All Chapters of CLAIMED BY MY ALPHA STEPBROTHER AND STEPFATHER: Chapter 81 - Chapter 83

KNOX’S POVTheo Gallagher’s apartment smells exactly as I expect - like dryer sheets and instant ramen and loneliness.I’m sitting on his couch uninvited with my boots on his coffee table and a beer I took from his fridge sweating in my hand while he stands in the doorway of his own living room looking at me with the expression of a man who is trying to decide whether running would make things worse.It would. For the record.“Door was unlocked,” I say, and take a drink of his beer which is cheap and tastes like someone brewed it in a bathtub, but I’m not here for the hospitality. “You should fix that. Dangerous neighbourhood.”“Get out of my apartment.”“Sit down, Theo.”He doesn’t obey. He stands in the doorway with his keys in his hand and his jaw set and his pulse hammering at a rate I can hear from the couch – a hundred and twelve beats per minute.I respect the not-sitting. It’s stupid, but I respect it.“I’m fucking her.”The words land in his living room the way I intended the

Theo’s apartment smells like whiskey and unwashed laundry and like he hasn’t opened a window in days.I know something is wrong before I’m fully through the door because Theo Gallagher has kept his apartment clean since we were fifteen, and the boy who alphabetised his spice rack during a study break would not voluntarily live in a room that smells like a bar floor unless something fundamental had been broken.He’s on the couch with a bottle between his knees and his laptop open on the coffee table showing what appears to be a research document about – I lean closer – domestic abuse warning signs?The search history visible in the tab bar includes “signs someone is being controlled by a partner” and “how to report a professor-student relationship,” and the thoroughness of his research makes my chest constrict because Theo doesn’t do anything halfway, which means he is currently most likely applying his specific methodical energy to dismantling my life.Then he turns his head and I see