Mated to Three Alpha: One of them is my brother

••REBECCA~ I want you to do three things for me. Three really simple things. One… I want you to close your eyes. Well, not in actuality, because if you did, you wouldn’t be able to see the rest of this. Now that your eyes are ‘closed,’ go ahead and imagine my voice playing out in your head like a narrator’s voice-over at the start of a movie. Two… Let my voice take a separate part in your head. Let yourself listen. Give it just enough focus as you would give the bird that just took a swerve, diving down toward a building. Specifically, the Bureau of Lycanthrope Affairs. And three… Follow that bird. Let it pull your focus to the skylight, where just underneath it, there I am. Rebecca Sullivan. Senior archivist. Completely oblivious to all the things I have just asked you to do. But most importantly? The fact that you are here nine minutes earlier to witness my death from my unknowing perspective. And it all began with four not-so-simple words. “You are fired, Rebecca.” I stared at Ethan Waters, Director of Archive Operations, not sure if I had heard him right even though his words were ringing out in my head. It took me another second to blink through it before the words left my lips in a whisper. “What?” Then I shook my head, snapping out of the shock. Ethan’s eyes flashed with irritation before they hardened. “Your incompetence could have cost us hundreds of artifacts dated centuries back. You are lucky all I am doing is firing you. Log in the rest of your inventory and leave, or I will have you escorted out. With force if necessary.” He turned to leave and without thinking I grabbed his arm. “You cannot do this to me.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I have dedicated six years of my life to this job. I didn’t start that fire. I’m not responsible for this. You cannot fire me.” “I can and will do whatever I wish.” His voice was ice. “Ten minutes, Rebecca. That is all I’m giving you.” He yanked his hand away from me, the force of it almost making me stumble backwards, but I caught myself in time. Then he dusted off his sleeve, dusted it off like I was dirt he needed to remove, turned around, and walked away, leaving me standing there. My eyes followed him across the main archive floor, then drifted to the corner of the bureau where millions of dollars worth of artifacts had almost burned down in a fire everyone thought I had started. A fire that just cost me my job and— The sound of slow clapping cut off the rest of my thoughts. I turned my head and my eyes clashed with hers. Sophia Greene. I had lived my life by going through it with numbness, having less-than feelings for everything and everyone. It was why I had excelled at this job, spending my days cataloguing objects most humans wouldn’t believe existed, enchanted weapons and cursed heirlooms stripped of all their drama and emotion I believed in the supernatural because the paperwork proved a world like that existed. Werewolves were real because evidence of their existence had been proven even though I had never seen one in real life. Magic was real because I logged it every Tuesday. But I never cared about any of it beyond doing my job correctly. I simply existed without feelings. Except for the one I had for Sophia Greene. Absolute hate. And as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, a sly smile grew on her face. “Quite the performance you just put up. I almost believed you didn’t do it.” The anger that had been directed at Ethan shifted toward her like a spotlight finding its mark. “You did this, didn’t you?” Her smile widened. “Did what, Rebecca?” My eyes flashed. “Don’t play dumb with me. You have been trying to sabotage me from the moment you got here because you cannot stand that I am better than you. You cannot stand that my name carries Senior Archivist—” She cut in, her smile turning triumphant. “You mean used to.” She tilted her head, examining me like I was something pitiful. “I would offer to help you pack your things, but you know, some of us still have jobs we have to get back to.” She turned, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “See you never, Rebecca.” What happened next happened in a blur. One moment I was standing there, fists clenched at my sides. In the next, my hands were wrapped around her hair, pulling her backwards. She screamed as she crashed to the ground, and then I was on her. Something primal and violent surged through my veins—something that wanted to rip, to tear, to make her pay for every smug smile, every sabotaged report, every lie she had whispered about me. I raised my hand, not knowing where the urge came from or how to stop it. She kept screaming, arms flying up to protect her face but just as my hand was about to come down because it felt like the rightest thing to do, like breathing, my whole body was pulled off her. My hands were yanked together behind my back, grip firm but not brutal. Sophia scrambled to her feet, her perfectly styled hair a mess, mascara smeared. “She is crazy!” she shouted, voice shrill. “She just attacked me for no reason!” I snapped out of whatever had come over me and registered three security guards. All familiar faces—Oliver, James, and Elijah. They were staring at me with astonishment, like I had just sprouted a second head. “Becca?” Oliver’s voice was a question, soft with disbelief. I pulled myself together, trying to stop my heart from racing like it wanted to burst through my ribs. I struggled against whoever was holding me—James, I realized and he let me go immediately. “I’m sorry.” My voice came out rough, shaking. “I will get my things and leave.” “Why are you letting her go?” Sophia shrieked, pointing at me with a trembling finger. “Can’t you see that she is crazy?” Oliver, who like the rest of us couldn’t stand her, cut her off. “You should know that noise isn’t appreciated here, Miss Greene.” Sophia’s eyes flashed with hate and anger, directed at him before snapping back to me. I shook my head and took a step backwards, sending the apology in my eyes toward them because just like the looks they were giving me, I had no idea what had just happened. I turned, heart still pounding, and sucked in a deep breath to stabilize myself then I made a mental note: I would get my things, come back tomorrow, and sort this out with someone who wasn’t as misogynistic as Ethan. Because I knew that was exactly what this was about—he hated that I was the only woman in senior leadership, hated that I had earned my position through merit while he had gotten his through nepotism and a firm handshake. So this definitely wasn’t over. I gathered my things mechanically—laptop, the photo of my mother I kept in my desk drawer, the coffee mug that said “I Put the ‘Arch’ in Archivist” that I had never found funny but kept anyway. By the time I got back to the main floor, everyone was gone. The bureau had that hollow, echoing quality it only got after hours. Emergency lighting cast everything in shades of red and shadow. I made my way toward the authentication station to log in the last object in my inventory before I left, procedure, even now but something pulled me off course. Pulled wasn’t even the right word. It was a compulsion. A magnetic draw that redirected my feet toward the restricted area where the fire had happened. I tried to resist it. Told myself to just finish the inventory and leave but my body wasn’t listening. Each step brought me closer to the scorched corner of the archives, to the blackened shelves and the acrid smell of smoke that still lingered. And there, sitting on a damaged display pedestal, was a chalice. Item #4782. The one with incomplete documentation. The one was currently glowing. Pulsing with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat. If I hadn’t experienced objects coming to life a hundred times before, I would have been surprised but nothing really shook me anymore. Except… Something about this felt different. I couldn’t just feel the magic existing around it. I could feel it inside me. Like recognizing a song I had never heard before but somehow knew all the words to. My hand reached out before my brain could stop it and I grabbed the chalice. Heat exploded through my palm, searing and wrong, like touching a live wire. “Damn it,” I cursed, jerking backwards, and the chalice slipped from my grip. It hit the ground and at that exact moment as if the universe had been waiting for precisely this, the crash echoed. Not just from the shattering chalice, but from above. The world moved in slow motion. My whole body froze as glass rained down in glittering shards, as the skylight exploded inward, as three massive shapes plummeted through the opening. They landed in crouches that shouldn’t have been possible from that height. My eyes registered the details in fragments: blood slicking skin, eyes that glowed silver and gold and something darker than midnight, bodies too large and too wrong to be human. And in seconds too slow yet too fast, it hit me—this was the realistic proof that werewolves existed. Because three of them were standing meters away from me. Snarling… And like the world pressed play, they all lunged at me.