Caught Between Two Alphas

Chapter Nine

SOPHIA

The rage from Anson's confession still burns through my veins like molten silver, each heartbeat pumping fury through this borrowed body. His words echo endlessly—I found her hanging in our closet—the lie of it making me want to tear the world apart. He strangled me while I trusted him, while I loved him, and now he's rewritten history so completely he might actually believe it.

After Alcyde caught me attacking the training ground wall, after he pressed me against it and we lost ourselves in desperate kisses that tasted of rage and need, I fled to Lou's cabin before I could do something stupid like confess everything. The ghost of his mouth on my throat still burns, but I can't afford distractions. Not when the truth about my death remains buried under Anson's convenient amnesia.

Lou takes one look at my split knuckles and wild eyes when I burst through her door. "Training or drinking?"

"Both. Training first."

What follows is three hours of the most brutal workout she's ever put me through. The backyard behind her cabin becomes our arena, cats scattering as we circle each other on grass still wet from yesterday's rain. Lou doesn't hold back—she comes at me with the full force of her Beta strength, testing every defense Alcyde's taught me, finding every weakness this borrowed body still carries.

"Your stance is wrong," she says after dropping me for the fifth time. The ground is cold against my back, mud seeping through my shirt. "You're fighting like someone who learned from books and movies, not experience."

Because Hannah learned combat as theory, studying forms but rarely practicing them, learned from watching the Durand brothers spar. Sophia's muscle memory is different—street fighting, desperate scrambles, the kind of violence that keeps you alive in Moonstone's omega quarters. I'm caught between two sets of instincts, neither fully mine.

"Again," I demand, pulling myself up.

We spar until my muscles scream protest, until sweat soaks through everything despite the October chill. Lou teaches me dirty moves Alcyde would never show—eye gouges, groin strikes, the exact angle to break someone's knee. She fights like someone who's survived things proper training doesn't prepare you for.

"Where'd you learn to fight like this?"

Lou lands a strike to my ribs that'll bruise by morning. "My mother, before the fever took her. She said pretty Beta girls need to know how to make themselves ugly when necessary."

By the time we collapse on her lawn, we're both gasping like we've run marathons. My knuckles throb through the tape she wrapped them with, blood seeping through in spots. Every part of me aches, but it's better than feeling the phantom rope around my throat.

"Better?"

"Different. Not better, but different."

She rolls onto her side, studying me with those sharp eyes that see too much. "The Still has two-for-one shots tonight. My Beta friends will be there. Girls' night. No Alphas, no politics, just alcohol and bad decisions."

"Sounds perfect."

An hour later, showered and changed into jeans that actually fit my new curves and a black tank that shows the muscle definition I've earned these past weeks, we walk into The Still to find it unusually crowded for a Thursday. The space reeks of stale beer and old smoke, sawdust on the floors to soak up whatever gets spilled. Lou's Beta friends have commandeered a corner table—four women who look like they could take down half the warrior class without breaking a sweat.

"Ladies, meet Sophia. Sophia, meet the only Betas worth knowing in this godforsaken pack."

Betty, a redhead with linebacker shoulders and scars across her knuckles, slides a shot across scarred wood before I even sit. "Heard you saved Lou's ass from a snake. Anyone who keeps this disaster functional deserves free drinks for life."

The bourbon burns perfect going down, carving a path of fire that has nothing to do with rage and everything to do with forgetting. The second shot burns better, loosening the knot in my chest that's been there since Anson's confession.

"You're pretty tough for an omega." Betty watches me match them shot for shot through the first round, approval in her green eyes. "Most can't hold their liquor worth s**t. Too small, too weak, too everything."

"Most omegas haven't had to drink away Moonstone memories."

That gets sympathetic winces all around the table. Willow, blonde with intricate tattoos covering both arms like battle maps, pours another round without being asked. "To surviving s**t packs and living to tell about it."

We drink. The conversation flows easier with each round, voices getting louder, laughter coming sharper. The bar fills with more wolves ending their shifts, but our corner remains a bubble of Beta solidarity. Someone mentions the investigation, and suddenly everyone has opinions they've been holding back.

"Hannah was complicated," Ruby says, her dark skin glowing amber in the bar's dim light. She's got a fighter's build, compact and powerful. "Some thought she was stuck up, walking around like the sun rose and set on her schedule."

