All Chapters of CLAIMED BY MY ALPHA STEPBROTHER AND STEPFATHER: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

DOMINIC’S POVShe says no and the last twenty years of control start to dissolve.I have maintained this – this composure, this carefully constructed fiction of a man who does not want things he cannot have – since before my son was old enough to understand what the wolf inside his father was capable of. I have sat through faculty dinners and parent conferences and twenty years of pretending that the animal behind my sternum doesn’t exist, and I have never once let it slip. Not in a classroom, not in a marriage, not even in the quiet hours when the wolf pressed against my skull so hard I could feel my vision threatening to shift amber.And then this girl walked into my lecture hall smelling like something my wolf has been searching for since the day I locked it away, and two weeks later my son’s mark is on her neck and his scent is in her skin and she is sitting in my office chair at 8 PM on a Thursday saying NO when I tell her to send me back behind the line I drew, and the line is d

KNOX’S POVI smell him on her from ten feet away and my vision goes gold before she rounds the corner.She’s walking home from campus in the dark with her bag over one shoulder and her hair still messed up from being pressed against a desk – I know this because the bond has been sending me data for the last hour that translates roughly to elevated pulse, arousal spike, arousal spike, arousal spike, PEAK, and then the slow descent of a body coming down from something my hands didn’t give her, and the entire time I’ve been standing in the alley between the humanities building and the parking structure with my claws itching at my fingertips and my wolf tearing at the inside of my chest like something caged.She doesn’t see me until I step out of the shadow.Her heartbeat spikes – the bond registers it in my own chest like a second punch – and her eyes go wide and her mouth opens to say my name but she doesn’t get the first syllable out because I’m already on her, my hand on the back of h

KNOX’S POVI find him in the kitchen at 6 AM because I haven’t slept and his scent trail tells me he hasn’t either, and the predator math of two wolves occupying the same room at dawn while the women they share a territory over sleep down the hall is the kind of equation that ends in blood or conversation.I’m not sure which I’m hoping for.He’s standing at the counter with a cup of coffee and his reading glasses pushed up on his head and his sleeves already rolled despite the hour, and he doesn’t look up when I walk in.“Stay away from her.”He takes a sip of his coffee with so much composure that my wolf reads it as a challenge, because stillness in a predator means either submission or superiority, and Dominic has never submitted to anything in his life.“She came to me, Knox.” He says it without looking up. “She knocked on my door. She sat in my chair. She stayed when I locked it. I didn’t drag her anywhere. I didn’t climb through her window. She walked into my office with her own

My mom made lasagna and it smells like home and I want to throw up.She’s been in the kitchen since 4 PM layering noodles and ricotta, and the table is set with the cloth napkins she bought when Dominic moved in and the candles she lights every dinner because she read somewhere that candlelight makes people feel connected, and the irony of that is so thick I could choke on it because the four people sitting at this table are connected in ways that candlelight cannot illuminate and cloth napkins cannot contain.Knox sits to my left. Dominic sits across from me. My mom sits to my right, beaming at the lasagna like it’s a diploma she earned.“I called three caterers today,” she says, serving Dominic first because she always serves him first, and the deference of the gesture makes my chest ache because she performs these small devotions with such sincerity. “The one on Fifth does a Mediterranean option that I think would be beautiful for the reception.”“That sounds lovely,” Dominic says,

DOMINIC’S POVShe knocks at 7:58 PM meaning she’s the kind of woman who arrives two minutes early for her own corruption.I can smell her through the door before she touches the handle – vanilla shampoo and coffee and the warm note underneath that is exclusively hers, layered over the unmistakable chemical marker of my son’s wolf bond that clings to her skin like territorial graffiti.And underneath all of it – arousal. Already pooling. Before I’ve said a word.“Come in.”She opens the door wearing the skirt I told her to wear, and the knowledge that she dressed for this appointment just like I said makes my wolf press forward hard enough that I feel my canines threaten to lengthen against my lower lip.I push them back. Twenty years of practice.No essay tonight. No red ink between us. She knows why she’s here and I know why she’s here and the only person who doesn’t know is her mother, who thinks I’m grading midterms.“Close the door.”She closes it. I stand and walk past her and lo