Caught Between Two Alphas

Chapter Eleven

Sophia

The thing about sharing a body with a dead girl's soul is that sometimes she fights back.

I'm crouched behind the supply shed watching Allura glide across the compound when it happens—a sudden wrenching in my chest like hooks pulling in opposite directions. My vision blurs, doubles, and for a moment I see two worlds overlaid: this one where I'm Sophia the omega, and another where callused hands that have only known hard work are stealing stale bread in Moonstone's kitchen, where a girl's last thought before her heart gave out was that maybe her mother would have loved her if she'd been prettier.

Get out, something whispers inside me. Not my voice, not Hannah's. The remnant of the real Sophia, the one whose body I stole when the moon brought me back. You don't belong here.

My hands grip the rough wood until splinters dig deep, using pain to anchor myself. I've felt her before—when Alcyde's hands skim my waist, when his mouth finds that spot below my ear that makes me melt. Hannah's wolf purrs, wants to bare her throat to him, offer everything. But Sophia pulls back, coils tight with the bone-deep knowledge that alphas bring nothing but pain. Her memories leak through: a Beta uncle who visited at night, guards who took what they wanted, years of learning that survival meant invisibility.

"You alright there, omega?"

I spin to find Elder Patricia watching me with sharp hazel eyes that miss nothing. She leans on a walking stick carved with moon phases, silver hair braided tight against her skull.

"Just catching my breath, Elder."

She studies me long enough that sweat pricks along my spine despite the October chill. "You're the one who saved Lou. Fixed that nasty bite with plantain."

"Lucky guess."

"Hmm." She taps her stick against the ground. "Funny how many lucky guesses you seem to have. Like knowing to add lavender to the Alpha's meat. Or teaching our young omegas combat forms that take years to master."

The Sophia-remnant screams at me to run, to bow, to disappear. But Hannah's pride keeps my spine straight. "People underestimate what omegas notice."

"Indeed." Patricia's weathered face cracks into something that might be approval. "Keep noticing, child. This pack needs wolves who see clearly."

She moves on, but her words feel like permission. Or maybe warning.

Allura has vanished while I was distracted, but her scent lingers—white tea and something medicinal that makes my nose itch. I follow it through the compound, past the training grounds where Alcyde is running warriors through morning drills. He catches my eye across the field, and the heat in his gaze makes my stomach flip. Last night he had me pressed against his cabin wall, hands everywhere except where I needed them most, whispering filthy promises while keeping that last line uncrossed.

"Not yet," he'd breathed against my throat. "When I finally have you, I want to know exactly who I'm claiming."

The irony almost made me laugh. Or confess. I'd been seconds from telling him everything—about being Hannah, about dying, about coming back for revenge. Only Sophia's terror had held my tongue. Her memories of trusting the wrong wolf, of kind words that turned to violence once doors closed.

Now I force myself to look away from Alcyde and track Allura's path toward the eastern woods. She moves like she owns this territory, barefoot despite the frost, white dress ghosting around her ankles. I remember her from before—always hovering at the edges of pack gatherings, watching Anson with pale eyes that held too much hunger for a foster sister.

The memories feel different now, filtered through death and resurrection. I see details I missed: how she'd touch him just a second too long, how she'd position herself between us at formal dinners, the way she'd whisper in his ear whenever I was called away for Luna duties. How she'd mention his father—Alpha Ethan—and watch grief cloud his eyes.

I follow at a distance, using skills Sophia learned through years of avoiding notice. The real Sophia, the one whose body this was, had been exceptional at disappearing. Her muscle memory serves me now as I ghost through underbrush, placing each foot with careful precision.

Allura pauses at the old oak where pack meetings used to be held before we built the formal hall. She kneels, pressing her palm to the earth, lips moving in what looks like prayer. Or curse. The air around her shimmers slightly, wrong in a way that makes my borrowed skin crawl.

"Such a shame about poor Hannah."

I freeze. She's not talking to me—Elder Roland has approached from the north path, his weathered face creased with what might be concern or calculation.

"A tragedy," Allura agrees, rising gracefully. "Though perhaps... inevitable."

"Inevitable?"

She sighs, a perfect performance of reluctant revelation. "I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but... there were signs. Her mother, you know. Three husbands dead before forty. They called her the Black Widow of Ravencliff."

My blood turns to ice. My mother died when I was twelve—cancer that ate her from the inside out. My father, Alpha Randall Packard, remarried within the year. Then again two years later to a girl barely older than me.

"Hannah never mentioned—"

"Of course not." Allura's fingers trail through the air, leaving faint traces of something that smells like copper and old bones. "She was careful to hide the family curse. But blood tells, doesn't it? Poor Daddy. If only we'd known she carried such darkness..."

Roland's expression tightens. "Alpha Ethan's death was investigated thoroughly. The rogues—"

"Were convenient." Allura's laugh tinkles like breaking glass. "I loved Alpha Ethan like a father—he saved my mother, gave us sanctuary when that Louisiana pack would have killed us both. But even I have to wonder... Hannah arrived, and within two years, our strongest Alpha in generations is dead. Then she supposedly kills herself, but her body burned so strangely. That pyre shouldn't have consumed everything so completely."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. Everything." She touches Roland's arm, and he doesn't pull away. "I only know that since she died, I've felt... lighter. Like a shadow has lifted from our territory. Haven't you noticed? The patrols finding fewer rogue signs? The younger wolves settling easier?"

Roland nods slowly, and I want to tear out his throat. These were my reforms—better patrol schedules, conflict resolution programs for the youth. Now she's spinning them as evidence I was the problem.

They part ways, and I follow Allura deeper into the forest. She knows these paths intimately, moving with purpose toward the lake's eastern shore. There, hidden among the cypress trees, sits a rotting dock with a small rowboat that looks held together by spite and old rope.

