Her Alpha's Impossible Claim

Blood Doesn't Lie.

The syringe caught the light.

It hung from Lena Quinn's fingers loose and casual, like a cigarette, the dark red inside throwing back the penthouse chandelier bloody. Council seal paper in her other hand, folded twice, edges sharp.

Same face as Elara. Same raven hair, same grey eyes. Only wrong. Elara's face had softness even when she was angry, from years of talking to scared kids and dying old wolves. This face had no softness left. Eyes flat. Smile rehearsed.

Kieran shifted half a step forward, his body blocking the bed entirely, shoulders rising until his shirt strained across his back. A low growl started so deep the floor hummed.

Lena didn't flinch. She looked him up and down, appreciative, like she was shopping.

"Prime Blackwood. You're bigger in person. Photos didn't do you justice." She tilted her head. "Pity. I always wanted to meet my sister's famous mate. Before you ruined her, I mean."

Elara's arms tightened around Lyra. Lyra was awake now, eyes huge, pressed to Elara's chest, staring at Lena. No glow. Just child terror.

"Who are you?" Elena asked from the corner, hand on Lyra's ankle, doing her best brave human-doctor voice.

"Sister," Lena said, eyes flicking to Elena and dismissing her. "Twin, technically. Maeve Quinn had two girls ten minutes apart. Elara got to be born first and left. I got to be kept."

Twin.

The word dropped like a stone into still water.

Elara's throat closed. Twin. Her mother had never said. Her father had never said. Empty coffin. Ten years.

"You're lying," she whispered.

Lena smiled wider, showing teeth that were exactly Elara's teeth but with a small chip on the front incisor Elara didn't have.

"Am I? Check my wrist." She turned her arm. Inside, a thin white scar, old, precise, shaped like a crescent. "Mom gave us matching ones. When we were three. So we wouldn't get lost. She gave you yours on the left. Me on the right."

Elara looked down at her own left wrist without meaning to. Crescent scar, pale, faded. She'd always thought it was a cat scratch.

Her hand shook.

Sasha moved, gun still low, eyes locked on Lena's lab coat.

"Kane coat," Sasha said. "B7 access. You work for them."

"I live there," Lena corrected, pleasant. "Since I was ten. Mommy and me. Well. Mommy mostly in a tank. Me mostly in school. Kane school. Very expensive. Very painful."

She said it lightly, like she was reciting someone else's story.

Kieran's growl deepened. "You put the bracelet on the child."

Lena looked down at the white gold bracelet around her own throat. Irina's second bracelet, polished new.

"No, Babushka did. Irina. Before they put her in the river. She was my favorite. She taught me how to pick locks with hairpins." She touched the bracelet. "She said I'd need it for my niece."

Lyra whimpered.

Elara stood, Lyra still in her arms though her legs wanted to fold. She set Lyra down behind her. Elena's hands immediately gathered her in.

"Get away from my daughter," Elara said.

Lena's eyes finally settled on her, sister to sister, and something flickered there. Not warmth. Envy, sharp and old.

"Your daughter," Lena repeated. "You have everything. Pack, even if shitty. Mother who told you stories. Mate who burned the world for you. And you got a daughter with his eyes and you hid her. I got a tank. And a needle." She lifted the syringe. "This is Mom's blood. Fresh today. Day 3642. You saw the vial. This one is for Lyra. Prime White needs a transfusion when her first shift comes early. Otherwise she dies. Like our cousin did."

First shift. At four. Impossible. Pups didn't shift until twelve.

Kieran turned his head a fraction, not taking his eyes off Lena.

"She's lying," Sasha whispered, but she sounded uncertain.

Lena laughed, short. "Ask your precious Council order. They already know. Unregistered female Alpha pup showing early Prime signs is an asset, not a child. That's why Darius filed the summons. He wants to own her before Volkov does. I want to save her."

She stepped into the room, lab coat swaying. Jace raised his gun higher.

"One more step," Jace said.

Lena stopped. Looked at the gun, then at Elara.

"I can prove I'm your sister," she said softly. "Ask me something only a twin would know. Ask me about the green bicycle. Ask me about the night Mom left."

Elara's mouth went dry. Green bicycle. She'd had a dream about a green bicycle for years. Two girls on one bike, falling into a creek. She thought it was her and an imaginary friend.

