Oops! My Twin Alphas Claimed Me

Chapter 9: Beta Thorne's Doubt

I should have known the peace wouldn't last past breakfast.

Word had spread overnight that Victoria was back, and with her return came a kind of restless energy through the mansion... warriors standing straighter in the halls, servants moving faster, everyone suddenly aware they were being watched by someone who noticed everything. I felt it too, that low hum of scrutiny, though I told myself it had nothing to do with why my hands shook slightly around my teacup that morning.

It had everything to do with it.

Beta Thorne found us in the training yard just past midday, where Ryker had insisted over Ash's quiet objection, that I needed to start learning to defend myself properly instead of relying on a power I couldn't yet control. I'd barely managed to land a single clean strike against the padded target Ryker held for me when Thorne's voice cut across the yard like a blade.

"A word, Alphas."

Thorne was an imposing man even among Alphas — broad through the shoulders, silver threading through dark hair, the kind of authority in his bearing that came from decades of loyal service rather than blood. He'd fought beside the twins' father. He'd carried both of them on his shoulders as pups, or so I'd heard whispered more than once since the festival. His loyalty to Ryker and Ash wasn't in question.

His loyalty to me clearly was.

"Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of her," Ryker said, lowering the padded target but not quite lowering his guard.

Thorne's eyes flicked to me, not unkind exactly, but not warm either. Assessing, the way a man assesses a structure he's not sure will hold weight. "Very well." He turned back to the twins. "The warriors are asking questions I can't answer. They want to know why we've committed to defending a mate who cannot shift, cannot fight, and by all accounts nearly got herself killed sneaking off pack lands against direct orders."

Heat crawled up my neck, shame and anger tangled together so tightly I couldn't tell which one was winning.

"She saved herself at that border," Ash said evenly, though I caught the edge beneath his calm. "Threw a full Alpha thirty feet without training. That's not nothing, Thorne."

"It's also not proof of anything we understand," Thorne countered. "An untrained, unpredictable power that flares under threat isn't a defense strategy, Alpha. It's a liability we can't plan around. I've buried enough warriors in my life to know the difference between a weapon and a wild card."

"Careful," Ryker said, voice dropping into something low and dangerous.

"I'm not insulting her," Thorne said, and to his credit, he looked at me directly when he said it, none of the sneering condescension I'd grown up expecting from higher-ranked wolves. "I'm telling you what every warrior under my command is thinking, whether or not they say it to your faces. You two are the strongest Alphas this pack has ever had, and right now half your strength is tied up managing each other over her instead of managing the actual threats gathering at our borders."

The words landed harder than I expected, mostly because I couldn't argue with them.

"I'm standing right here," I said, before either twin could answer for me. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "You can address me directly, Beta Thorne. I'm not a strategy problem to be solved around a table I'm not sitting at."

Something shifted in his expression — surprise, maybe, that I'd spoken at all, let alone with any spine behind it.

"Then answer me directly," he said. "What happens the next time your power flares and there isn't an enemy in front of you? What happens if it goes wrong in the middle of this training yard, or the council hall, or a room full of pups?"

I didn't have an answer. That was the truth of it, ugly and plain, and I hated him a little for making me say so out loud in front of both Ryker and Ash.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I've had this power for three days, Beta Thorne. I spent twenty-three years being told I had none at all. Forgive me if I haven't mastered it on your schedule."

To my surprise, something almost like respect flickered across his weathered face. "At least you don't pretend to certainty you don't have," he said. "That's more than I expected." He looked between the three of us, jaw tight. "I'm not your enemy, Alphas. I'm the man who has to look every mother in this pack in the eye and tell her why her sons should trust their lives to a Luna none of us understand yet. Give me something to tell them besides 'the Moon chose her.'"

"Then train with us," Ryker said suddenly, before Ash could speak. It surprised me as much as it clearly surprised Thorne. "Not just theory in the council hall. Actual training, actual oversight. You want proof she's not a liability... help make sure she isn't one."

Thorne studied Ryker for a long moment, then me, weighing something I couldn't read.

"Fine," he said finally. "Every morning. I'll see for myself what the Moon supposedly gave us." He turned to leave, then paused, glancing back at me almost as an afterthought. "For what it's worth, most Lunas I've known didn't argue with a Beta twice their rank on their first meeting. That took nerve, if nothing else."

He left before I could decide if that had been an insult or the closest thing to approval I was going to get from him.

Ryker watched him go with a low, considering hum in his chest. "That went better than I expected," he said.

"Did it?" I asked, still feeling raw from the exchange.

"He didn't threaten to challenge either of us for keeping you," Ash said dryly, though there was warmth underneath it when he looked at me. "Trust me. That's Thorne's version of a warm welcome."

I wasn't sure I believed that yet. But something about standing my ground instead of shrinking into the space behind them had loosened a knot in my chest I hadn't realized was there... the old, familiar instinct to apologize for existing, just slightly, quietly, undone.