Oops! My Twin Alphas Claimed Me

Chapter 6: The Power Beneath the Skin

The Shadowfang Alpha's jaws were close enough that I could see the wet gleam of his teeth, close enough to smell blood and rot beneath the pine and smoke of the battlefield.

I didn't decide to move. My body decided for me.

Heat exploded outward from my chest… not the warm ache of the mate bond, not the slick, shameful want that Ryker and Ash had taught my body to crave. This was older. Colder. It rushed down my arms and out through my palms like a current looking for somewhere to go, and I threw my hands up on pure animal instinct, a wordless scream tearing out of my throat.

Silver light burst from my skin.

It wasn't fire. It didn't burn. It was more like moonlight given weight, given teeth. The wolf lunging for my throat hit an invisible wall a foot from my body and was flung backward, yelping, end over end, until he crashed into a stand of birch trees hard enough to splinter bark.

The clearing went silent except for the crackle of my own breathing.

I stood there with my hands still raised, palms tingling, staring at them like they belonged to someone else. Every wolf on the battlefield — ours and theirs — had frozen mid-motion, ears pinned, eyes locked on me.

"Elara." Ash's voice. Human again, stumbling out of his shift, silver-streaked hair damp with sweat and blood that wasn't his own. He was staring at me the way you'd stare at the moon during an eclipse..awe wrapped around fear. "What did you just do?"

"I don't—" My voice cracked. My hands were shaking now that the light had faded, leaving only the phantom hum of it under my skin. "I don't know."

Ryker shifted back beside his brother, chest heaving, blood dripping from a gash along his ribs that was already knitting shut. His amber eyes weren't on the enemy anymore. They were on me, wide and wild in a way I'd never seen not lust, not fury. Something closer to terror.

"She threw him thirty feet without touching him," he said hoarsely, like he needed to say it out loud to believe it.

The Shadowfang Alpha dragged himself up from the wreckage of the birches, human again, blood running from his temple. His cruel eyes found me across the clearing, and for the first time, the hunger in them curdled into something wary.

"The seer spoke true," he called out, voice rough with pain but carrying across the sudden quiet. "The Eclipse wakes in her. And you fools have no idea what you're holding."

"Eclipse," Elder Thorne repeated somewhere behind me, and I heard the word ripple backward through our own warriors like a struck bell.

The Shadowfang Alpha didn't press the advantage. He looked at the wreckage of trees, at the two Alphas flanking me with murder in their eyes, and made a decision.

"We're not finished," he snarled, backing toward the tree line, cradling his bleeding arm. "This isn't a retreat. It's patience. When the twins tear themselves apart over her and they will… we'll be waiting to pick up what's left."

His warriors melted back into the dark with him, and just like that, the battlefield was ours. Howls of victory rose from our own wolves, ragged and disbelieving, but I couldn't make myself feel it. My knees had started to shake, adrenaline draining out of me all at once, and the ground tilted.

Ryker caught me before I hit the dirt.

"I've got you," he said, low and rough against my hair, and for once there was no growl of possession in it — just something raw and frightened, a man holding something he didn't understand and couldn't afford to lose. Ash was there a second later, pressing his palm flat against my back like he was checking I was still solid, still real.

"She needs the healer," Ash said. "Now."

"I'm fine," I tried to say, but the words came out slurred, and the last thing I registered before the world went dark at the edges was the two of them arguing in low, frantic voices over my head — Ryker insisting on carrying me himself, Ash insisting they move together, side by side, neither of them willing to let the other take the lead.

For once, I didn't have the strength to referee them.

***************

I woke to firelight and the smell of crushed herbs.

The healer's hut was small, lined with dried plants hanging from the rafters, and I was tucked into a narrow cot with quilts pulled up to my chin. Someone had cleaned the dirt from my feet. My whole body ached like I'd run for miles, and underneath the ache, that same low hum still pulsed faintly beneath my skin quieter now, banked like coals, but not gone.

"You're awake." Ash's voice, gentle, from a stool pulled close to the bed. He looked wrecked, hair disheveled, a healing cut along his cheekbone, dark circles under eyes that hadn't left my face. "You scared the life out of both of us."

"How long was I out?"

"Six hours." Ryker's voice, from the doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the frame like he'd been standing there refusing to sit for most of that time. His shirt was gone, replaced with a bandage wound tight around his ribs. "The healer says you're not hurt. Just... spent. Like you burned through something you didn't know you had."

I pushed myself up slowly, quilts sliding to my waist. "The Shadowfang Alpha called it the Eclipse. What is that?"

The brothers exchanged a look, the kind of look twins share that says an entire conversation in half a second. Ash was the one who finally spoke.

"There's an old prophecy," he said carefully, sitting forward, elbows on his knees. "Older than either of our fathers. It says the Moon will one day choose a Luna who isn't bound to one Alpha, but to two… twins, born of the same power, split down some ancient line. And that when she accepts both of them completely, their strength doesn't just combine. It becomes something new. Something that hasn't existed in the pack world for centuries."

"The Eclipse Bond," Ryker said, the name sitting strange and heavy in his mouth. "Most of the elders think it's a myth parents tell pups to explain why some wolves are stronger than others. I never believed it either. Until tonight."

I stared down at my own hands, still faintly tingling, and thought about the birch trees splintering, the enemy Alpha flung through the air like he weighed nothing.

"I couldn't even shift," I whispered. "My whole life, I couldn't do the one thing every wolf is supposed to do. And now I'm supposed to believe I'm... what, chosen? Powerful?"

"You didn't need to shift," Ash said quietly. "That's the part none of us understood. You were never wolf-less because something was missing in you, Elara. You were wolf-less because you were built to hold something bigger."

Ryker pushed off the doorframe and crossed the small room, crouching beside the cot until we were eye level. Up close, the exhaustion on his face made him look younger, less like the ruthless Alpha who'd cornered me against an oak tree three nights ago and more like a man who'd almost watched something unbearable happen.

"That thing tonight," he said, voice rough, "it went for your throat. And for one second, neither of us could get to you in time." His jaw tightened. "I've never been afraid of anything in my life. Not until I watched you stand there alone."

"But you didn't need saving," Ash added, reaching out to brush a strand of hair back from my face, thumb lingering against my temple. "You saved yourself. And maybe all of us, before this is over."

The weight of that settled over the small room like a held breath. Outside, I could hear the low murmur of the pack — wounded being tended, warriors recounting the battle, and underneath it all, a new kind of whisper. Not *wolf-less omega* anymore.

Something closer to reverence. Something closer to fear.

"The elders will want answers," I said quietly. "They already thought I was a curse. Now I'm... whatever this is."

"Let them be afraid," Ryker said, low and certain, taking my hand in both of his like it was something precious rather than something dangerous. "Fear keeps them from doing anything stupid."

"And the ones who aren't afraid," Ash added, threading his fingers through my other hand, "will have to answer to both of us."

For the first time since the scout had burst through the council doors, I let myself lean into it — into them, into the quiet certainty in both their voices even as the rest of the world outside that hut was unraveling into something none of us fully understood yet.

But even as the warmth of them settled around me, one thought kept circling back, cold and insistent beneath the exhaustion.

The Shadowfang Alpha didn't run because he lost.

He ran because he already knew what came next.

And somewhere out past the tree line, in the dark beyond the dying bonfires, something ancient and patient was still watching. Waiting for the twins' rivalry to do what no enemy pack could.

Tear us apart from the inside.