Mated To The Alpha Triplets (SPICY)

Chapter 8

My mother was on the floor.

She was on her side, one arm stretched out in front of her like she had been reaching for something — the door, maybe. Maybe she had been trying to get to me. Her uniform, the same grey and white maid's uniform she wore to the palace every single day, was soaked through with dark red. It had spread out around her like a terrible shadow, seeping into the cracks between the floorboards, pooling against the leg of our kitchen table. The small vase she always kept on the counter — the one with the fake yellow flowers because she said real ones were too expensive but a home needed colour — was shattered on the floor beside her. She must have grabbed it when they came for her. She must have tried to fight back.

That thought alone nearly destroyed me.

My legs moved before I decided to move them. I was on my knees beside her in an instant, my hands going to her face, her shoulders, her hands. Her skin was still warm. That warmth hit me like a punch because it meant this had just happened, it had just happened, she had been alive and breathing and warm just minutes ago and I had not been here.

"Mama, wake up," I whispered. "Please. Mama, please look at me."

She didn't move.

Her chest wasn't rising.

I pressed my ear against her chest the way she used to press hers against mine when I was small and had a fever and she was checking my heartbeat. I listened so hard it felt like I was pouring every piece of myself into that one act of listening. I begged every force in the universe to let me hear something. A flutter. A faint thud. Anything.

There was nothing.

The silence in her chest was the loudest thing I had ever heard in my life.

Something inside me cracked open. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't the way grief looks in stories, with wailing and throwing yourself against the wall. It was quieter than that and somehow so much worse. It was the feeling of a part of you going dark — like a light being switched off in a room you didn't even know you needed until the darkness came. I pressed my forehead against hers and I just breathed, because breathing was the only thing left I knew how to do.

"I'm sorry," I heard myself say. "I'm so sorry I wasn't here. I'm sorry, Mama."

She had spent her whole life keeping us alive. Working her fingers raw at that palace, coming home with sore feet and tired eyes and still always finding a way to smile at me. Still always finding something warm to put on the stove. Still always managing to say you'll be alright, Cassie, you're stronger than you think. She had believed in me even when I had given her so little reason to. She had loved me without conditions, without limits, without hesitation — and someone had come into our home and taken her from me like she was nothing.

Like she was nothing.

I stayed like that for I don't know how long. Seconds. Minutes. Time had stopped making sense.

Then I heard it.

Footsteps.

Heavy. Deliberate. Coming from the back of the house, from the direction of the narrow hallway that led to our bedroom. My whole body went rigid. The grief that had swallowed me whole cracked down the middle and something else pushed through — cold, sharp, and electric. Every werewolf instinct I had, dulled as they were without my wolf, screamed at me to pay attention.

I slowly raised my head.

Three men stepped out of the hallway and into the main room. They were big — not as big as Smalls, but built in that dense, deliberate way that said they knew how to hurt people. They wore dark clothing and their faces were covered with black masks that left only their eyes visible. Eyes that were completely flat and emotionless, like they had left their consciences somewhere far behind them. One of them had a blade in his hand. The dark stain on it didn't need any explaining.

My mother's blood was on that blade.

The man in front tilted his head to the side when he saw me kneeling there. Then he laughed. It was a light, careless sound, like he found the whole thing mildly entertaining.

"Well," he said, his voice low and rough. "Looks like the daughter came home."

The one behind him cracked his knuckles. "Makes things easier. We were going to have to go looking for her anyway."

They started moving towards me.

My body went cold from the inside out. My heart was slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat, my wrists, my temples. These were the men who had done this. These were the men who had come into our home — the only home we had — and they had stood over my mother and they had not shown her a single second of mercy. And now they were walking towards me with blood still on their hands and not one ounce of remorse on their faces.

The fear was real. I won't pretend it wasn't. It was a living, breathing thing inside my chest and it wanted me to run. Every rational part of me understood that I was wolfless, that I was half their size, that without my wolf I was just a girl on her knees on a blood-soaked floor.

But then I looked at my mother again.

I looked at her outstretched hand. I looked at the shattered vase. I thought about her last moments — alone, afraid, fighting back with whatever she could reach. She had fought. Even at the end, she had fought.

The fear didn't disappear. It transformed.

It became something hot and white and absolute. It moved through me like a current and it burned away every sensible thought I had left. I wasn't thinking about odds or strength or logic. I was thinking about my mother's face when she smiled. I was thinking about every time she had come home exhausted and still asked me how my day was first. I was thinking about how she had never once asked the world for anything and the world had still found a way to take everything from her.

I stood up.

The man in front stopped walking for half a second, surprised. Then he smiled beneath his mask. "Sit back down, little girl."