The Alpha I Shouldn't Want

Chapter Five — Training At Dawn

° AUTHOR'S POV °

Sera was dreaming about nothing in particular when the door to her room exploded open.

Not literally. It only felt that way, the way it always did when Kaiden decided a closed door had his permission to open immediately.

"Up."

She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head.

"No."

"Up, Sera. Training."

"It's not even light out."

"It's dawn. Dawn is basically light."

A second weight settled on the edge of her bed — lighter, more deliberate. Kieran. She didn't need to look to know it was him; Kaiden threw himself onto furniture like he was declaring war on it, and Kieran simply arrived, the way weather arrived.

"You've been back for over a week," Kieran said. "You're getting soft."

"I am not soft."

"You slept until dawn."

"Normal people sleep until dawn."

"We are not normal people," Kaiden said, ripping the pillow away with a triumphant grin. "We are lycans with a schedule."

She squinted up at both of them, blurry and unimpressed. Kaiden was already dressed for the yard, sleeveless, hair a mess, looking entirely too pleased with himself. Kieran stood by the window, arms crossed, watching her with the patient, assessing look he wore like a second skin.

"Five minutes," she said.

"You have two."

"Kaiden—"

"One and fifty-nine seconds."

She threw a second pillow at his head. He caught it out of the air without looking, tossed it onto the chair, and grinned wider.

"There's the Sera we remember."

"Get up I hate waiting for your ass." Kieran muttered.

°°°

The training yard was empty except for the three of them, mist still clinging low to the grass, the sky just beginning to bruise gold at the edges. Sera stretched while Kaiden ran through his warm-up drills, and Kieran, predictably, sat on the fence with a book he had absolutely no intention of reading, watching his brother's form with a critical eye.

"Your stance is off," he called.

"My stance is fine."

"Your left foot's too far forward. You'll overextend on the pivot."

"I have been fighting since I was six, Kieran."

"And you've had the same flaw since you were six."

Sera laughed, and Kaiden shot her a betrayed look. "Don't encourage him."

"He's not wrong."

"Traitor."

She stepped in anyway, correcting his footing with a light kick to the ankle, the way she used to when they were teenagers and she was somehow always the one keeping the peace between two boys who loved each other so fiercely it sometimes looked like war.

Kaiden grumbled but adjusted. They ran through drills for the better part of an hour — her calling out corrections, him throwing punches that got progressively less sloppy, Kieran occasionally interjecting from the fence with commentary neither of them asked for but both of them, but eventually used.

By the time the sun cleared the tree line, all three of them were breathing hard and grinning like children.

"Enough," Kieran finally said, hopping down from the fence. "We're going out."

"Out where?"

"The forest."

Sera wiped sweat from her brow. "I just spent an hour training. I'd like a shower before we hike, thanks."

"Not hiking."

Kieran was already stripping off his shirt, methodical, unbothered, the way he always was about shifting — none of Kaiden's dramatic flair, none of the growled anticipation. Just calm, practical shedding, like taking off a coat.

"Get on," he said, once fur had replaced skin, once four legs and silver-black fur and molten amber eyes had replaced the brother she'd been arguing footwork with thirty seconds earlier.

She hesitated. She always hesitated, just for a second, at the size of him in this form. Kieran's wolf was leaner than his brother's, sharper somehow, but no less enormous, no less capable of swallowing a normal person's fear whole.

"You sure?"

He huffed, which she'd learned over the years was wolf for *obviously.*

She climbed onto his back the way she'd done a hundred times since childhood, fingers curling into thick fur, legs tightening at his sides. Kaiden shifted beside them a heartbeat later — same colour silver-black fur, broader, built like his father in miniature — and then they were moving, crashing through the tree line into the hush of the forest beyond, morning light breaking apart into scattered coins across the path.

She'd missed this.

She hadn't let herself think it until right now, wind pulling her hair loose, the forest blurring green and gold on either side, two brothers who'd apparently decided sleep was optional flanking her like she'd never left at all.

°^°

#Vote#

For some of confused

Seraphina and Lorianna are the same people.

I'll later explain why the boys call her Sera or Seraphina.