The Wolf Girl with Two Alpha Mates

Chapter 10 – Split Second

The world came back in fragments.

Cold first. Rain seeping through her jacket, soaking into skin gone clammy. Then sound: sirens somewhere distant on the human roads, Nyla’s ragged breathing close to her ear, Kess swearing a blue streak into the comm.

Then pain.

It roared in slow, ugly waves from her side, like someone had taken a claw and carved fire straight through muscle and bone. Lupa tried to curl around it and found she couldn’t move more than an inch.

“Don’t,” Nyla choked. “Lupa, don’t move, you’re—”

“I’ve… had worse,” Lupa lied, her voice a raw scrape.

The lie was so bad even her wolf rolled its eyes.

Concrete pressed unforgivingly against her shoulder blades. She focused on that, on the grit digging into her palms. Anchor points. Real things. Not the still‑buzzing echo of hot, fetid breath inches from her face, not the memory of almost‑human eyes and a boy’s hateful whisper threaded through their shared hurt.

You left me.

Nyla’s hands hovered over the shredded fabric at Lupa’s side, fingers trembling. “It’s bad,” she whispered. “It’s— it’s really bad.”

“Thanks for the expert opinion,” Kess snapped, dropping to her knees on Lupa’s other side. Her face was pale under the streetlight, jaw set. “Pressure. Now. Jorin, I need—”

“On my way.” His boots slammed down from the fire escape ladder, landing with a thud. “Status?”

“Monster’s gone,” Kess said. “Took a souvenir.” Her mouth twisted. “We lit it up, but it moved like—”

“—like it’s not obeying the same rules we are,” Lupa managed. “Not gravity. Not pain.”

“Save the analysis for when you’re not leaking,” Jorin said gruffly.

He ripped his jacket open, tore a strip from his shirt with his teeth and pressed it hard against the wound. White exploded across Lupa’s vision. A strangled sound tore out of her, part snarl, part sob.

“Sorry, kid,” Jorin muttered. His hand stayed mercilessly steady. “I know. Breathe through it.”

She did. In. Out. In. Out. Rain on her face, copper in her mouth, Nyla’s fingers laced white‑knuckled with hers.

“Ambulance ETA?” Mirel’s voice cut over the channel, brisk with carefully leashed panic.

“Four minutes if they don’t hit traffic,” Kess said. “We’re at the east alley by the mill. Lupa’s—”

“Conscious,” Lupa forced out. “Annoyed. Add that to your report.”

Nyla’s laugh was half a sob.

Movement at the mouth of the alley snapped every head up.

Alder Vox didn’t so much appear as arrive. One second the space was empty; the next he was there, rain plastering his hair to his forehead, chest heaving, eyes blazing bright gold in the low light.

He dropped to a crouch so fast the puddle beside Lupa splashed her cheek.

“Lupa,” he said, and her name in his mouth shook more than she’d ever heard it.

“I told you…” She swallowed, throat raw. “No… heroics.”

“Too late.”

His scent crashed over her — pine, riverstone, ozone from the sprint — drowning out the stink of blood and monster. Some of the tightness in her ribs that had nothing to do with claws loosened.

“Let me see,” he told Jorin.

Jorin hesitated barely a second before lifting his hands, letting Alder peel the sodden, makeshift bandage back. Heat hit cold air; Lupa bit through a curse.

His gaze flicked over the damage, nothing soft in it now. Clinical, assessing. Under the control, something wild snarled, wanting to hunt.

“She’ll live,” he said, voice flat with iron. “If we don’t do anything stupid between here and the med wing.”

“Define stupid,” Kess muttered.

“Letting her walk,” Alder said. “Or shift.”

“I am right here,” Lupa croaked.

He met her eyes. For a heartbeat she saw anger there — not at her, but at the fact that he was kneeling in her blood again, that this was becoming a pattern.

Then it was gone, submerged under command.

“Stretcher’s coming,” Mirel’s voice said. “I’ve got human EMTs on one line, Iria on the other. Tell them it was a forklift accident.”

Jorin snorted. “Forklift with fangs.”

“Humans don’t need the fangs part,” Mirel said sharply.

Behind Alder, shapes loomed at the alley mouth. Not the gurney yet. Wolves. Everwood.

Erynd Varro pushed through the cluster of Riverside bodies like they were smoke.

He stopped dead when he saw her.

For an instant his mask dropped. Lupa saw everything: the flash of remembered loss, the echo of the ritual knife, the raw terror that what he’d done years ago was about to be repeated by a stranger’s claws.

“Out,” Alder said quietly without looking up. “Too many bodies in the way.”

Erynd didn’t move. His eyes were locked on Lupa’s face, on the blood soaking her shirt.

“Lupa,” he said, voice breaking on the second syllable.

The stupidest part was that some thread deep inside her still flared at his tone, that same old, traitorous heat.

“Forest,” she rasped. “You’re… off your turf.”

“You’re bleeding on mine,” Alder snapped.

Their gazes met over her body, two storms colliding in the narrow space.

The air between them crackled: old history, current duty, something else neither of them wanted to name.

Lupa, half‑propped on Jorin’s arm, felt the tremor through both bonds — not sharp now, but deep and resonant. They were both tied into this wound whether anyone liked it or not.

“Iria’s on her way,” Erynd said, tearing his attention to Alder. “Let her work. Don’t shut Everwood out of this.”

“You’re standing in my alley, Varro,” Alder replied, voice very, very calm. “You don’t get to tell me how to keep my wolf alive.”

My wolf.

The words landed in Lupa’s chest with a different kind of ache.

Sirens grew louder, bouncing off brick. Human lights washed red and blue against the rain. Somewhere overhead the river hissed and the city held its breath.

Pinned between two alphas and her own dripping side, Lupa closed her eyes for half a second.

Monster. Ritual. Two bonds. One very pissed‑off Moon.

“Later,” she whispered, not sure who she was talking to — Alder, Erynd, the thing in the dark or the girl she used to be. “We fight about it later.”

For now, all she had to do was not bleed out before the humans turned the corner.