Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 106 Dec 18, 2025 POV: Thalia The three-hour drive back feels like drowning in slow motion while someone holds your head underwater and you're very aware of exactly how long you have before your lungs give up. Lysander's phone is permanently attached to his ear, trying to coordinate defenses remotely through cell service that cuts out every twelve seconds. "Marcus, if you can hear me, initiate Protocol Delta. Lock down the-fuck." The call drops again. He redials. Gets voicemail. Redials. Nothing.

Kieran's driving with the kind of controlled violence that makes the steering wheel creak under his grip, jaw clenched so hard I'm surprised his molars don't shatter. "We should have left more wolves behind. Should have anticipated she'd hit while we were gone." "We couldn't have known." The words taste hollow even as I say them. "We should have." His voice is flat, dead, carrying guilt that's going to eat him alive if I don't stop it. "This is basic tactical thinking. While the leaders are away, hit the vulnerable.

We walked straight into it." "We were chasing the intel we had." I'm gripping the door handle hard enough that my knuckles go white. "Robert gave us real information. We followed it." "Real information that was deliberately outdated." Lysander's given up on the phone, is just staring at it with the expression of someone who knows everything's gone to shit and they're powerless to stop it. "She played us perfectly." The mountain comes into view and my stomach drops through the floor. Smoke. Not the controlled kind from campfires or cooking.

The thick, acrid kind that comes from things burning that shouldn't be burning, from structures collapsing, from the aftermath of violence. We're still half a mile out when the carnage becomes visible. Two cabins reduced to smoking wreckage. Bodies in the clearing covered with tarps that weren't quite big enough to hide everything. Pack members moving through debris with the shell-shocked expressions of people who survived something they shouldn't have. This isn't an active attack. This is the aftermath. We're too late.

The vehicles screech to stops that leave rubber on dirt and I'm out before the engine dies, running toward the secured cabin where I left my children with Rosalie and three warriors who swore on their lives they'd protect them. The door's reinforced with furniture, barricaded from the inside. I'm pounding on it hard enough to bruise my fists. "Rosalie! It's Thalia! Open up!" Movement inside. Furniture scraping. The door cracks open and Rosalie's face appears, pale and terrified and very much alive. "Thank fuck." She pulls the door wider. "They're okay.

The kids are okay." I'm inside before she finishes speaking, scanning the small space for three specific faces. They're huddled in the corner-Orion trying to be brave with his shoulders squared and hands clenched, Luna crying silently with tears streaming down her face, Phoenix vibrating with barely contained power that's making the air shimmer around her. They see me and it's like whatever dam was holding them together just breaks. "Mama!" Phoenix is first, launching herself across the room with that supernatural speed she's still learning to control. Luna's right behind her.

Orion tries to maintain composure for approximately three seconds before giving up and joining the pile. I'm on my knees holding all three of them, checking for injuries with shaking hands, breathing in their scent to confirm they're real and whole and alive. "I'm here. I'm here. You're safe." "They came while you were gone." Orion's voice is steady but his hands are shaking. "Lots of them. With guns and fire and they were killing people and Marcus said we had to hide and-" "Shh. You're safe now. I've got you." The door opens again and Kieran enters.

Phoenix sees him and launches herself from my arms toward her father with zero warning. "Dad! They said you might not come back!" She slams into him with enough force to stagger a normal human. "They said the bad people might kill you and Mama and Uncle Lysander and we'd be alone and-" "I'm always coming back." He catches her easily, holds her with one arm while reaching for Orion and Luna with the other. "Always. You hear me?" They're crying against him now-all three of them letting go of whatever brave faces they've been maintaining.

He sinks to the floor holding our children, murmuring reassurances that sound like prayers, and I'm watching them with something that makes my chest physically hurt. Then it happens. The bond flickers. Just for a second. Faint enough I might have imagined it, but there-that pull toward him that's been silent for six weeks suddenly whispers recognition. Not demanding, not consuming. Just present. Acknowledging what my heart already knows. Maybe the antidote is finally working completely.

Maybe my wolf is just recognizing what biology tried to tell me a year ago and I was too terrified to accept. Maybe it doesn't matter which one is true. I reach for him and he looks up, something shifting in his expression. "Did you-" "Yeah." My voice comes out rough. "I felt it." The moment breaks when Marcus appears in the doorway, expression grim enough that I know whatever he's about to say will make this exponentially worse. "We need to talk.

About the dead." The kids are settled with Rosalie again-secure, safe, surrounded by warriors who look ready to die before letting anything through that door. We follow Marcus across the clearing, past wolves rebuilding what burned, past the wounded being treated with supplies we don't really have. The makeshift morgue is the storage cabin farthest from the main complex. Probably to keep the smell away from the children. Probably to give the survivors space to process without confronting corpses every time they step outside. Five bodies laid out on the floor.

Tarps covering them that weren't quite big enough, so I can see edges-a hand here, boots there, blood soaking through fabric. Marcus pulls back the first tarp and my stomach revolts. Sarah Chen. Beta Marcus's niece. Twenty-four years old. Just finished her nursing degree and was supposed to open that clinic for low-income pack members. She's got three bullet wounds center mass that tell me she died protecting someone. The second body is Elder Catherine. Seventy-eight years old. Survived three pack wars and countless smaller conflicts.

Killed by a hunter's arrow through the throat because she was too slow to dodge. Three more-wolves I've ruled beside for the last year, families I've defended, people who trusted me to keep them safe and I was three fucking hours away chasing ghosts while they burned. "This is on her." The words come out flat, clinical, completely divorced from the rage currently eating me alive. "My sister did this. My family's vendetta is getting people killed." Kieran's hand finds my shoulder but I shrug it off, can't handle comfort when I'm staring at corpses created by my blood relative.

"Lia coordinated this attack specifically to hit while we were gone." Marcus's voice holds no accusation but I hear it anyway. "Professional mercenaries. Not hunters with personal stakes, just contractors doing a job. They knew exactly when to strike for maximum damage." "She played us." Lysander's standing at the morgue entrance, Caroline beside him, both of them looking like they aged a decade.

"Sent us chasing intel while she hit the real target." I turn to face both brothers-my mate who might be coming back to me, my brother-in-law who's been holding this pack together through systematic warfare. "We end this. Now. Whatever it takes." "Thalia-" Kieran starts. "No." The word comes out hard, final. "She's killed five pack members. Burned our homes. Terrorized our children. Spent two years systematically trying to destroy everything we've built." My voice drops to something lethal. "I'm done being reactive. Done waiting for the next attack.

Done playing by rules she's not following." "What are you suggesting?" Lysander's Alpha command bleeds through despite probably not meaning it to. I look at the five bodies-wolves who died because I wasn't here, because my sister's vendetta made me a liability, because family ties became weapons that got people killed. "We hunt her down. No mercy, no second chances, no complicated feelings about shared blood." My hands clench at my sides. "And when we find her, I kill her myself." The declaration hangs in the morgue air. Marcus nods once. Kieran's expression goes cold and calculating.

Lysander's jaw works around words he's not saying. But nobody argues. Nobody suggests mercy or family loyalty or trying to reach the sister I used to know. Because that sister died the moment she chose revenge over everything else. And whoever's left wearing her face needs to die before she kills anyone else I love. Archer