"She was Luna. She literally controlled pack schedules," Ashley points out, silver hair cropped short enough to show the scar across her scalp—claw marks from something that tried to take her face off.

"Still. She had this way of looking at you, cataloging your worth in seconds." Ruby shrugs, but there's something else there, old hurt maybe. "Made you feel like you were being measured and found wanting."

My chest tightens. Was that how I looked at people? How I made them feel? I remember standing at pack meetings, scanning the crowd, tallying attendance and attention. Never realizing how it might have felt from the other side.

"But she fought for omega healthcare when the Council tried to cut it," Willow adds, tracing the rim of her glass with one tattooed finger. "Three hours of arguing, wouldn't back down even when they threatened to go over her head to other packs."

"And the protection laws," Betty chimes in, refilling everyone's glasses with practiced ease. "The ones that say Alphas can't just claim any omega they want anymore. Can't just take without consent."

The irony of it burns worse than the bourbon. I fought for those laws after seeing what happened to unclaimed omegas in other packs. Never imagining my own Alpha would take my life without consent.

Ashley snorts into her drink. "Fat lot of good those laws do now with Allura sniffing around the Alpha's office every damn day, batting those white eyelashes like she's some innocent priestess."

The table goes quiet at that. Everyone drinks deep, the weight of unspoken truths heavy in the smoky air.

"She's always been like that," Willow says quietly. "Even when we were kids. Remember when she tried to convince everyone that Jenny's miscarriage was because she'd been cursed? Poor girl nearly got driven out of the pack."

"I'd take Hannah's stuck-up ass a million times over that white-haired witch," Ruby says finally, slamming her glass down hard enough to rattle the others. "At least Hannah was honest about what she was. Allura pretends to be this ethereal priestess touched by the moon goddess when everyone knows she's been trying to get into Anson's bed for years."

"Trying?" Ashley laughs, bitter and knowing. "Honey, she succeeded plenty before Hannah came along. Why do you think she hated the Luna so much? Hannah took her favorite toy."

My hand tightens on my glass until the cheap thing creaks. Another piece clicking into place. Allura wasn't just ambitious—she was reclaiming what she thought was hers. The foster sister who grew up beside Anson, who probably thought she'd be Luna until a Philadelphia girl with amber eyes arrived and changed everything.

"Speaking of getting into bed," Lou stands, swaying slightly but still steady enough. "Who wants to go swimming?"

"It's October," Willow protests, but she's already grinning.

"So? The lake's still there. Moon's almost full. And we're all drunk enough not to care about the cold."

Somehow this logic wins unanimous approval. We pay our tabs—or rather, Betty throws cash on the table for everyone—and stumble out into the night. The air is sharp with autumn chill, leaves crunching under our feet as Lou leads our ragged parade through woods I know too well. These paths are etched into both sets of memories—Hannah's romantic walks with Anson, Sophia's desperate escape routes planned but never taken.

The lake forms Silverfrost's eastern border, fed by mountain runoff that stays cold even in summer. In October, it's practically glacial. The moon, nearly full, turns the surface to hammered silver, beautiful and dangerous. Mist rises from the water like ghost fingers reaching for sky.

"Last one in does breakfast cleanup for a week," Betty shouts, already stripping, her clothes flying everywhere.

A month ago—hell, a week ago—I would have hesitated. Would have catalogued every soft place, every imperfection, every way this borrowed body didn't measure up to my original form. But this body has earned its scars, built its strength through Lou's torture and Alcyde's training. These women don't care that I'm an omega, don't care that I'm not beautiful in the conventional sense. They care that I can drink, fight, and apparently make terrible decisions with them.

I pull off my tank and jeans without thinking, diving in just behind Lou. The cold hits like electricity, sharp enough to stop my heart for a second before it restarts double-time. We shriek and laugh, voices echoing across water that's been here longer than any pack, longer than the territories we've carved around it. Betty attempts a backflip and belly-flops spectacularly. Ruby and Ashley start a splash war that somehow involves everyone, water flying in silver arcs under the moon.

"This is insane," Willow gasps, teeth chattering as she treads water.

"This is living," Lou counters, floating on her back like the cold doesn't touch her.

