All Chapters of Stepbrother’s Obsession: Claimed By The Triplet Alphas: Chapter 171 - Chapter 175

Sleep was a stranger.They’d shoved me into a small, stone-walled chamber near the barracks. No window, just a narrow slit where moonlight managed to slip through and paint the floor in a pale streak. A cot sat in the corner, thin blanket folded with military precision, but my body refused to surrender to it.Every time I closed my eyes, ghosts rose to greet me. Faces I’d buried. Names I’d never forget. Isabella’s voice—sharp, cold, laced with steel—echoed in my skull. You’ll never have what you once did.I didn’t deserve the cot, or the blanket, or the air filling my lungs. I knew that. Still, I sat hunched on the edge of it, hands twisted tight, listening to the faint sounds of the pack outside. Their laughter. Their footsteps. Their lives. Lives I’d poisoned.When the first cracks of dawn slipped through the slit in the wall, I rose. My legs felt like stone, but I forced them to move. Today was the day. Penance, she had called it. Punishment, I knew.The door slammed open before I

The dirt clung to my skin even as the world slipped away. I didn’t faint so much as my body forced itself into silence, like shutting down was the only way to keep me from shattering.When I woke, the stone ceiling swam above me. My throat burned with thirst, my stomach cramped with hunger, and every inch of me ached as if my bones had been replaced with rusted iron. The cot beneath me was stiff, but it was still the first surface in days that wasn’t dirt or stone. The blanket tangled around my legs like a restraint.For a long time, I lay there. Breathing. Just breathing.My hands, bandaged poorly by someone who clearly didn’t care about the stitching of flesh, throbbed in sync with my heartbeat. The blisters had burst open again and again until my palms were one raw map of pain. Whoever wrapped them didn’t bother with ointment. The bandages smelled faintly of iron and sweat.The door creaked open before I could pull myself upright.Luca. Again. Of course.He leaned against the frame

The word lead echoed through my skull all night like a curse I wasn’t sure I deserved.The chamber was darker than usual, the torch in the hall burning low. I sat on the cot with the sword balanced across my lap, tracing the scars on the wood with bandaged fingers. My ribs ached every time I breathed too deeply, but it was the silence pressing hardest on me.I whispered the names again. Not to punish myself this time, but to remind myself. To hold them close, even if the weight cut me open.When the door creaked open, I was already on my feet.Not guards this time. Isabella.She didn’t enter—never did. She filled the doorway like iron poured into human form, gaze sharp enough to pierce through the dark.“Today,” she said, “you don’t fight alone.”The words slotted into me like a blade between ribs. My grip tightened on the sword.“I’m not ready,” I rasped before I could stop myself.Her expression didn’t change. “That isn’t my concern.”Then she turned. “Bring them.”---They shoved f