Bound to the Alpha Twins

The Summons

He did not smile nor speak, he simply held out a letter.

The envelope was a thick cream-coloured paper, sealed with blood-red wax stamped with the Valerius crest.

My name was written across the front in clean black ink.

Ophelia.

I stretched out my hands to take it.

"You are expected at the palace tomorrow evening," the guard said. His voice was flat and practiced, the voice of a man who delivered messages for a living and felt no attachment to their contents. "Sunset at the eastern gate. Do not be late."

He dipped his head once. Then turned and walked away, his boots crisp against the stone path, and disappeared into the dusk without looking back.

I stayed rooted in the doorway holding the letter.

The evening air swirled around me, carrying the smell of woods and the distant shouts of children being called inside for supper. It was an ordinary evening in Ashen Ridge, everything was exactly as it had always been.

Except for the letter in my hands.

I heard my mother's feet shuffle against the kitchen floor.

"What is it?"

I closed the door, walked back to the kitchen and set the letter on the table between us without a word.

She stared at it. Then at me. Then at the crest pressed into the wax. Her face contorted with complicated emotions before she smoothed them away.

"Well," she said.

My lips stayed in place.

She reached out and touched the edge of the envelope with one finger, not opening it, just touching it, the way you do something you are not sure is safe.

"Tomorrow evening," I said.

She nodded slowly. "Then you had better eat something tonight." She was back at the counter, back to being ordinary, her hands moving swiftly over the vegetables I had abandoned. "And sleep. You will need your head clear."

I watched her for a moment.

"Ma."

"Mmmhh."

"Are you not going to say anything?"

She did not turn to look at me still. "I said eat and sleep. What more do you want from me?"

I picked up the crested envelope and went upstairs.

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***THIRD POV****

The candles in Niverna's chambers burned low.

She was exactly where Lucian had left her, draped across the silk sheets like she had been carved there, her flame-coloured hair draped across the pillow. She watched him dress with the particular patience of a woman who had learned that watching held its own kind of power.

Niverna was not naive and had not been naive since her sixteenth birthday. She knew what she was to the alphas. She had made her peace with it a long time ago and built something comfortable within these walls.

But tonight, Lucian had been different.

She had felt it the moment he came through the doors. In the way his hands had been certain but his mind had been somewhere else entirely.

She had said nothing. That was part of what made her good at this, what made her the favourite in the Harem.

"You are thinking about her," she said now, her voice silky.

Lucian did not falter in buttoning his shirt. "Don't." It was final.

Silence stretched.

Minutes later, her voice came again, "I am not accusing, my Lord, I am merely stating." She stretched slowly, catlike. "Your mind seems to have been elsewhere tonight."

He glanced at her then, briefly.

Niverna smiled. It was a small, knowing smile, "She must be something."

Lucian worked his belt.

"The Omega," Niverna continued lightly. "The whole palace is talking. The whole pack, probably." She tilted her head to the left.

"I am curious, very. What does she look like... What does she smell like? Santal? Fresh earth?" She paused, almost theatrically. "What it is about her that has the composed, untouchable Lucian Valerius standing in my presence but thinking about another."

"Niverna."

"Yes?"

"Stop."

She laughed softly, a low warm sound, and pulled the sheet around her shoulders. "I will stop. But you should know, my Lord, that whatever you are trying to work out of your system-" she glanced at the rumpled sheets between them, "it is clearly not working."

Lucian picked up his jacket from the chair. He did not answer her.

She watched him stride to the door.

"Lucian."

He lingered for a moment, his hand on the frame, his back to her.

"She is already in your blood," Niverna said quietly. "I have known you a long time and I know the difference between a man who wants something and a man who needs it." A pause. "You are the latter."

The candle flames flickered.

Lucian stepped out of her chambers, the doors shut behind him.

Niverna sat in the dark for a long moment, her chin resting on her knees, listening to his footsteps fade down the corridor.

Then she reached for the wine on the bedside table and poured herself a glass.

She was not heartbroken. She had never been under any illusions about what this was.

But, sitting alone in the darkness, she was honest enough to admit to herself: she would miss him.