Bought By My Alpha Mates

JEN’S POV I never expected to spend New Year's Eve grinding out my last shift at The Onyx Room in six-inch heels, counting down the minutes until midnight and freedom in the same breath. Freedom from Nate. Freedom from the forty-two thousand dollars his debt collectors kept calling about even though the loan was never mine to begin with. Freedom, if I could just get through tonight without my knees buckling under the weight of everything I'd become since I was nineteen. "Five minutes, Cole." Marisol's voice crackled through the dressing room speaker. "Crowd's wild tonight. VIP's already three drinks deep." I checked myself in the cracked mirror one more time. Black lace, red lips, a smile I'd practiced so many times it almost looked real. This was the plan. One more shift, one more stack of cash, and I'd have enough to leave this city and never look back. I did not plan on the three men who walked into VIP at eleven fifty-eight. --- I felt them before I saw them. A pull, sudden and violent, low in my chest, like a hook sinking into my ribs and yanking hard enough to steal the air from my lungs. My heels stuttered on the stage floor. The DJ's bass kept thundering, the crowd kept screaming toward midnight, but for one long second the whole club tilted sideways around me. I knew that pull. I'd felt it exactly once before, seventeen years ago, at a summer bonfire I wasn't supposed to remember, three boys who used to chase me through the woods behind my father's house before everything fell apart and my mother packed us into a car in the middle of the night. *No. Not them. Not here. Not like this.* But when I turned toward the VIP section, there they were. The tallest one sat back against black leather like he owned the booth, the room, the whole city block. Storm-gray eyes found mine across the crowd and locked on with a force that felt physical. Older now. Broader. But I would know that face anywhere — I used to draw it in the margins of my notebooks when I was twelve and stupidly in love. *Cross.* Beside him, golden-eyed and golden-haired, wearing a smile too lazy to be harmless, sat the boy who used to steal peaches from my father's tree and split them with me in half. Rhys. And in the shadows at the edge of the booth, dark and still and watching me like I was the only thing in the room worth watching, sat Kian — the quiet one, the one who never said much but always noticed everything. My mates. My childhood. Standing — sitting — right in front of the stage where I was currently dancing in my underwear for tip money. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. The song ended. I didn't move to the next set. I just stood there under the lights, heart slamming, while three men who used to be my whole world stared up at me like the last seventeen years hadn't happened at all. Cross rose first. He crossed the distance to the edge of the stage in a way that made the whole club seem to hold its breath, security included. Up close, his eyes were even colder, even hungrier than I remembered. "Jenna." "You're supposed to be in Silverpine." My voice came out steadier than I felt. Small miracles. "We could say the same about you." His jaw ticked, gaze flicking once, involuntarily, down the black lace before snapping back to my face like he was furious at himself for looking. "This isn't—" He stopped. Started again. "You shouldn't be doing this." "I don't remember asking your opinion." Rhys appeared at Cross's shoulder, grin sharp now instead of lazy. "Careful, Cross. She's got claws." His eyes were warm, though, warm in a way that made the ache in my chest worse instead of better. "Hi, little wolf. Been a long time." "Don't call me that." I grabbed my robe off the stage hook, tugging it around my shoulders like armor. "I don't know you. Not anymore. Whatever this is—whatever you think you felt just now—" "You felt it too." Kian's voice, when it finally came, was low and rough, like it hadn't been used in years. He hadn't moved from the shadows, but his dark eyes pinned me in place just the same. "Don't lie to us. Not about this." He was right, and that was the worst part. The pull hadn't faded. If anything it had gotten stronger the second Cross touched the edge of the stage, low and insistent, like my body remembered something my mind had spent seventeen years trying to forget. "We're your mates," Cross said, quiet now, like the words cost him something. "Bonded since before we understood what that meant. We came the second we caught your scent in this city. We've been looking for you for years, Jenna." Behind him, midnight struck. Fireworks cracked over the city skyline, streaming gold light through the club's high windows, and the whole room erupted into screaming, kissing strangers welcoming in the new year. I stood frozen on that stage in my lace and my six-inch heels, three ruthless, dangerous men staring up at me like I was something worth tearing a kingdom apart for, and understood with sudden, bone-deep certainty that whatever life I'd built to survive on my own terms had just ended at the stroke of midnight. The real story was only beginning.