Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 96 Dec 27, 2025 POV: Thalia The screaming starts at . I know the exact time because I've been staring at the ceiling since midnight, waiting for it. Luna's voice tears through the safe house, high and terrified, pulling me from bed before conscious thought catches up. Kieran's already moving beside me, the mate bond pulsing with shared alarm as we race down the hallway to our daughter's room. She's tangled in her sheets, thrashing, eyes squeezed shut while her mouth shapes words that aren't hers.

"No, please-they're coming through the perimeter-blood, so much blood-" Echoes of other people's trauma bleeding through her empathic abilities, nightmares that belong to traumatized pack members filtering into her eight-year-old consciousness. "Luna. Baby, wake up." I gather her against my chest, feel her heart hammering through her pajamas. "You're safe. You're here with us." Her eyes fly open, wild and unfocused. "Mama, I can feel them. Everyone's scared. Everyone's hurting." "I know, sweetheart.

I know." Kieran sits on the edge of her bed, his hand on her back, and I watch him struggle with the same helplessness crushing my chest. We're supposed to protect her. Supposed to keep the monsters away. Instead, she's absorbing everyone else's monsters through abilities she can't control. It takes forty minutes to calm her enough that she'll close her eyes again. By then, the damage is done-another night of sleep shattered, another morning she'll face exhausted and overwhelmed. I find Orion awake in his room, tablet glowing in the darkness. He's not gaming or reading.

He's mapping the safe house, marking exits, calculating optimal escape routes from every corner of the building. "Orion." I crouch beside his bed. "It's three in the morning." "The eastern fire escape has a seven-second delay in the alarm system." His voice is flat, clinical. "If hostiles breach through the main entrance, we'd need to evacuate through the kitchen, but that route passes two structural chokepoints that could trap us. I've designed three alternative paths." He's nine years old.

Nine years old and planning tactical retreats because he watched hunters attack his family, watched his father nearly bleed out, watched pack members die defending them. "That's really smart, baby." The words scrape through my throat. "But you need to sleep." "Can't sleep." He doesn't look up from the tablet. "Someone has to watch the exits." I take the tablet from his hands, gently, and pull him against me. He doesn't cry-hasn't cried since the attack. Just goes rigid in my arms for a long moment before finally, finally softening. "I'll watch the exits tonight," I whisper. "That's my job.

Your job is being a kid." "Being a kid doesn't keep us safe." My chest cracks open at the words. He's right. Being a kid didn't keep him safe. Nothing I did kept him safe. He witnessed horror and now his brilliant mind can't stop preparing for the next horror, can't stop calculating because calculating is how he survives. Phoenix is the one who breaks me. I check on her last, expecting her to be sprawled across her bed in her usual chaos of blankets and stuffed animals. Instead, she's curled in a tight ball against the headboard, knees to chest, barely breathing.

"Phoenix?" I keep my voice soft. "You okay, firecracker?" She flinches. My seven-year-old who laughs at everything, who finds joy in bugs and mud and terrible jokes, who attacked a hunter with pure righteous fury-she flinches at her mother's voice. "Bad dreams," she whispers. "Want to tell me about them?" Headshake. Tiny and violent. I climb into bed beside her, pull her small body against mine. She doesn't relax, doesn't melt into me the way she used to. Stays tense and vigilant, her supernatural strength coiled beneath her skin, ready to fight. She shouldn't have to be ready to fight.

She's seven. The pack therapist arrives the next morning-a woman named Dr. Chen who specializes in trauma response among supernatural children. She spends an hour with each of them while I wear tracks in the hallway floor, pacing. "Normal trauma response," she tells me afterward, her voice gentle and infuriatingly calm. "Luna's empathic abilities make her particularly vulnerable to secondary trauma. Orion's hypervigilance is a protective mechanism. Phoenix is experiencing startle response and emotional numbing." "How do I fix it?" "You can't." The words land with the force of a physical blow.

"You can only be present while they process. Create safety. Maintain routine. Let them know it's okay to feel whatever they're feeling." "That's not enough." "It's everything, Mrs. Fenris. Your presence is everything." I want to scream at her. Want to demand solutions, interventions, magic words that will erase what my children witnessed. But there aren't any. There's just time, and patience, and the agonizing process of watching them heal in increments too small to measure. Night comes again. Luna's screaming starts at .

By 2 AM, all three kids have migrated to our bedroom-Luna burrowed between Kieran and me, Orion curled against Kieran's side with his tablet confiscated, Phoenix sprawled across my legs in a possessive sprawl that makes my circulation suffer. They're too old for this. Eight and eight and seven, past the age of midnight migrations and parental bed invasions. But trauma doesn't care about age, doesn't respect developmental milestones, doesn't give a shit about what's appropriate. Kieran's hand finds mine across Luna's sleeping form. His fingers lace through mine, grip tightening.

"We failed them." His voice is barely audible, rough with guilt. "We kept them alive." I squeeze back. "That's not failure." "They saw their mother fight. Saw me nearly die. Saw pack members killed in front of them." His breathing stutters. "Orion's planning escape routes. Phoenix flinches at her own shadow. Luna can't sleep without absorbing everyone's nightmares." "And they saw us survive." I turn my head to look at him in the darkness, his profile illuminated by moonlight through the window. "Saw us fight for them.

Saw love strong enough to burn the world." The mate bond pulses between us-quiet affirmation, shared pain, stubborn hope that refuses to die. "Is it enough?" he asks. "Is love enough to fix what they've been through?" "I don't know." Honesty tastes bitter but necessary. "But it's what we have. It's what we can give them." Luna stirs between us, her small hand finding my arm in sleep. Phoenix's weight shifts on my legs, her breathing finally evening into something peaceful. Orion mumbles something about structural integrity before burrowing deeper against Kieran's side. Not perfect.

Not healed. Just present. Morning arrives with gray light and exhausted eyes. I'm making coffee when Phoenix appears in the kitchen doorway, hovering with unusual hesitance. "Mama?" Her voice is small. "Can I help make breakfast?" My throat tightens. She hasn't asked to help with anything since the attack. Hasn't engaged, hasn't laughed, hasn't been Phoenix. "Of course, firecracker. You're on egg duty." She doesn't smile-not yet-but she moves to the counter with purpose. Luna drifts in next, clutching her tablet. "Can I read you my book report? I finished it last night.

Well, technically this morning. After the nightmare." "I would love to hear it." Orion appears last, serious-faced and carrying his own tablet. "I designed a new defensive system for the perimeter. It's better than the current one. More redundancies." Different from his midnight escape routes. This is problem-solving instead of panic. Contribution instead of desperation. "Show me after breakfast." We sit at the table-not eating, not yet, just existing in the same space. Phoenix cracks eggs with excessive force. Luna reads about Charlotte's Web in her clear, practiced voice.

Orion explains sensor placement with animated hand gestures. Small steps. Tiny signs of healing. Progress measured in millimeters, not miles. Phoenix snorts at something Orion says-not a laugh, not yet, but close. Luna looks up from her report and actually meets my eyes. Orion sets down his tablet long enough to eat. Kieran's hand finds my knee under the table, squeezes once. We haven't fixed them. Can't fix them. But maybe-maybe-love is enough to be present while they fix themselves. Archer