Who's My Triplet's Alpha Daddy? Novel

Chapter 98 Dec 18, 2025 POV: Thalia The emergency pack meeting happens in the main hall at 6 AM because nothing says "your life is falling apart" quite like mandatory attendance before sunrise. Lysander stands at the front looking like he aged ten years overnight, Caroline beside him radiating guilt and determination in equal measure. Two hundred wolves packed into a space designed for half that, everyone smelling like fear and coffee and the particular desperation that comes from knowing you're prey.

"We're evacuating." Lysander's voice carries Alpha command that makes even the skeptics shut up. "The hunters know our locations, our defensive capabilities, our vulnerabilities. Staying here is suicide." "Where are we supposed to go?" Beta Marcus, perpetually questioning authority, crosses his arms. "We've already lost the safe houses." "Mountain retreat. Forty miles into protected wilderness, defensible terrain, warning systems in place." Lysander pulls up a map that makes the logistics look even worse. "It's designed for eighty wolves comfortably.

We're squeezing in two hundred." The hall erupts in angry murmurs that quickly escalate to shouting. Not enough space, not enough supplies, lower-ranked families getting shafted again while Alpha bloodlines get priority housing. I'm standing in the back with Kieran and the triplets, watching pack hierarchy do what it does best-protect the powerful and sacrifice everyone else. "What about us?" A woman I recognize from the Riverside housing calls out, holding a toddler who's maybe three.

"Lower-ranked families don't fit in the 'defended areas.' What are we supposed to do?" "Everyone goes." Lysander's jaw clenches. "Cramped and alive beats comfortable and dead." "This is mandatory?" Elder Catherine, because of course she has opinions. "You're ordering pack members to abandon their homes?" "I'm ordering them to survive." The Alpha voice drops to something lethal. "Refusal means you're on your own when the hunters come. And they're coming." The meeting dissolves into logistics that make my head hurt-supply chains, housing assignments, transportation schedules.

Kieran handles most of it with the kind of methodical competence that probably shouldn't be attractive but absolutely is. Three hours later I'm in our borrowed room at the pack house, packing what's left of our lives into duffel bags that smell like smoke and failure. Most of our stuff burned when the safe house went up. What's left fits in four bags and a backpack. The kids' clothes still carry that acrid stench no amount of washing removes completely. I'm folding Orion's favorite shirt-the one with the planets that he insisted on wearing three days straight-when Kieran stops me mid-motion.

"You're still their father." The words come out sharper than intended. "Bond or not, wolf or not, you're still theirs." His hands pause on Phoenix's jacket, that micro-expression crossing his face that I've learned means he's processing something painful. "Am I still yours?" The question hangs between us, weighted with every doubt I've been swallowing for weeks. "I'm figuring that out." Honest. Painful. The kind of truth that cuts both ways. "But Kieran? You're not losing me to Lysander. You're losing me to my own doubts.

Those are different things." He sets down the jacket with deliberate care, turns to face me fully. "Then let me help you figure it out. Together." "That's not how doubt works." My throat tightens around words I don't want to say but need to. "I need to know I'd choose you without supernatural interference. That what we have is real, not just biology forcing us together." "What we have is seven-year-old triplets and eight years of history and deliberate choice every single day." His voice goes rough. "The bond might have started this, but we're the ones who kept showing up." He's right.

Logically, rationally, with my entire lawyer brain I know he's right. But doubt isn't logical. It's poison that corrodes trust even when the evidence says it shouldn't, even when every part of me wants to just accept what we have instead of questioning whether it's enough. "I know." My hands fist in Orion's shirt. "I'm working on it." "Work faster." Not a demand-a plea.

"Because watching you pull away is killing me, and I don't know how to fight an enemy that lives in your head." The convoy assembles in the parking lot like a evacuation from a disaster movie, except the disaster is ongoing and we're driving straight into the next phase. Forty vehicles, two hundred wolves, enough supplies to last maybe three weeks if we're careful. I'm in the SUV with Kieran driving, triplets in the back arguing about who gets the good seat, trying to pretend this is a fun adventure instead of running for our lives.

"Are we going camping?" Phoenix asks with the kind of enthusiasm that only seven-year-olds can muster for upheaval. "Something like that." I turn to look at them, memorize their faces in case this goes as badly as my gut says it will. "It'll be tight quarters, but we'll make it work." "Will Uncle Lysander be there?" Orion's already calculating logistics in that way that makes him too much like Kieran. "And Caroline? She's nice." "Everyone will be there." Kieran's hands tighten on the wheel.

"The whole pack together." The drive takes six hours through increasingly rough terrain, paved roads giving way to dirt, then to barely-maintained tracks that make the SUV groan with protest. The mountains rise around us, beautiful and isolating and exactly the kind of place you'd pick if you wanted to defend against coordinated assault. Or trap two hundred wolves with nowhere to run. We arrive at dusk, convoy spreading out as vehicles find parking spots in the clearing.

The cabins are exactly as described-rough-hewn logs, defensible positions, barely big enough for the crowd we're shoving into them. And covered in spray paint. Red. The same arterial red from the corporate building, from the senior partners' houses, from every attack the hunters have launched. The message repeated across every cabin wall in letters three feet high: GET OFF OUR TERRITORY. Over and over. Twenty times across twelve cabins. Fresh enough the paint still drips in places, catching the dying sunlight. The hunters were here first. They've been watching. Waiting.

Letting us run straight into the trap they built specifically for us. Lysander's out of his vehicle before the engine dies, phone already to his ear calling security. Kieran's scanning the tree line with the kind of tactical awareness that comes from years of Alpha training. I'm standing in the clearing with my children pressed against my legs, staring at the message that's been haunting us for weeks, and one thought crystallizes with terrifying clarity: We didn't evacuate to safety. We evacuated to the killing floor. Archer