Oops! My Twin Alphas Claimed Me

Chapter 16: Twin Rules

Chapter 16: Twin Rules

It was Ash's idea, which should have warned me it would go badly, because Ash's ideas were always more reasonable in theory than in practice.

"A schedule," he said one evening, over dinner the three of us had started taking privately in our rooms rather than the formal dining hall. "Nothing rigid. Just... structure. So neither of us feels shortchanged, and you're not stretched thin trying to manage both of us at once."

"You want a rotation," I said slowly, "for spending time with your own mate."

"I want fairness," Ash said, unbothered by how strange it sounded out loud. "Ryker gets restless when he feels like he's losing ground. I get quietly resentful when I feel unseen. A schedule solves both."

Ryker, to my surprise, agreed almost immediately — though I suspected it had more to do with hating uncertainty than genuinely believing in the plan. "Fine," he said. "Mornings, training and meals with me. Afternoons, ledgers and council nonsense with him. Evenings—" he paused, something almost boyish and competitive flickering across his face, "—we split fairly."

"This feels like you're negotiating custody of a person who's sitting right here," I said, half amused, half exasperated.

"Would you rather we didn't try?" Ash asked, entirely serious.

I sighed, and agreed, mostly because the alternative was watching them circle the same argument in smaller and smaller loops for the rest of the week.

The schedule lasted four days.

It fell apart on the fifth morning, when Ryker's training session ran long because Thorne had insisted on an extra hour of sparring, which meant I arrived at the library twenty minutes late for Ash's lesson, which meant Ash had already rearranged the afternoon's agenda to accommodate the delay, which meant Ryker informed of this change secondhand by a servant rather than either of us directly arrived at the library himself, entirely uninvited, under the very thin pretense of "checking on the ledgers."

"This is my time," Ash said, not looking up from the trade agreement he was walking me through.

"The schedule shifted. I'm allowed to adjust for the shift," Ryker said, dropping into the chair beside me like he had every right to be there, which, in fairness, he technically did.

"You're allowed to adjust your own time. Not annex mine."

"I'm not annexing anything. I'm supervising."

"Supervising what, exactly?"

"Whatever this is." Ryker gestured vaguely at the ledgers, at Ash, at the entire arrangement, with the particular irritation of a man who suspected he was losing an argument he hadn't fully understood the terms of.

I put my pen down slowly, watching them circle each other with the same restless energy they'd apparently had since childhood, and felt something between exasperation and helpless affection bubble up in my chest.

"You're both being ridiculous," I said.

"I'm being reasonable," they said, simultaneously, in the exact same tone, which might have been the funniest thing I'd witnessed since arriving at the mansion. I laughed before I could stop myself a real, unguarded laugh that startled both of them into silence.

"What," Ryker said, somewhere between offended and curious.

"You sound exactly alike when you're both wrong," I said, still laughing. "I don't need a schedule. I'm not a ledger to be divided into fair columns. Some days I'll want Ash's patience. Some days I'll want your fire. Most days, honestly, I'll want both of you in the same room, arguing about something ridiculous exactly like this, because it's the only time either of you looks like you're actually having fun instead of performing duty."

They exchanged a glance over my head... the kind of silent twin communication I still hadn't learned to read fully, though I was beginning to catch the shape of it.

"So no schedule," Ash said finally.

"No schedule," I agreed. "Just....tell each other things. Talk to me directly instead of rearranging your whole day around guessing what the other one's planned. I promise I'm capable of saying what I need, when I need it."

Ryker considered this, then reached over and, with no warning at all, hooked his hand behind Ash's neck and pulled him into a rough, affectionate headlock that had absolutely nothing to do with rulership or rivalry and everything to do with two brothers who'd apparently done this exact thing since they were pups.

"Get off," Ash said, laughing despite himself, shoving his twin away.

"You're impossible," Ryker said, releasing him, grinning in a way that took ten years off his face.

"I learned it from you."

I watched them, warmth spreading slow and unfamiliar through my chest not the desperate, drowning want the bond usually stirred in me, but something quieter. Something that felt, for the first time, like a family instead of an arrangement.

"For the record," I said, once they'd settled back into something resembling composure, "I liked that far better than the schedule."

"Noted," Ash said, picking his pen back up, though the smile lingered at the corner of his mouth for the rest of the lesson.

Ryker, for his part, didn't leave. He stayed the whole afternoon, mostly quiet, occasionally muttering commentary about trade law that made Ash roll his eyes, and I found I didn't mind the interruption at all — found, instead, that I'd missed exactly this, without knowing it was something I'd been missing.