I dive under, letting the glacial water shock every nerve ending alive. Under the surface, the world goes quiet. Just the sound of my heartbeat, the burn in my lungs, the strange peace of being suspended between surface and bottom. When I come up, gasping, the others are laughing at something Betty said, their joy infectious and real.

I float on my back, watching stars spin overhead, feeling something I haven't felt since dying—free. Not happy exactly, but uncaged. My body, strange as it still sometimes feels, cuts through the water with growing confidence. The soft parts that made me hate this form now keep me buoyant, warm despite the cold. Sophia's body was built for endurance, for surviving, and I'm finally learning to appreciate that strength.

That's when I feel it. That prickling awareness of being watched.

Anson stands at the tree line, barely visible in the shadows between pines. He's watching us—watching me—with an expression I can't read from this distance. The other women are too drunk, too distracted by their water war to notice. But I see him, and he knows I see him.

I should feel exposed, vulnerable, afraid. My killer is watching me swim naked in the lake where he and I probably had dozens of romantic encounters in my past life. Where he promised me forever under summer moons, where we planned our future between kisses that tasted like wine and hope.

Instead, I arch my back slightly, letting the moonlight catch the water droplets on skin he's never touched in this form. Let him look. Let him see what survived his violence. Let him wonder why this stranger seems so familiar, why his wolf stirs restlessly at the sight of an omega he shouldn't care about.

"Sophia, you coming?" Lou calls, already swimming toward shore, her pale skin almost glowing in the moonlight.

I turn my back on Anson's shadow, following my new pack. As we stumble toward our scattered clothes, laughing and shivering, I feel his eyes track every movement. But I don't look back. He's already seen too much and understood too little.

"That was f*****g freezing," Willow complains through chattering teeth, pulling her shirt over still-wet skin.

"That was f*****g amazing," Betty counters, wringing lake water from her hair. "We should do this every week until the lake freezes."

"We'll die of hypothermia before November," Ashley says practically, but she's grinning wider than I've ever seen her.

"Death by skinny dipping. Could be worse ways to go," Ruby adds, and we all laugh because we've all seen worse ways. We've survived worse things.

As we walk back toward the compound, arms linked for warmth and stability, still giggling over nothing and everything, Lou leans close enough that I smell lake water and bourbon on her breath.

"You saw him."

Not a question. Lou misses nothing, even three sheets to the wind.

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

I think about it. About Anson watching me swim naked in the lake where he and Hannah probably made love under summer moons. About the way my body moved through the water without shame, without apology for what it is rather than what it was. About Alcyde's hands on my skin earlier, his mouth on my throat, the way he makes this borrowed body feel like home even when I'm fighting not to tell him everything.

"I'm better than okay."

And for once, it might actually be true. The rage is still there, banked but burning steady like coals waiting for air. The plan is still in motion, pieces moving toward collision. Anson still needs to pay for what he did, and Allura's role in my murder becomes clearer with every piece of information I gather.

But surrounded by women who accept me as I am now, who toast to survival and dare each other into October lakes, who see an omega worth drinking with rather than another servant to command—I feel something besides vengeance.

I feel alive. I feel like maybe Sophia deserves to exist for more than just revenge. Like maybe this second chance is about more than justice for Hannah.

"He's getting worse," Lou says as we near the compound. "Anson. Dad says the elders are talking about formal intervention if he doesn't pull it together soon."

"What kind of intervention?"

"The kind where they strip his title and install someone else." She glances at me sideways. "Probably Alcyde. He's basically running things already."

The compound comes into view, lights still burning in windows where insomniacs and guilty consciences keep watch. I can see Anson's office from here, dark now, but I know he'll be there in the morning, drunk and searching for answers in the bottom of a bottle.

Somewhere, Alcyde is probably pacing his cabin, wanting to claim what his wolf insists is his, held back only by the promise I made him wait. Wait until the truth is clear. Wait until I know who I really am.

And here I am, walking between two worlds, two lives, two loves, still deciding which parts of each I want to keep and which I need to burn to ash. The new moon approaches, and with it, Allura's plans accelerate. I can feel it in the air, the gathering of power that tastes like copper and old bones.

Soon, everything hidden will surface.

But not yet. For now, I'm just Sophia, drunk and freezing and surrounded by women who've claimed me as theirs. Tomorrow I'll investigate more, push harder, get closer to the truth.

For now, this is enough.