She poles across water that reflects the gray October sky, heading for the abandoned fishing shacks on the far shore. I know this area—it's technically pack territory but so remote that even patrols rarely venture here. Hannah never had reason to visit.

I wait until she's halfway across before stealing another boat, a slightly less decrepit thing that at least has both oars. The lake is mirror-smooth, mist rising from its surface like ghostly fingers. Each stroke sends ripples spreading outward, and I pray she doesn't look back.

She doesn't. Her focus is entirely on one particular shack, its roof half-collapsed, walls green with moss and rot. She produces a key from somewhere and slips inside.

I beach my boat behind a tangle of kudzu and creep closer. Through a gap in the boards, I see her lighting candles—dozens of them, their smoke thick and sweet with herbs I can't identify. She's singing something in what sounds like Creole French, the melody making my teeth ache.

The shack is filled with disturbing things. Bones strung like wind chimes. Jars of dark liquid with things floating inside. And on a table in the center, a leather journal that looks disturbingly like human skin.

Allura opens it, running her fingers over pages covered in symbols that hurt to look at directly.

"Soon," she whispers to no one. "He's almost ready to break completely. Then you can have him, and I can finally—"

A hand clamps over my mouth, yanking me backward into solid warmth. Alcyde's scent floods my senses—cedar and rain and controlled fury.

"Don't scream," he breathes in my ear, and Sophia's body responds to his proximity even as my mind races with being caught.

He drags me deeper into the trees before releasing me. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Following Allura."

"To Muriel's shack?" His blue eyes darken. "Do you have any idea what that place is?"

"Old Bertha mentioned Muriel. Blood-hag?"

"Blood witch. Muriel Thibodaux, came up from Louisiana forty years ago with more power than sense. She's the one who helped birth Allura when her mother crawled dying into our territory." His jaw tightens. "My parents gave them sanctuary, but Muriel... she practiced things that should stay buried. Dad wanted her gone, but Mom was grateful to her for helping with Allura.”

"Bertha said she died last year."

"Body wasn't found for a month. Anson wanted to burn the shack with everything in it, but Allura begged him not to. Said it was all she had left of the old woman." He glances toward the shack where candlelight flickers through gaps. "I followed you when I saw you take the boat. That place... it's wrong, Sophia. Whatever Allura's doing there—"

"She's planning something with Anson. I heard her say he's almost ready to break."

Alcyde's hands cup my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones. "You need to be careful. Allura grew up in this pack, but she's never really been part of it. She wants things—" He stops, searching for words. "She wants what she thinks she's owed. And she's wanted Anson since we were kids."

"She can have him."

Something dangerous flashes in his eyes. "Can she?"

The possession in his voice makes Hannah's wolf preen while Sophia's remnant recoils. I'm drowning between them, these two souls that want opposite things.

"We should go," I say. "Before she—"

Allura's singing stops. The silence is worse than the sound.

Alcyde pulls me against him, melding us into the shadows of a massive oak. His body covers mine, protective and possessive, as footsteps crunch through fallen leaves. She passes within feet of us, humming that awful melody, the smell of her magic making my eyes water.

Only when she's long gone does he release me, though his hands stay on my waist.

"Come to my cabin tonight."

"Alcyde—"

"Please." His forehead touches mine. "I need to know you're safe. That she hasn't—" His hands tighten. "Just come."

I nod, and he kisses me hard enough to bruise, like he's trying to brand himself onto my soul. Both souls, the one that craves him and the one that fears him.

When we part, he heads back to patrol while I return to Lou's cabin, mind churning over what I've learned. Allura isn't just some jealous foster sister. She's something worse—someone with real power and twisted purpose.

Lou's mixing something that smells like death in her kitchen when I enter. "You look like you've seen ghosts."

"Something like that."

She eyes me knowingly. "Alcyde?"

"Among other things."

"That boy's got it bad for you." She adds something green to her pot that makes it hiss. "Never seen him look at anyone the way he watches you. Like you're gravity and he's just trying not to fall."

"It's complicated."

"Good love always is." She tastes her concoction, makes a face, adds honey. "But be careful. The Durand boys... they love like wolves. All or nothing. And when they lose what they love..." She glances toward the main house where Anson drinks himself toward oblivion. "Well."

That night, I slip into Alcyde's cabin through the back door he left unlocked. He's waiting by the fire, shirtless and beautiful in the orange light. When he sees me, something in his shoulders releases.

"You came."

"As if I could stay away.”

We don't talk about Allura or the shack or the fact that we're playing with forces neither of us fully understands. Instead, he pulls me onto the thick rug before the fire, hands mapping my body like he's memorizing me by touch. We push boundaries but never cross them, building heat that has nowhere to go except back into kisses that leave us both gasping.

When he pins my wrists above my head, something in Sophia's memories makes me freeze. He immediately releases me, concern flooding his features.

"Too much?"

"No, I just—" How do I explain that this body has trauma my soul doesn't share? "Sometimes I forget myself."

He studies me with those penetrating eyes. "Sometimes I think you're two different people."

If only he knew.

"Everyone has different sides."

"Maybe." His fingers trace my jaw with aching tenderness. "But one day, you're going to trust me with all of them."

The certainty in his voice makes me want to confess everything. But Sophia's terror holds me back, that bone-deep knowledge that alphas promise protection right until they become the threat.

So instead I kiss him again, letting our bodies say what words can't. Tomorrow I'll investigate more, follow more leads, build more evidence against those who killed me.

But tonight, caught between two souls and two brothers, between revenge and something that might be love, I just let myself burn without quite catching fire.

The moon outside is dark—new moon rising tomorrow when the veil grows thin and hidden things surface.

Perfect timing for secrets to crawl into the light.