Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 161 Jan 17, 2026 POV: Thalia Six weeks after the DNA results, I start falling apart at the molecular level. It begins at a pack gathering-nothing dramatic, just Tuesday evening drinks at the pack house that she attends on Lysander's arm because refusing would be political suicide. The sounds hit her first. Conversations from across the room assault her ears at full volume, crystal glasses clinking like cymbals in her skull, someone's laugh three tables over making her flinch.

She grips Lysander's arm tighter, tells herself it's just the acoustics in this room, just bad luck with the seating arrangement. Then the scents overwhelm her. Individual perfumes and colognes separating into distinct chemical compounds she can somehow identify-bergamot, sandalwood, cheap drugstore body spray trying to pass as luxury. The wine someone spilled two hours ago in the corner. Fear-sweat from a Beta arguing pack politics near the bar. Her skin feels wrong under her clothes.

The silk blouse that fit perfectly this morning now scrapes like sandpaper, seams digging into her shoulders, bra straps burning welts she can feel but can't see. "You okay?" Lysander murmurs against her ear. "Fine." The lie tastes metallic. "Just a headache." She pops three ibuprofen in the bathroom and tells herself it's stress. Anxiety about pack division, about raising three confused children, about Magnus's cold threats that hover like storm clouds. Normal human stress response to abnormal supernatural bullshit. I recognize these symptoms intimately because I lived them.

Sensory overload. Hypersensitivity. Skin that feels two sizes too small. Your wolf trying to claw its way to the surface, responding to proximity to your true mate even when your conscious mind refuses to acknowledge what biology already knows. At work, it gets worse. Me can't be in the same room as Kieran without her entire nervous system staging a revolt. Conference meetings become torture sessions where she sits three chairs away from him and still feels his presence like static electricity crackling across her skin. Monday morning, they're both in the executive briefing.

Kieran sits at the head of the table in his usual position-ice king holding court, expression carved from marble. I take a seat as far away as physically possible. Ten minutes in, her skin starts prickling. Not itching-something underneath the epidermis trying to push through. Her hands shake so hard she has to sit on them to hide the tremors. Kieran's explaining some merger details when his eyes cut to her. Just a glance, probably checking if she's paying attention. But the second their gazes lock, something inside her chest yanks hard enough to steal her breath. She excuses herself.

Practically runs to the bathroom. Stands at the sink gripping the porcelain while her reflection shows pupils blown wide, chest heaving, skin flushed like she just ran a marathon. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" she whispers to her reflection. Everything, I want to tell her. Everything is wrong because you're fighting destiny and destiny is fighting back. Lysander notices because of course he notices. He's not stupid, just catastrophically wrong about what's causing it. Thursday evening after another day where I "worked from home" to avoid Kieran, he sits her down with doctor-level concern.

"You need to see someone," he says. His hands frame her face, checking for fever she doesn't have. "These headaches aren't normal. The exhaustion, the sensitivity-" "It's just stress." The excuse is wearing thin even to her own ears. "Stress doesn't make you avoid entire floors of the building. Stress doesn't make you flinch when Kieran walks into a room." His voice stays gentle but I hear the question underneath. "What's really going on?" She can't answer because she doesn't understand it herself.

Just knows something is trying to claw out of her bones, something ancient and instinctive that recognizes Kieran in ways her conscious mind refuses to process. The symptoms escalate with the precision of a terminal diagnosis. Dreams she can't quite remember plague her sleep-running through forests that feel more real than her bedroom, chasing something or being chased, the line between hunter and prey blurring until she wakes gasping. Lysander's beside her every time, solid and steady and completely wrong in ways she can't articulate. Her body temperature spikes randomly.

Middle of a deposition, she'll suddenly feel like she's burning alive from the inside out. Has to excuse herself, splash cold water on her face, wait for the fever that isn't a fever to pass. It's always worse when Kieran is nearby. When he's in the building, her skin prickles with awareness. When he's on the same floor, her temperature spikes. When he's in the same room, she can barely breathe through the sensation of something trying to complete itself inside her chest. She starts taking the stairs.

