Rejected by My Mate, Claimed by the Triplet Alphas

Chapter 10: The Next Lock

Viene’s POV

I woke up walking.

Not sleepwalking. My eyes were open, my feet were moving, and I had no memory of getting out of bed. The corridor around me wasn’t one I recognized — narrower than the guest floor, the stone older, the lights dimmer and spaced further apart.

I stopped and looked back the way I’d come. Nothing. No sense of how far I’d walked or how long ago I’d left my room.

“Nathan?” My voice didn’t carry the way it should have. “Nolan?”

No answer. No guards either, which meant I was somewhere they weren’t supposed to let me go, and somewhere I hadn’t chosen to be.

I tried to turn back the way I’d come. My feet wouldn’t listen. They kept moving forward, past sconces spaced further and further apart, past a door hanging half off one hinge that nobody had bothered to fix, deeper into a part of the compound that felt older than the rest of it, like it had been built first and everything else added around it later.

Something pulled at me. Low, insistent, coming from further down the corridor, past a set of doors that looked older than the rest of the compound. My collarbone had gone warm again, the same warmth from the night the symbol formed, except this time it wasn’t burning. It was pointing.

I tried once more to stop walking. My body didn’t ask permission. I followed the pull because my legs were already moving and stopping felt harder than continuing.

The corridor ended at a door with no handle. Just a flat surface, dark metal, humming faintly like it was plugged into something enormous.

I don’t know why I put my hand on it.

The second my palm touched the metal, a voice came through — not from speakers, not from anywhere I could locate. It came from inside my own skull, clear as if someone were standing directly behind me.

There you are.

I spun around. Empty corridor.

Don’t be afraid. You’ve done this before. You just don’t remember yet.

“Who are you?”

You’ll know soon. You’re close now. Closer than any of the others ever got.

“Others?”

The next Lock doesn’t form on its own. It needs a hand to finish it. Mine, or yours, and I’d rather it be yours. It always goes easier when it’s yours.

The lights in the corridor flickered once, then died completely.

I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. The hum behind the door had grown louder, filling the dark like something breathing.

Don’t pull away, the voice said, gentler now, almost affectionate in a way that made my skin crawl worse than any threat could have. You’re not in danger. You’re finally where you’re supposed to be.

My hand wouldn’t move. I told it to. It didn’t listen.

“Let go of me.”

I’m not holding you. You’re holding on.

That was somehow worse than being forced.

Heat spread from my palm up through my wrist, up my arm, following the same path the mark had carved into my collarbone. It didn’t hurt exactly. It felt like being filled with something too large for the space it was entering.

Almost, the voice said. You’ve been so alone since he sent you away. I know what that feels like. I’ve been alone longer than you can imagine.

“Stop.” The word came out smaller than I meant it to. “I don’t know what you are.”

You will. That’s the whole point of this. You were always going to end up here eventually. I just made it happen a little sooner than it would have on its own.

Footsteps, distant, running.

“Viene!”

Nathan’s voice, somewhere behind me in the dark, closer than I expected but still too far.

They’re coming, the voice said, almost bored by it. They always come too late. It’s rather sweet, honestly, how hard they try.

“Viene, don’t touch anything!”

I tried to pull my hand back. It came away from the door only after real effort, like tearing something loose that didn’t want to let go, and the second contact broke, the heat in my arm turned to ice, then to nothing at all.

The lights came back on all at once, blinding after the dark.

Nathan reached me first, grabbing my shoulders, checking my face like he expected to find someone else looking back at him.

“What did you touch,” he said. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know. I woke up here. I don’t remember walking.”

Neil arrived seconds later, already scanning the door, the hum behind it, my hand, which I realized was trembling.

“The Vault’s active,” Neil said. “Fully active, not just responding. This is different from before.”

“There was a voice,” I said. “A woman. She called me the next Lock.”

Nathan’s face went through something fast — recognition, then something worse than recognition, gone before I could name it.

“What did she say to you,” he asked, low. “Exactly.”

“That I’ve done this before. That I don’t remember. That the next Lock needs a hand to finish it and she’d rather it be mine.”

“Anything else,” Neil said.

“She said the others always come too late. She said it like she found that funny.”

“Did she give you a name,” Nathan said. “Anything you could call her by.”

“No. Just that I’d know soon. That I was closer than anyone else has ever gotten.”

Neil and Nathan looked at each other, and whatever passed between them, neither one said it out loud.

“You know who that is,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Not now,” Nathan said.

“You keep saying that. Not now, later, when I understand it well enough. I want one honest answer before something else happens to me in the dark.”

Neither of them gave me one.

Nolan arrived last, out of breath, and didn’t ask a single question. He just pulled me back from the door, putting himself between me and it the way he always did, like his body was the only answer he trusted.

“We need to move her,” Nolan said. “Now. Away from this door.”

“Not yet,” Neil said. “I need to know what she—”

“You need,” Nolan said. “Not her. You keep saying you need when you mean you want. She’s shaking. Look at her.”

Neil looked. For once, he didn’t argue.

“You knew her,” I said again, to both of them this time. “That’s not the same as knowing about her. You knew her name before I said one word.”

Nathan’s silence answered for him. Neil’s did too.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “You’re both standing here asking me what she said, and neither of you will tell me who she is.”

“Because I don’t have an answer that won’t scare you worse than she already did,” Nathan said.

“Try me.”

The scream cut off whatever he was going to say next.

Nathan’s head turned toward the sound.

“That’s not her.”

Nobody moved.

Then the scream came again.