Claimed by the Triplet Alphas

By nine in the morning I was sitting across from Margaret Patterson, divorce attorney, who looked at me with the focused calm of a woman who had heard everything at least once and was prepared to hear it again.

"I want a divorce. As quickly as possible."

"How long have you been married?"

"Three years. No children. I have been the primary earner for most of the marriage."

"Assets?"

"The house is in both our names but I have been paying the mortgage alone. I want my freedom and the house. That is all."

She raised an eyebrow. "That is unusually generous toward him."

"I do not want to be connected to him a day longer than I have to be."

"Are you sure you do not want more time to think this over?"

"I found my husband in bed with his father's assistant last night. There is nothing to think about."

She gave a single nod and got to work.

By noon I had a manila envelope in my hand and I drove to the Slade family home with a calm that only comes from having already done the grieving and come out the other side of it. Maria, the housekeeper, opened the door and her face creased with concern.

"Mrs Melania—"

"It's fine, Maria," I told her, walking past.

The entire Slade family was at the dining table. Derek's parents. His sister Sophia and her husband. His younger brother Marco. Various cousins around the edges. They all looked up at once and Derek went white.

"Mel. What are you doing here?"

"I have something for you." I walked straight to him and set the envelope in front of his plate. "Divorce papers."

The silence that followed was clean and deeply satisfying.

Victoria recovered first, her voice sharp. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Your son has been cheating on me since the week we got married. I caught them last night. I am done."

The table erupted. Victoria raised one hand and the noise dropped.

"All marriages have their difficulties, Melania."

"Having an affair for three years is not a difficulty. It is a decision." I looked at Derek. "Sign the papers."

"You will not drag this family through a scandal," Victoria replied. "You will handle this privately."

"I am not a member of this family. I never was." I kept my eyes on Derek. "Sign the papers."

Victoria let out a short dismissive laugh. "Without the Slade name you are nothing. You are an orphaned girl from nowhere and you should be grateful you lasted three years in this house."

Marco leaned back with a smirk. "You work at an accounting firm. No connections, no money, no standing. Who exactly is going to want you now?"

The words landed exactly where they were aimed. That was always the point of them.

"You would be surprised," I said. "Someone already did. Just last night, as a matter of fact."

Derek looked up sharply from the envelope. "You are lying."

"Ask yourself this. Would the cold boring wife you described have the nerve to say that in front of your entire family?"

"Who would want you?" Sophia cut in with contempt. The table broke into cold laughter that filled the room and pressed in from every direction.

That was when the front door opened.

The laughter stopped like a switch had been thrown. Every head at the table turned. I turned with them.

Three men filled the doorway.

My mind did several things at once. The first was recognition. I knew that face. Those shoulders, that specific way of filling a space without working at it. Axel. In a perfectly cut dark suit this time instead of a leather jacket, but the same eyes and the same wolf on the back of his right hand.

The second thing my mind tried to process was the two men standing with him. They were identical. Not similar. Identical in the way that made you question what your eyes were telling you. Same jaw, same height, same dark eyes. The only difference was the ink. The man to Axel's left had a stag across his knuckles in deep green-black. The one to his right had a snake coiled from wrist to index finger, detailed enough to look real.

Derek's chair scraped back.

"Uncle." The word came out like all the air had left his body.

Uncle. I tried to make sense of it and could not. The man I had spent last night with was Derek's uncle. I had heard the name Axel Slade at the edges of conversations that went quiet whenever I walked into a room across three years of marriage. I had never seen him. Now here he was in triplicate.

Then all three of them looked at me at exactly the same moment and something happened in their eyes that had no explanation I could reach for. The dark irises bled red, slow and deliberate, spreading from the centre outward until there was nothing else. It was not a trick of the light. It was real and it was happening and every person at that table had gone completely still.

All three spoke together. One word. One voice from three mouths at the same time.

Mine.

The word moved through the room and settled in my chest before I could stop it.

I crossed the floor without thinking and took Axel's arm and pressed against his side.

"Sorry I'm late, darling." My voice came out steady. "The paperwork took longer than I expected."

Axel looked down at me. Surprise crossed his face, brief and then completely gone. His arm came around my waist and the same warmth from the night before was immediate.

"No problem, sweetheart," he said, low and even. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

The room had gone very quiet. It was not only Axel doing that. All three of them together did something to the air in that dining room that the whole family was clearly feeling without being able to name.

"I came to see my girlfriend," Axel said. "It seemed like the right time for a proper introduction."

"Girlfriend." Victoria's voice barely made it above a whisper.

"She is Derek's wife," Marco managed.

"Ex-wife," I corrected, holding up the signed envelope. "As of about five minutes ago."

"Uncle Axel." Derek's voice had gone soft in a way I had never heard from him. "You do not understand who she is. She is nobody. Just some girl from an accounting firm."

Axel went very still beside me.

"One of us, Derek?" His voice dropped to something that needed no volume to carry weight. "What exactly does that mean?"

Derek registered his mistake a moment too late. Everyone at that table knew Axel had built his fortune from nothing and had no patience for people who used background as a measure of worth.

"I just meant she is not from our world."

"Our world. The one where you live off trust funds and spend three years cheating on the woman who has been carrying your finances? That world?" The quiet in Axel's voice was doing more work than shouting would have. "She is intelligent, she works hard and she deserved better than what this family gave her. That is what I know about her."

He looked around the table once, the red entirely gone from his eyes now, replaced by something darker and more settled.

"I think we are done here. Mel, ready to go?"

I looked at the family that had spent three years reminding me I did not belong, let the weight of it sit there one final time, and nodded.

"More than ready."

We walked out. The voices broke loose behind us the moment we cleared the doorway, panic and fury in equal measure.