All fourteen flights to avoid the elevator where she might be trapped with him for sixty seconds. Her thighs burn from the climbing but it's better than the alternative-being confined in a small space with the man who makes her body stage a coup against her conscious choices. I watch my wolf trying desperately to wake up. See it clawing at the surface, responding to the mate bond it recognizes even if she's too stubborn to acknowledge what's happening. Biology doesn't care about Lysander's patient presence or comfortable safety.

Biology is screaming that the wrong man is in her bed and the right one is being relegated to "uncle" status. The more she fights it, the sicker she gets. Headaches that last three days straight, immune to medication or sleep or any attempt at relief. Exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch-she'll crash for ten hours and wake up feeling like she ran a marathon. Restlessness that makes her want to crawl out of her own skin, pace the apartment at three AM, anything to discharge the energy building with no outlet. Lysander grows increasingly worried. Makes her doctor appointments she cancels.

Googles her symptoms and comes up with everything from chronic fatigue to early-onset autoimmune disorders. Hovers with the kind of concern that would be sweet if it wasn't so catastrophically misplaced. "Maybe you should take some time off," he suggests one night. They're in bed, his arm around her, and she can't settle into his warmth the way she used to. "Rest. Let yourself recover from whatever this is." "I'm fine," she lies into the darkness. "You're not fine. You haven't been fine since-" He stops himself. "Since what?" "Since the DNA results." His voice goes quiet.

"Since we found out about Kieran being their father. Like your body is rejecting this choice we're making." The accuracy makes her chest tight. "That's ridiculous." "Is it?" He turns her to face him, and in the dim light I see something like defeat in his expression. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're getting sicker the longer you deny him." "I'm not denying anyone anything. I made a choice-" "And your body is screaming that it's the wrong one." He says it gently, like delivering a terminal diagnosis he wishes he could change.

"I'm watching you destroy yourself fighting something and I don't know how to help." She doesn't have an answer. Can't explain what she doesn't understand. Just knows something is wrong in ways that feel increasingly catastrophic. Friday afternoon, she's leaving work late-avoiding rush hour to minimize the chance of running into Kieran. She takes her usual route through the back stairwell, door propped open with her hip while juggling her bag and files. Kieran's coming down from the opposite direction. They freeze on the landing. Ten feet of concrete and fluorescent lighting between them.

The stairwell door swings shut behind her with a sound like a cell locking. Her skin erupts in sensation-every nerve ending firing simultaneously. The files slip from her hands, papers scattering across concrete. Her vision tunnels, sounds fading to just her heartbeat hammering against her ribs and Kieran's breathing from across the landing. "Thalia-" His voice is rough, concerned. She backs against the wall as he moves closer. Not threatening-worried, actually worried in ways that would matter if her entire nervous system wasn't staging a revolution. "Don't," she manages.

"Please don't come closer." He stops. Stands there holding her scattered papers, grey eyes tracking over her face. "You're sick." "I'm fine." "You're trembling. You can barely stand." He sets the papers down carefully. "What's happening to you?" "Nothing. Stress. I need to-" She moves for the door but her legs won't cooperate. Kieran catches her before she hits concrete. His hands on her arms send electricity shooting through her entire system, and suddenly she can't breathe for entirely different reasons. This close, his scent is overwhelming.

Cedar and smoke and something underneath that makes her wolf-the wolf she didn't know existed until recently-try to surge forward with desperate recognition. "Let me go," she whispers, but her body is doing the opposite, swaying toward him instead of away. "You're burning up." His hand touches her forehead, checking for fever. "Christ, you need a doctor-" "I need you to let me go." The words come out strangled. He does. Steps back immediately, hands up, giving her space.

But the damage is done-her body has recognized something her mind refuses to process, and now the symptoms are escalating from chronic to acute. She makes it home somehow. Lysander takes one look at her face and immediately goes into crisis mode-water, medication, concerned hovering that makes her want to scream because he's being perfect and it's not helping. That night, lying in bed with Lysander's arms around her, feeling like she's missing something crucial she can't name, I watch me finally start to understand.

You can't fight the mate bond forever without it destroying you from the inside out. Biology always wins eventually. And hers is screaming that the wrong man is holding her while the right one is alone in his penthouse, probably staring at the city lights and wondering why fate is such a vindictive bitch. The wolf inside me is waking up whether she likes it or not. And when it fully emerges, when that bond snaps into place with biological certainty- Everything she's built with Lysander is going to burn. admin