Female Alpha Twins’ Regret After Choosing Their Stepbrother

I unclenched my fists, keeping my breathing even. "He's not coming back."Selene smiled, but her eyes were ice. "Oh? Has he found another she-wolf and doesn't need me anymore?"Even now, after everything, Caleb was still nothing but a disgrace in Selene's eyes. Three years of devotion, of swallowed pride, of hopes repeatedly crushed — all worthless."Selene, if you despise him so much, why don't you just break the mate bond?" My voice was flat. "Or is having someone to torment too enjoyable to give up?"Selene chuckled. "Sounds like he really has found another Alpha."Her eyes glowed an eerie red, her wolf close to the surface.I didn't look away.I'm Beta-born. My father trained me from the time I could walk. I'd taken down rogue Alphas twice my weight in the pack's border raids. Selene might outrank me on paper, but if she came at me here, she'd get a fight she wasn't expecting.She seemed to remember that too. Her wolf retreated behind her eyes.I turned and walked past her toward t

I closed the bedroom door and locked it again.Then I sat down at the desk and started writing.A list of every Beta and warrior in the Creek Pack who owed my father a favor. A list of every Alpha in neighboring packs who owed me one. A list of Elena and Selene's political weaknesses — the contracts that were up for renewal, the alliances that were strained, the pack members who'd quietly complained to me about Victor moving in.By midnight I had a plan.By the time I went to bed, I felt calmer than I had in months.I slept hard for the first time in a week.I woke up to pounding on my bedroom door."Ryan! Open this door right now!"Elena.I checked my phone. Seven in the morning. The Pack Council had probably just delivered news of the investigation.I took my time getting dressed. Pulled on jeans and a clean shirt. Then I opened the door.Elena was furious."What did you do?""I filed an investigation request. What did you think I was going to do?""You filed a complaint against my

Elena came home that night looking like she hadn't slept.I was in the living room, sitting in her usual armchair, drinking her usual whiskey.She stopped in the doorway when she saw me."That's my chair.""I know."She didn't tell me to move.She walked over to the couch instead and sat down across from me. Set her own glass down on the coffee table. Stared at it."Victor's being held until the trial.""I heard.""The Council is moving fast. Trial date is in three days.""Good."She looked up at me."Ryan. I need you to withdraw the recording you threatened me with this morning. I'm not going to fight you on the severance. But that recording — if it goes public, it doesn't just hurt me. It hurts the whole pack's standing. Other packs will use it. Selene's authority is going to be in shreds already after Victor's trial. If mine collapses too, we're vulnerable."I considered that."Sign the severance papers tonight. I'll hold the recording. As long as my father stays Beta, my family kee

Caleb's funeral was small.I held it the next morning at the seaside cliffs, where I'd scattered the first handful of his ashes the day after he died.My parents came. A handful of warriors from our old training cohort came. The Council Elder sent a formal envoy out of respect.Selene and Elena came too. They stood at the back, the way I'd told them to. They didn't speak.I held the rest of Caleb's ashes in a small carved wooden urn I'd made myself the night before — sat up cutting and sanding it because I couldn't sleep and because Caleb deserved better than a store-bought box.I didn't make a speech.I just stood at the edge of the cliff and talked to him the way I would have talked to him in life."You were the best Alpha River Pack ever had, Caleb. You held that pack together with nothing but your own back. You signed a bad mating contract to save them and you never once complained about it where anyone could hear. You deserved a thousand years more than you got, and a thousand tim

I heard later that she'd thrown herself into pack business after the trial. Stopped sleeping. Stopped eating much. The pack healer had to step in twice. She was holding the pack together by sheer Alpha will and it was costing her.Elena was running the pack alone in everything but name.The Creek Pack was struggling but surviving. Their reputation was wounded but not destroyed. The other packs in the region had drawn closer in some ways, farther in others. Politics.Victor was dead within four months of his exile. He didn't survive the first winter outside pack territory. Marcus told me they found his body near the eastern border, frozen, alone.I didn't feel anything when I heard.I'd already let go of him on a cliff above Caleb's ashes.I joined the Crescent Pack the spring after Caleb died.The Alpha there — a man my father's age, who'd known me since I was small — gave me a warrior's welcome and put me to work. By the end of my first year I was running their training program. By th