AMARIS STORME
My wolf.
My wolf.
I had a wolf.
I stood in that darkness with my hand pressed to my chest and my heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to escape and all I could think about was that I had a wolf and she was screaming.
Not whimpering. Not stirring politely like a well-behaved creature announcing herself with grace. No. She was screaming the word into every nerve ending in my body like she had been trapped for twenty three years and someone had finally cracked the door open and she was not interested in being subtle about it.
Mate.
My brothers used to call me the empty one. Wolfless. An Alpha's daughter with nothing inside her but air and embarrassment.
They said it at dinner tables and in training yards and once, memorably, in front of the entire pack gathering when I was fifteen and Darius, my eldest brother, announced loudly that I was proof that even wolves had standards. Everyone laughed. My father didn't stop them. I remember staring at the ground and deciding that if I had no wolf then I would simply become someone who didn't need one.
And now here she was. Awake and loud. Absolutely unhinged.
And she was screaming the word mate at two shadows that were walking towards me.
Two.
Two shadows. Two sets of eyes lighting up in the dark like something ancient and dangerous had just been switched on. Two voices that didn't speak separately but folded into each other in a chorus that rolled through my chest cavity like thunder underground.
Our mate.
Our.
I backed up another step and my heel nearly buckled beneath me. The rational part of my brain, the part that had survived my father and my brothers and a lifetime of swallowing things whole, that part was trying very hard to have a useful thought right now and failing spectacularly.
I cannot be mated to two people. That is not a thing. That is not a real thing that happens to real people. I was already sold to one man who made it very clear that my only purpose was to be a biological vessel for his bloodline and now the moon goddess, apparently dissatisfied with how thoroughly my life had already been ruined, decided to also give me two mates in a fever dream. In the dark. At the same time.
This is a nightmare. This is sleep deprivation. This is grief manifesting as hallucination because I cried until my body gave out and now my brain is just producing content.
But then the smell hit me and my brain went very, very quiet.
Apple and fur. Of all the things in the world it could have been, it was apple and fur, warm and wild and deeply strange and I hated how much my body responded to it before I could stop it. My wolf surged forward so hard I actually swayed, her pull on me violent and urgent, every instinct she had screaming move towards them while every instinct I had screamed back move away.
I was backing towards the bed now. I hadn't made the decision consciously, my legs were just moving and the back of my knee hit the mattress and I sat down hard and then I was crawling backwards up towards the headboard because putting distance between myself and whatever this was felt necessary even though some part of me was beginning to understand it was completely useless.
Their faces were still half shadow, the sleep still clearing from my eyes too slowly, but I could make out the shape of them now and they were tall, both of them, broad and entirely too present for something that might have been a dream. They reached the edge of the bed and I pressed my back against the headboard and looked up at them and their eyes were still shifted, wolf gold and wolf red burning in the dark, not human at all.
My wolf laid down inside me and rolled over like a dog meeting its owner after a long day and I wanted to shake her.
They climbed onto the bed and I knew, I knew with the kind of bone certainty that bypasses logic entirely, that running would accomplish nothing.
One of them reached out first, slow enough that it almost felt like a question, and his fingers brushed along my jaw and up into my hair and I exhaled like something had been pulled out of me against my will. His touch was deliberate, unhurried, tracing down the side of my neck like he was reading something written there and every single place his fingers moved left heat behind it, the kind that didn't fade but spread.
The second one settled beside me and his hand found the curve of my waist and I felt the warmth of him through the thin fabric of my clothes like he was a second source of gravity pulling at me. He pressed his nose to the space below my ear and inhaled slowly and I felt the shiver run the full length of my spine before I could catch it.
I want to stop this, I told myself. I should stop this. I am going to stop this any second now.
My wolf pinned me like she had actual weight.
The first one's hand slid from my hair to my collarbone, tracing the line of it with his thumb, patient and deliberate, and when his red-lit eyes found mine the air in my lungs simply stopped cooperating. He touched my breast through the fabric and the sound that almost left my mouth was embarrassing and my wolf made a noise that was half growl half plea and I felt the heat pool somewhere low and immediate and deeply inconvenient.
I had never been touched in my life. Not like this. Not with something that felt like intention rather than possession. Every nerve ending I had was awake and confused and very unhelpful.
They moved carefully over me, unhurried, like they had no interest in rushing something they had apparently been waiting for, hands learning the shape of me with the kind of slow thoroughness that made it nearly impossible to hold a single thought together. My mind had dissolved into static. My wolf was absolutely no help whatsoever.
And then both of them stopped.
At the same time, sharply, like something had been cut.
Their eyes moved to the window together and I followed their gaze and the sky outside was bleeding faint and gold at the edge, the first suggestion of sunrise pressing against the dark. I looked back at them and their expressions had shifted into something I couldn't read, the trance broken, whatever had been holding all of us suspended now releasing.
They didn't speak. They didn't look at me again. They climbed off the bed and walked out of the room like they had simply decided to leave and the door didn't even make a sound behind them.
I laid there.
Chest heaving in the sheets twisted. Completely unraveled.
I bathed with the water as hot as I could stand it and scrubbed my skin like I could wash the confusion off along with their scent. It didn't really work. I could still feel the ghost of where they had touched me no matter how much I tried to redirect my attention and at some point I stopped trying and just let myself stand under the water and feel it, that strange warm residue of something I didn't have language for yet. Then I shook my head and turned the temperature down until it was cold enough to be useful.
I was pulling on a white sundress with small navy flowers along the hem when Nia appeared in the doorway and I startled badly enough to knock my elbow against the mirror.
"Luna Amaris, I am so sorry," she pressed her hand to her mouth, eyes wide. "The Alpha has requested your presence at breakfast."
My stomach dropped cleanly through the floor.
I fixed my hair up, soft and controlled at the back of my neck because today I needed every bit of the composure that came with it. I sprayed perfume generously and hoped to every deity I had ever heard of that it was enough to cover whatever was still clinging to me.
Act normal, I told myself as I walked. You are fine. You are absolutely fine. Nothing unusual happened. You are a completely normal person going to breakfast.
I stepped into the dining room and my eyes found Alpha Corvin first, standing at the head of the table with the same immovable authority he had worn yesterday, and then my wolf moved.
"Amaris," the Alpha said, his gaze pulling away from whatever held it before. "Glad you could join us. These are my sons." He gestured beside him without ceremony. "Ryker and Rowan."
My wolf threw herself against my ribs so hard I nearly lost my footing.
Our mate.
I recognized the smell immediately. Apple and fur.
What kind of cruel nightmare is this?