Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 166 Jan 15, 2026 POV: Thalia Lia has been playing the long game with the kind of patience usually reserved for serial killers and people waiting for inheritance money. Two months of supportive almost-girlfriend energy, showing up at Kieran's office with lunch and sympathy, positioning herself as the solution to problems she helped create. It's actually impressive in a deeply sociopathic way. Thursday afternoon, she corners the other me in the break room.

The timing is surgical-everyone else is in depositions, the floor is empty, and that version of me is trapped between the coffee maker and her sister's predatory smile. "We need to talk," Lia says. She's wearing designer everything because subtlety is for people who don't weaponize Chanel. "Sister to sister." Her entire body goes rigid. "I don't think-" "About how selfish you're being." Lia leans against the counter, all casual concern that doesn't reach her calculating eyes. "Keeping Kieran in limbo while you play house with Lysander.

It's cruel, Thalia." The words land exactly where Lia intended. I watch her flinch, hand tightening around her mug. "I'm not keeping anyone in limbo. I made my choice." "Did you?" Lia tilts her head with that expression that says she knows something you don't. "Because from where I'm standing, you're stringing along two men while three confused children suffer. If you really loved Lysander, you'd leave the pack and let Kieran move on." Her jaw clenches.

"My relationship with Lysander is none of your business." "It becomes my business when it's destroying my friend." Lia drops the word friend with surgical precision. "Kieran and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. He's been leaning on me. Talking to me about things he can't say to anyone else." The implication hangs there-intimate conversations, emotional connection, the foundation for something more if only she'd get out of the way. "Good for you," she says. Her voice stays level but I see her knuckles go white.

"There could be a future there." Lia examines her manicure with studied casualness. "If you'd just make a clean break instead of torturing him. He deserves someone who chooses him first, don't you think?" I recognize my sister's manipulation tactics because I survived them for nineteen years. The concern-trolling disguised as sisterly advice. The poisonous observations wrapped in reasonable-sounding logic. That version of me doesn't see it. Too busy drowning in the guilt Lia's weaponizing, too caught up in the image of Kieran moving on with our sister. "If that's what he wants," she manages.

"Then I'm happy for him." The lie tastes bitter even from here. "Are you?" Lia steps closer, voice dropping to something almost kind. "Because you don't look happy. You look jealous. And that's interesting considering you're supposedly in love with Lysander." "I'm not jealous." "Sure." Lia's smile could cut glass. "That's why you've been watching us at every pack function like you're trying to memorize the pattern of his hands on my waist." She doesn't have a response because Lia's catastrophically right. I've watched her watching them-Kieran and Lia at council meetings, at pack gatherings.

Where Lia laughed at something Kieran said and touched his arm with casual ownership. What she doesn't see is what I can see from my observer position. Kieran going through motions with the enthusiasm of someone filing taxes. Keeping Lia around because the alternative is suffocating loneliness, but there's zero real feeling underneath. But that other version only sees the surface. Only sees the man who should be uncle to her children possibly building something real with her sister. The jealousy that floods her system confuses her because she's supposed to be happy with Lysander.

Supposed to be over the guy who makes her skin prickle and her wolf try to claw through her bones whenever he's nearby. Friday brings another pack function and I watch the torture continue. Kieran arrives with Lia on his arm, both playing their roles with practiced ease. She laughs at his dry observations. He lets her lean into his space. To anyone watching, they look comfortable. To me, watching through the lens of knowing how this ends, they look like two people drowning separately while pretending to save each other.

The alternate me stands across the room with Lysander, nursing wine she's not drinking, eyes tracking Kieran's movements with the kind of intensity usually reserved for stalking prey. "You okay?" Lysander murmurs against her ear. "Fine." The lie is automatic. "Just tired." But she's not tired. She's watching Lia whisper something to Kieran that makes him almost-smile, watching Lia's hand settle on his chest with proprietary ease, watching the man she's insisting isn't her mate possibly moving on without her. The jealousy is corrosive.

Eating through her carefully constructed denial like acid through silk. Later that night, Lia finds her in the bathroom. Classic intimidation tactic-corner your target where they can't easily escape. "You know what's funny?" Lia checks her lipstick in the mirror, voice conversational. "Everyone keeps talking about this mate bond like it's inevitable. But you've been around Kieran for months now and nothing's happened." Her hands freeze on the paper towel. "What's your point?" "My point is maybe everyone is wrong." Lia turns to face her directly. "Maybe there is no mate bond.

Maybe your wolf is trying to emerge because of stress, not destiny. Maybe Lysander actually is the right choice and all these pack traditionalists are just being controlling assholes." The words are reverse psychology wrapped in poisonous sisterly support. Telling her exactly what she wants to hear-that fighting destiny is valid, that comfort matters more than biology. "You really think that?" Her voice carries desperate hope. "I think if the mate bond was real, you'd have felt it by now." Lia delivers this with the confidence of someone who's never experienced a mate bond.

"I think you're being pressured into something that doesn't exist. And I think you should trust your own feelings instead of letting Magnus and pack law dictate your life." It's exactly what she needs to hear to justify continuing down this catastrophically wrong path. Permission to keep fighting biology, keep choosing comfort, keep pretending that two months with Lysander matters more than eight years of destiny. "Maybe you're right," she says quietly. "Of course I'm right." Lia squeezes her shoulder with manufactured sisterly affection. "Now go home to Lysander. Be happy.

Stop letting Kieran's expectations control you." I watch her grab onto those words like a lifeline. Watch her use Lia's manipulation as justification to keep fighting what her body already knows. Watch her walk back into the gathering, find Lysander, let him pull her against his side with the kind of relief that looks like love if you're not paying attention. Watch her avoid looking at Kieran for the rest of the evening even though her body tracks his movements like a compass pointing north. Lia has done her work perfectly.

Planted doubt about the bond, given permission to keep choosing wrong, positioned herself to claim Kieran the second the alternate me finally implodes. It's masterful in the way that poisoning someone slowly is masterful. You can't quite prove malicious intent but the victim ends up dead regardless. That version of me drives home with Lysander that night, lets him hold her while she pretends everything is fine, uses Lia's words to shore up foundations that are actively crumbling. "Maybe there is no mate bond," she whispers into the darkness after Lysander falls asleep.

"Maybe I'm just stressed. Maybe everyone is wrong." Maybe, maybe, maybe. The word that lets you avoid certainty. The escape hatch from truth that's too uncomfortable to acknowledge. But biology doesn't negotiate with maybes. Destiny doesn't accept substitutions. And mate bonds don't disappear because your manipulative sister gave you permission to ignore them. I watch her fall asleep repeating Lia's poisonous logic like a prayer, and I know what's coming. The harder you fight destiny, the more catastrophically it asserts itself when you finally stop running.

And she just got permission to keep running for two more weeks. Lia's smiling in her own bed across the city, probably dreaming about victory she hasn't earned. Kieran's alone in his penthouse, possibly wondering if using Lia as a human shield makes him as manipulative as she is. Lysander's holding a woman who's slipping through his fingers while he pretends not to notice. And that alternate version of me is building her entire future on Lia's lies. This is going to end in flames. I just don't know yet how many people will burn. admin