Chapter 340 340
Sabine POV
The scent of dinner drifted through the corridors of the Garnier-Roux home, rich and comforting, wrapping around me the moment I stepped inside. When I entered the dining room and saw the spread laid out across the table, my breath caught. I couldn’t remember the last time food had stirred this kind of excitement in me this almost aching gratitude.
To Didier, Caroline, and me, this wasn’t just a meal. It was a feast. Enough to last days. Even now, my thoughts instinctively calculated how leftovers could be reheated, rationed, stretched how we might make it endure once we returned to life on the farm. Old habits, ingrained too deeply to shake.
We’d never sat together around a proper dining table like this before, not really. Unless you counted the occasional meals at the farmer’s cramped kitchen table, where elbows knocked and space was always scarce. This—this was something else entirely. Polished wood. Space. Abundance. A kind of quiet affluence I wasn’t accustomed to.
Didier still wasn’t speaking to me. Yet across the table, his gaze kept drifting my way hesitant, searching, unsettled. I could see the conflict written plainly on his face, the discomfort of accepting something so generous in such a grand family setting.
In the span of a few hours, we’d gone from rags to riches, and I couldn’t fault him for wondering which world he preferred. At least around a campfire, there was no performance, no careful filtering of words. Most nights, we’d been too exhausted and hungry to talk at all.
“Potatoes, Didier?” Aurélie asked, passing him a bowl he accepted with a small nod.
“Yes, thank you, your Ladyship”
“No titles here, Didier,” she interrupted gently. “This is our family home. Alpha will do when the time comes. Otherwise, it’s just Aurélie.” She smiled at him before reaching for the platter of meat.
With practiced ease, she filled Dominique’s and Delphine’s plates with sliced chicken and sausages. Both children let out exaggerated moans of delight when she moved on to the vegetables, earning a soft laugh from those nearby.
“So,” Fabrice said, nudging my arm playfully. “When do we get to hear about your adventures?”
As Aurélie’s Beta and the twins’ second father—he spoke with easy familiarity. I knew the story well enough by now: how Aurélie and Damien were happily mated and married, but only after years of heartbreak. She’d rejected Fabrice once, faked her own death when she learned she was pregnant, all because of mistakes Damien had made mistakes buried firmly in the past.
She’d returned when the children were four, newly risen as Alpha of the Darkvale pack. I still had much to learn about werewolf society, but one truth stood clear Aurélie tolerated no foolishness, and she had rebuilt her pack from ruin with sheer will. Fabrice had been there for the children’s first four years, raising them as if they were his own.
“There’s not much to tell,” I said carefully, aware that every ear at the table was tuned toward me.
“Oh, come on,” Fabrice pressed. “Six months living off-grid? There had to be a few interesting moments.”
My gaze flicked, unbidden, to Didier and Caroline.
“Well,” Caroline said, suddenly animated, “we were raided by the police when we left. They found illegal workers on the farm.”
“Raided?” Aurélie gasped. “Wow I imagine you shifted and ran for the hills.”
“No well, we didn’t know Sab was a werewolf back then, so all our escaping was done on foot.” Caroline’s cheeks flushed as Aurélie’s full attention snapped to her. She even glanced at Didier, as if checking she hadn’t said too much.
“But you could’ve shifted, if Sab had known,” Damien interjected.
I rolled my eyes.
“We had someone else with us,” Caroline continued. “Gilles. We didn’t want to expose” She trailed off when Didier nudged her arm.
“Don’t worry about Gilles,” Damien said with a chuckle. “I’m fairly certain he knows more about the supernatural world than I do.”
His smile faded when he noticed the sharp look Didier shot my way.
At least back then, my innocence was genuine. I hadn’t known Gilles knew my brother or that he belonged to this world at all.
“You poor things,” Aurélie said softly. “You must all be desperate for a proper shift. Please feel free to roam the grounds before bed tonight. Your wolves must be aching.”
The meal continued. Dominique had climbed into my lap, Delphine settling comfortably on Fabrice’s, both girls whispering secrets and giggling under their breath. I found myself far more invested in their hushed conversations than the adult discussions unfolding around us.
Didier kept looking at me. I made a conscious effort not to meet his gaze not once. It was difficult. I still thought of him as a friend, and the knowledge that he was angry, that he didn’t trust me, cut deeper than I cared to admit.
Just like so many others.
My future, it seemed, had arrived already tangled in the shadows of my past.
Each time his eyes found mine, heat crept up my cheeks. My gaze would drop instead to Damien, who watched Didier closely… then shifted his attention to me.
“What I don’t understand,” Damien said as staff quietly cleared space for dessert, “is why two alpha-borns were hiding out on a remote farm.”
Alpha-borns?
My eyes snapped to Didier. He shifted uncomfortably, edging closer to his sister.
“Alpha-borns?” I echoed, my mouth voicing the confusion swirling in my head.
“Can’t you feel it, Sab?” Damien asked. “The power radiating off him. Only alpha-borns carry that kind of presence pack or no pack.”
He studied me closely. “I’m surprised you didn’t sense it. Especially after living with them for so long. In such close quarters.”
He didn’t know the truth.
That right now, I had no way of sensing anything at all.