All Chapters of Mated To Three Alphas: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

~Annalyn POV~I could hear Isabella through the door, not words anymore, just crying. The kind that runs out of breath and keeps going anyway. Her fist hit the wood every few seconds, weak, like she was doing it out of habit more than hope."Anna, please, please just let me explain."I stood on the other side with my palm flat against the door and said nothing. My wolf had gone quiet inside me. Not the peaceful kind of quiet. The kind that happens when something has made a decision and is waiting for the right moment.Lucas had ordered Isabella locked in the guest room the second we got back to the mansion. He hadn't asked me. He'd just done it, eyes still gold at the edges, jaw set. I hadn't argued."She made her choice." Calix appeared at the end of the hallway, arms folded, watching me. "You standing there doesn't change that.""I know.""Then come away from the door."I didn't move immediately, I listened to Isabella cry for another few seconds, and then I dropped my hand and walk

~Annalyn POV~"Seven," I said.Lucas was still crouched in front of me on the floor of the east wing, and the look on his face when I said that number made something cold move through my chest."The first time I heard it, I was seven. I thought it was just my imagination, like a girl's voice, older than mine, saying things I didn't understand." I looked at my hands. "It started coming more often when I turned twelve. After the fever, it got louder."Lucas stood up slowly. He didn't say anything right away, and with him silence wasn't a comfortable thing. It was the kind that meant he was deciding how much to tell me."Come with me," he said.His study was on the third floor, a room I'd never been invited into. It was nothing like Matteo's spaces, no dramatic décor, no atmosphere. Just a working room. Maps on one wall, a desk covered in papers, bookshelves organized with the kind of precision that came from actually using them. He went directly to the lowest shelf and pulled out a thic

~Annalyn POV~Ezra didn't deny it.That was the part that stayed with me on the walk back. Not what he said, but the fact that he looked at me with those ancient, ruined eyes and told me plainly — a lesser binding, not a mate bond, something subtler. A thread woven into Isabella's instincts to make her compliant. Trusting. Easy to steer in whatever direction he needed."It's reversible," he'd said, like that was a reasonable thing to offer in his defense.My wolf went completely still inside me when he said that. Not the restless, pacing stillness from before. The kind that comes right before something moves.I didn't scream at him. I didn't say anything at all. I turned and walked back through the trees toward the mansion with a cold, clean clarity that felt nothing like calm.Isabella was still in her room. She looked up when I came in, reading my face the way cousins learn to read each other over years of shared history."What happened?" she asked."Sit down," I said. "And give me

Annalyn POVNobody laughed at the comment about my size. Nobody even smiled.Elder Dalisay was already moving, circling the room slowly, taking in the space the way someone does when they're deciding whether a building is structurally sound. She looked at the three alphas with the particular patience of a woman who had dealt with many powerful men and found them largely predictable."Out," she said to Lucas and Calix. Simple as that.Lucas didn't move. "This is my house.""And that is my Moon Alpha." Dalisay didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. "I won't examine her with three territorial males breathing in the room. You'll compromise everything I'm trying to read." She looked at me then, direct and unhurried. "Tell them to go."I felt it the moment she said it — not a suggestion but an opening. I looked at Lucas and Calix and said, "Please wait outside."The word please was mine. The weight behind it wasn't.Lucas moved toward the door before he'd visibly decided to. He caught

Annalyn POVNobody moved for a full three seconds.Then Calix did. He was between Lola Coring and me before anyone else had drawn a breath, not dramatically, just efficiently, the way he did most things. He didn't touch her. He simply placed himself so that reaching me required going through him first.Lucas hadn't moved at all. He stood with his eyes fixed on Ezra and the look on his face was the coldest I had ever seen from him. Not anger. Anger had heat in it. This was something that had gone past heat entirely into something flat and final.Matteo was looking at Lola Coring.Just looking at her. He hadn't shifted, hadn't stepped forward. He stood completely still with an expression I hadn't seen on him before and hoped not to see again. The kind that comes when something a person built their understanding of the world around turns out to have been wrong the entire time."Lola," he said. Just her name. Quietly.She didn't flinch. She stood at the top of the stairs with Ezra's hand