"The night Mom left, you said you heard wolves," Lena said before Elara could ask, voice dropping, almost childlike. "You hid in the closet. I hid under the bed. Mom kissed you first. You fell asleep. She kissed me after and said 'Be brave for both.' You never knew. You thought you were alone."

Elara's knees hit. Elena caught her elbow.

She remembered the closet. Cedar smell. Her mother's hand on her hair. She did not remember a sister under the bed.

"You were there," she whispered.

"I was always there," Lena said. "Under the bed. In the walls. In B7. Watching you get to leave."

Lyra, behind Elara, made a small sound and reached out from Elena's arms, hand extended toward Lena. Not scared now. Curious.

"Auntie Lena smells like Mama but sadder," Lyra said, echoing what she'd said about the lady in the wall.

Lena's mask cracked. For the first second, her eyes filled, wet.

"Hi, baby," she said, voice raw. "I'm"

Kieran moved.

Not toward Lena. Toward Elara. He knelt, hand on her back, steadying, thumb brushing once over her spine where her shirt had ridden up, oil from earlier still there his scent, cedar smoke. Grounding.

"Breathe," he murmured, only for her. "Look at me, not her."

Elara looked at him. Ice-blue eyes, not cold now, wrecked, focused only on her. Same eyes Lyra had.

"She has my scar," she whispered, broken. "She knows about the bicycle."

"I know," he said. "That doesn't make her safe."

Lena watched them, smile gone, something tight around her mouth.

"Touching. Really. You do the love story while our mother rots in a tank?" She lifted the syringe higher. "This will keep Lyra alive until we get Maeve out tomorrow. Early shift without Prime mother blood kills the pup. The Council knows. That's why they want her at noon to take blood while she shifts. I can stop it. Let me give her half now."

"Put it down," Elara said, standing again, placing herself between Lena and Lyra. Her own scent, rain and sage, flared, stronger since the wolfsbane stopped, since Kieran's oil on her throat. Silver flickered behind grey. "You don't touch her."

Lena's eyes flashed silver too, identical, but with red at the edges, like blood in water.

"You're weak," she spat, sweet facade gone. "You were always weak. You ran. I stayed. I bled. I earned Mom. You don't get to play mama wolf now."

"You left the bracelet in the shaft," Elara said, realization hitting cold. "You were in the walls. You scared her."

"I was trying to warn her!" Lena's voice rose, shrill, first real crack. "Bad men are in the walls, Elara! Not me! The men who take little girls who shift early! They took the second twin!"

Second twin. Lyra had said second twin in her trance.

Sasha inhaled sharply. "Irina wrote twin. She wrote they took second twin."

Kieran's hand tightened on Elara's waist, pulling her slightly back.

"What second twin?" he asked Lena, voice lethal quiet.

Lena laughed, wet. Tears now, real, tracking down a face that looked exactly like Elara's crying.

"Ask your mother," she said to Kieran. "Oh wait, you can't, the river took her. Ask the Council. They know. White Line didn't have one child every generation. They had two. Always two. One to be shown. One to be stored. For blood. For breeding. Maeve had us. We were supposed to be stored together. But Dad sold Elara to Silver Ridge to pay a debt. Kane kept me."

Elara's world tilted. Two. Always two.

Lyra behind her whimpered, and the mark on her chest fresh bite, four punctures silvery began to glow faint, same silver as Elara's eyes, pulsing with her heartbeat.

Lena stared at it, and her face transformed, greed and grief warring.

"She's shifting," she whispered, reverent and terrified. "Already. Four years old and shifting. We need a tank now, or she will die like"

The main elevator dinged again.

No one had called it.

The doors opened, and two Council enforcers in white masks stepped out not Beta, Prime flanked by Darius Kane who held a Council order raised, smile triumphant despite the bruised throat.

"Well," Darius said, eyes landing on Lyra's glowing mark, on Lena, on Elara's throat shining with Kieran's oil. "Isn't this a family reunion. Council, I present unregistered Prime female offspring, early shift, mother noncompliant and marked without permission during a claim dispute. And an escaped B7 asset." He looked at Lena. "Lena, darling, you were supposed to bring the child quietly. Not bring the Council to Blackwood's door."

Lena's hand tightened on the syringe, and in one smooth motion she lunged not at Lyra, not at Darius at Elara, needle aimed at her throat.

Kieran roared.

Lyra screamed, and the bedroom glass all sixty floors of it exploded inward.