All Chapters of CLAIMED BY MY ALPHA STEPBROTHER AND STEPFATHER: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

IVY'S POVThe night air hits my face where the slap is still stinging and the cold feels good against the heat. I walk without direction because direction requires intention and I don’t have intention right now, I have momentum and the momentum is carrying me away from the kitchen and my mother’s hand.The campus is quiet.The streetlights cast circles on the pavement, and I walk through them one at a time, and each circle of light feels like the spotlight I’ve been in for a while now.My cheek throbs and the gold mark on my neck pulses in response because the mark is connected to my nervous system in ways that only Dominic could probably explain with precision. I, on the other hand, experience it as a simple, devastating fact – when I hurt, the mark knows. And when the mark knows, Knox knows, because he’s always checking.The channel is already carrying a questioning signal from across the apartment, a pulse that translates to you okay? and I dampen it by pressing my palm against the

I finish my shift with steady hands and a professional smile, while feeling the wolf's intense gaze burning through the window, even when my back is turned. I don't mention it to Knox until I get home, and when I do, his eyes turn gold, and his hands open and close at his sides. The bond carries the cold, focused rage that has been simmering since the rabbit."I'm following you tomorrow," he says, and the sentence isn't a request.On Friday, Knox follows me from afar – his motorcycle is parked two blocks away from The Grind House. I can sense him sitting on a bench across the quad, out of my sight but connected through the bond. The gold channel hums softly, like a wolf on alert, maintaining a steady, watchful frequency.This time, the scout follows me from campus to The Grind House. I feel him before I see him – a presence behind me on the sidewalk, carrying the wrong heat signature and the wrong scent. My body's cataloging of wrong-wolf-behind-me triggers the fear-arousal wiring tha

KNOXThe bike knows the way before I do. Muscle memory on a route I've ridden since I was fourteen, stolen keys and a dead man's Harley, before I even knew what I was. My hands don't shake on the grips. Everything else in me is shaking. My hands only stay steady because they have a job.Compound gates with the same rust on the hinges, and a gravel lot where bikes are lined up in rows. I cut the engine, and the silence after feels louder than anything I've heard all night.The bar smells the way it always does. Leather, spilled beer, and the staleness of a building that's absorbed forty years of wolves sweating out their rage on the same floorboards. I was sixteen the first time my skin split open in this room, and something bigger climbed out of it. Viktor caught me before I hit the pool table. He put the cut on my shoulders that same year, and the leather settled onto me and became my skeleton. Five years of it. Every scar under this vest has a story that starts with somebody in this

He lifts his head from my shoulder and his eyes – gold again now, the wolf fully present – carry a question."Get on the bike, Knox."He doesn't ask where. He shifts back toward human dimensions, and the recession is slow and uneven because the wolf doesn't want to let go of the extra space the shifted body provides. His hands find my waist, and the grip is tighter now, closer to his usual. We walk to the parking lot, and the bike is still warm from his ride home, with the seat holding the heat in the leather.He gets on. I get on behind him, then swing my leg over and reseat myself in front of him, facing him, my thighs on either side of his hips, my hands on his shoulders, and my face level with his because the geometry of what I'm about to do requires eye contact."Drive to the compound."The gold flares. The question in his eyes sharpens into recognition, and that recognition sends the first signal through the bond that isn't grief – a hot, bright pulse that tastes like the Knox I

I quicken my movements as Knox's hands shift from my hips to my backside, gripping firmly in a way that is unmistakably Knox. His palms press into me, forcing me wider, which deepens the angle and makes me gasp. That gasp echoes through the air, detectable by wolf ears and noses, carrying the scent of arousal mingled with cold air and motorcycle exhaust."Harder," Knox whispers through clenched teeth as his hips lift to meet my downward stroke. The intense clash of his force against my rhythm creates a depth that makes my hands grasp his shoulders and my nails dig into the tattoo on his left deltoid."No." I press his shoulders back against the seat. "My pace."His gold eyes narrow slightly, and the bond sends a familiar signal – the tortured arousal of a man whose pride battles his desire because his mate just said no, and that no is intensifying his arousal. His cock twitches inside me, and I feel it, and he knows I feel it, and the knowing makes him grip my hips tighter.I move wit