standard procedure.”

“Of course.”

He circled to the trunk, and I heard the latch pop, heard the pause that followed, longer than it should have been.

“Sir,” the second sentinel called, his voice tight. “You need to see this.”

I heard the fabric shift, someone peeling back a corner of the wrapping, and then a sharp intake of breath from both of them at once.

“Apologies,” I said, not turning around. “I carried my mother too.”

Neither of them answered right away. I watched in the side mirror as they exchanged a look I couldn’t fully read, something between horror and confusion, before the first one grabbed the radio clipped to his shoulder.

“Base, this is gate two. We have Luna Margaux requesting entry. She’s also transporting a body. Female. It looks like Luna Vivianne.”

Static crackled back, a pause stretching long enough that I felt my pulse climb despite myself, and then a voice, tinny and distant, cut through.

“Let her in.”

The sentinel closed the trunk gently, more gently than I expected given the circumstances, and waved me through.

I drove the rest of the way to the main estate with my hands locked tight around the wheel, watching familiar landmarks slide past: the training yards, the chapel, the old oak where Chris, Shanelle, and I used to hang around as teenagers, before any of us understood what our futures actually cost. Nothing about the place had changed. Everything about me had.

I parked in the main courtyard, and before I’d even fully killed the engine, a small crowd had already gathered, Omegas mostly, several I recognized from the household staff, their faces lighting up the moment they spotted me stepping out of the car.

“Luna Margaux!” one of them called, hurrying forward, hands clasped together like she might actually cry from relief. “You’re home. Thank the goddess, you’re home safe.”

Another reached for my hands, squeezing them warmly, chattering something about how worried everyone had been, how the whole estate had held its breath since word came that I’d been taken by a rogue.

I let them fuss for exactly as long as I could stand it.

Because I remembered how I left this place and how relieved plenty were.

“My mother’s body is in the trunk,” I said, cutting through the noise. “She needs to be taken to the morgue immediately and handled with care.”

The warmth in their faces flickered, confusion replacing it, but years of household discipline won out over curiosity, and two of them moved toward the car without further question.

That was when I heard the voice behind me.

“You’re back,” Chris said, “just like I hoped you would be.”

I turned, and before I could brace myself properly, his arms were already around me, pulling me into a hug tight enough to steal the breath from my lungs. I felt him bury his face against my hair, felt the slow inhale as he breathed me in like I was something he’d been starving for.

I froze.

I had told myself, somewhere on the long drive here, that I would need to fawn. That I would need to play the role convincingly enough to buy myself room to move, to reach my father, to undo whatever poison Chris had already fed him. I had rehearsed the softness I’d need to fake.

But… I couldn’t make myself do it.

I shoved him off hard enough that he stumbled back a step, his expression shifting from euphoria to genuine confusion.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded.

“I was just happy to see you,” he said, his hands still half raised toward me, like he expected to close the distance again the moment I let him.

“After everything you did?” My voice came out sharper than I intended, sharper than was strategic, but I couldn’t seem to pull it back.

“What else did I do,” he said, “but save you?”

“You don’t actually believe that.”

“I do.” He stepped closer again, and I forced myself to hold my ground rather than retreat, refusing to give him the satisfaction of watching me flinch. “Every word of it.”

“You’re insane, Chris.”

He reached for my hand, and I let him take it only because pulling away too fast would have told him more than I wanted him to know yet. His fingers curled around mine, warm and far too familiar, and something in his eyes had gone soft in a way that made my skin crawl.

Because it was a performance.

“I did it because I love you,” he said, quiet, earnest, like the words alone should have been enough to excuse everything that came stacked behind them. “I know how it looks. I know what they’re all saying right now. But I need you to understand that everything I’ve done, every single choice, came from love. I couldn’t watch you suffer in that man’s hands and do nothing.”

“Where’s Shanelle?” I asked. “What happened to her?”