Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 82 Dec 23, 2025 POV: Thalia My wolf moves before thought catches up-pure maternal instinct compressed into violence and teeth. The nearest hunter raises his dart gun but I'm already on him. Four hundred pounds of white fur and Alpha fury driving him into our coffee table. The wood splinters beneath his back. His weapon skitters across hardwood. I don't kill him. Want to-every cell in my body screams for his throat-but conscious thought claws through the rage just enough. Hunters work in teams. Bodies bring investigations. Questions I can't answer without exposing what we are.

So I settle for his arm instead. Teeth closing around bone with enough force to feel it crack. He screams-high and terrified, suddenly understanding he's prey-and I release him just long enough to position myself over Kieran's naked, convulsing form. Mine. The thought is primal, absolute. Mine to protect. The other two hunters don't engage. Just back toward the shattered sliding glass door with practiced efficiency, weapons trained on me but not firing. "Mission accomplished," one says into his comm unit. "Package delivered. Extracting now." Package.

Like Kieran's writhing body and our terrorized children are just items on a fucking checklist. I snarl-the sound reverberating through our ruined living room-but they're already through the door. Gone into darkness like they were never here, leaving destruction and chemical poison in their wake. The second they disappear I shift back. Bones cracking, fur receding, the transformation still brutal enough to leave me gasping. Naked and covered in blood-his, mine, the hunter's mixing together in ways I'll probably feel guilty about later when shock wears off.

"Kieran." My hands find his face, his neck, checking for his pulse. Strong but wrong, his heart racing too fast while his skin goes clammy. "Baby, look at me." His eyes track to my face. Gray and unfocused, pupils blown so wide the iris almost disappears. "Thalia?" My name comes out uncertain. Questioning. Like he's not entirely sure who I am. The dart is still buried in his shoulder-black plastic and silver mechanism that looks too advanced for anything commercial. I yank it out without thinking about gentleness because leaving it in seems worse. That's when I see the gunshot wound.

His side, just below his ribs, bleeding sluggishly onto our living room floor. My stomach lurches-when did that happen? In the chaos, the fighting, the screaming children I somehow missed my mate taking a fucking bullet. "I'm here. I've got you." My hands press against the wound, trying to slow the bleeding while my brain tries to reboot. Medical training from eight years of single motherhood kicks in through the panic. Pressure, elevation, keep him talking. "Stay with me." "Can't." His voice is wrong-flat, disconnected.

Not the man who whispers possessive promises against my skin but someone hollowed out, echoing. "Can't feel-" He stops. Jaw working like the words won't come. The bond. That constant pull, the gravity that's existed between us since my wolf woke. The thing that's been my compass for a year, showing me where he is, what he feels, the certainty that I'm not alone even when we're apart. I reach for it desperately. Find nothing. Not silence-that would be something. This is absence. The space where the bond should be feels like reaching for a light switch in the dark and finding empty wall.

My chest goes tight with something beyond panic, beyond fear. "No." The word tears out of me. "No, no, no-Kieran, feel me. Feel the bond." His expression shifts through confusion to devastation. Those gray eyes that usually burn with possessive certainty now hold only loss. "I can't." Two words. Two syllables that shatter everything I've built my world on. "Thalia, I can't feel anything." My hands frame his face-desperate, demanding. "Try. The bond doesn't just disappear. It's mate magic, it's permanent, it's-" "Gone." His voice cracks on the word. "It's gone." I kiss him anyway.

Frantic and claiming, trying to force the connection back through physical contact. Trying to make my body remember what biology forgot. His mouth responds-warm and familiar, his hand coming up to tangle in my hair with muscle memory even if the supernatural recognition is gone. But it's just human desire. Just flesh and want without the soul-deep certainty that made this right. Nothing mate. Nothing forever. Nothing but two people kissing while my world crumbles around us. I pull back, press my forehead to his. "It's the dart. Whatever they shot you with, it's temporary. Has to be temporary.

The bond can't just-" "Mama!" Phoenix's scream cuts through from upstairs. Still terrified, still needing me, still my responsibility even while my mate bleeds on our floor without recognizing what I am to him. "I'm okay." Kieran's trying to sit up even though he's absolutely not okay. "The kids-" "Don't move." I press him back down, hand sticky with his blood. "You're shot. You're-" The front door explodes inward.

I'm moving before I process the threat-positioning myself between Kieran and whoever just broke down our door, ready to fight naked and desperate if that's what protecting him requires. Lysander stands in the doorway. His chest heaves like he's been running, shirt untucked and hair wild. He was in Colorado-three states away, three states distant from this nightmare. But he's here now, Alpha-heir connection to the pack probably screaming emergency loud enough to yank him from sleep and send him sprinting.

"What the fuck happened?" His eyes track over the scene-shattered glass, splintered furniture, Kieran naked and bleeding while I crouch over him covered in violence. "I felt the pack bond explode. Felt-" He stops. Nose flaring as he scents blood, fear, chemicals that don't belong. "Hunters." The word comes out flat. "Three of them. Professional. They had tactical gear, specialized weapons, and they knew exactly where to find us." Lysander's expression goes from shock to rage so fast I physically flinch. "Where are they?" "Gone.

They got what they came for." I look down at Kieran, at the dart I'm still clutching in my other hand. "They weren't here to kill. They were here to poison." "The kids-" "Upstairs. Terrified but unharmed." Physically unharmed anyway. Emotionally they just watched their home get invaded, heard their parents fight for their lives, felt terror flooding through walls that were supposed to keep them safe. "Orion barricaded his door. Phoenix probably tried to fight. Luna-" My voice cracks thinking about Luna drowning in everyone's fear and violence through her empathic abilities.

Lysander's already moving past me toward the stairs. Toward his niblings who need an adult who isn't covered in blood and fractured. But he pauses at the landing, looks back. "Thalia. Why is the mate bond-" He stops. Realization crossing his face when he sees Kieran's hollow expression, my desperate grip. "Oh fuck." "It's temporary." I don't know if I'm trying to convince him or myself. "Whatever they shot him with, it's temporary. It has to be temporary." He doesn't answer.

Just takes the stairs two at a time while I'm left kneeling in blood and broken glass next to my mate who can't feel me anymore. My phone buzzes against the floor where I dropped it. Text from an unknown number lighting the screen: We took the bond. Next time we take everything. But it's the second text-from Marcus on the security team-that makes my stomach drop. Alpha Magnus's house is burning. Three other families hit tonight. This was coordinated. I look at Kieran. At the dart that held whatever poison severed our supernatural connection.

At the shattered remains of our home and the terror still echoing from upstairs. This wasn't random violence. Wasn't some isolated attack by hunters who got lucky. This was war. And they just fired the opening shot directly at our foundation. Archer