Reclaimed by the Alpha: His Secret Twins

Chapter 3 — The Door He Breaks Down

Mara:

I was trying to convince myself that the phone call didn't mean anything.

I was telling myself this while I made breakfast for the twins. I cut Ava's toast into triangles and left Rowan's toast in squares. I poured orange juice into Rowan's cup without a lid because he gets upset when I used a lid. I was trying to tell myself it was a wrong number or maybe someone who sounded like him because it was early and I was still shaken from what happened at the park.

I almost believed it.

Rowan climbed into his chair and immediately knocked his spoon onto the floor. Ava arranged her toast triangles in a pattern that apparently required significant concentration. I turned back to the counter to grab the second juice cup, and the front door detonated off its frame.

There was no knock, no warning, just the violent roar of splintering wood and tearing metal echoing down the small hallway. The sheer force of the impact rattled the dishes in the sink. I spun around, my fingers white-knuckled around the plastic cup. Rowan scrambled onto his chair, his small body locking up, while Ava froze instantly, a half eaten piece of toast hovering inches from her face.

Rhys framed the shattered threshold, his towering presence completely suffocating the room. He wore a dark, rumpled suit with no tie, his jaw shadowed by heavy stubble that betrayed a chaotic, sleepless forty-eight hours. But it was his eyes that stopped my breath, they were pitch-black, his alpha wolf driving dangerously close to the surface.

His gaze ripped across the room, tracking the sudden drop in my scent, and then it hit the twins. I watched his entire body violently lock down. His broad shoulders went rigid, and his jaw dropped a fraction of an inch as his mind collided with a reality he never saw coming.

He was staring directly at two children who possessed his exact bone structure, his midnight-black hair, and his unmistakable eyes. The silence in the kitchen became absolutely deafening.

He looked at the twins, his entire frame locking down in shock, before his gaze snapped back to me.

"How long?" he asked. The question wasn't shouted, it was delivered in a low, terrifying rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.

I understood that whatever I said next was going to matter for a long time.

"Rhys… "

“How long have you known." he said, his voice not a question, but more like a bomb waiting to go off.

I gripped the edge of the counter to anchor myself. "I found out the night I left. Two hours after you handed me that pen.”

“You've had three years," he said. "Three years, Mara. You had my number. You had Lewis's number. You could have…"

“Could have what? Come back? Called you from a hospital examination room the night you told me I was a liability and handed me a pen?"

"They are my children."

“No, they are my children “I said, “You made it very clear what I was to you. I wasn't going to use them to change your mind." He crossed the kitchen in four strides. I held my ground. I had promised myself three years ago that I would never take a step back from Rhys Calloway again.

He stopped so close that I had to tilt my chin up to keep his eyes. The heat coming off him was the heat of an Alpha whose wolf was barely leashed.

"You had no right. Whatever happened between us you had no right to keep them from me. They are pack, they are blood. You took that from me and you are standing there like you did nothing wrong."

I absorbed the impact, kept my expression completely unreadable, and let my right hand drift blindly along the countertop. My fingers slipped into the open utility drawer, instantly locking around the cold, familiar steel of a surgical scalpel.

Without breaking eye contact, I stepped fully into his space and pressed the razor-sharp edge directly against the racing pulse of his throat. My hand was perfectly, terrifyingly steady, the unwavering precision of a surgeon who spent her days controlling life and death.

Rhys went entirely rigid, the feral growl snapping shut in his throat.

"You don't back me against walls anymore," I whispered, the steel in my voice matching the blade at his neck. "We're not married.”

The kitchen was silent. Behind me I could feel Rowan pressed against my legs completely motionless. Somewhere behind me Ava's chair scraped gently against the floor.

Rhys looked at me for a moment with the scalpel at his throat and something shifted in his expression. The fury pulled back by one layer to reveal what was underneath it. Raw and unguarded and gone again quickly I would have missed it if I hadn't been watching his face. He took a step back.

I lowered the scalpel, set it on the counter and turned around. Rowan was standing directly behind me, both arms wrapped around my leg. His small face turned up with an expression that made something pull tight in my chest.

"It's alright, go sit with Ava." I said quietly.

He looked at Rhys once then he went.

I turned back to find Rhys watching his son cross the kitchen. His jaw was tight. His hands were at his sides. He looked like a man standing at the edge of something he hadn't known was there until he was already too close to step back from.

I gave him nothing. I had learned three years ago that giving Rhys Calloway anything he hadn't earned only taught him that he didn't need to earn it.

"You should leave," I said.

"I'm not leaving."

"You broke my door."

"I'll replace it."

"That is not the point…"

The security lead appeared in the broken doorframe and whatever Rhys heard in the man's silence made him turn before a word was spoken.

"Alpha," the security lead said, his voice low and clipped. His eyes moved to me briefly back to Rhys. "The two wolves from the park yesterday we finished running them.”

He paused.

“They're not rogues, they're Eastern territory, three packs over. They were not there by accident. Someone sent them."

The kitchen went very quiet.

Rhys turned back to look at me slowly. The pitch-black was gone from his eyes. What replaced it was worse. Clear and cold and absolutely focused.

"Pack your children's things," he said. "You're not staying here tonight.”

"You don't give me orders anymore," I warned, keeping my spine straight.

"I'm not giving you an order." His eyes dropped to the grainy surveillance photograph in his guard's hand before lifting back to mine, dark and unreadable.

"I'm asking.”

I looked at him across the kitchen. This man who had broken my door and broken my life and was now standing in my kitchen telling me what to do, like three years hadn't happened. And I felt something shift in my chest that I didn't want to examine closely. The security lead was still standing in my doorway with that look on his face.

I was a doctor, not a fool.