Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

The machines beeped.

”I tried to warn her,” Victoria said. ”I came here and I told her the truth about Victor. About what their family did. But she wouldn’t listen. The bonds are too strong now. They’ve got her so twisted up she can’t see that they’re using her.”

She looked at her sister’s face, so peaceful, so still and felt tears burning behind her eyes.

”I need you to wake up,” Victoria whispered. ”I need you to tell me what to do. Because I’m so angry, Cass. I’m so angry I can barely think straight. They took Victor from you. From Lilith. And now they’re taking her too.”

The memories came without permission.

*Twenty-seven years ago*

Victoria was fifteen years old the first time she met Victor.

He showed up at the Morvaine estate on a summer afternoon, all easy smiles and warm brown eyes, asking to speak with their mother about some pack business Victoria did not care about. She had been in the garden practicing her magic....coaxing flowers to bloom out of season, making vines grow in patterns across the stone walls when Cassandra came running out with her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.

”There’s a wolf here,” Cassandra said, breathless and excited. ”And he’s gorgeous.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. ”You think every boy is gorgeous.”

”This one actually is,” Cassandra insisted. ”Come see.”

So Victoria had followed her sister inside and found Victor Thorne standing in their mother’s study looking completely out of place among the books and magical artifacts. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with an openness to his expression that was rare among wolves. Most of them carried themselves with a kind of defensive wariness around witches.

Victor just looked curious.

”You must be Elowen’s daughters,” he said when he saw them. ”I’ve heard a lot about you.”

”All good things, I hope,” Cassandra said, and Victoria had watched her sister light up in a way she never had before.

That was the beginning.

Victor started finding reasons to visit the estate. Pack business with their mother. Questions about supernatural territory agreements. Requests for magical consultations. Always with a smile. Always with that easy warmth that made even their mother’s stern expression soften slightly.

And Cassandra fell in love with him.

It should not have worked. A Morvaine witch and a pack Beta. Their mother disapproved. The pack elders disapproved. Even Victoria had her doubts.

But Victor was patient. Persistent. And absolutely devoted to Cassandra in a way that eventually won everyone over.

They were married when Cassandra turned twenty-one.

Victoria had been her maid of honor.

*Then fifteen years ago*

The attack came on a Tuesday.

Victoria remembered that detail with perfect clarity because she had been planning to visit Cassandra that week. Had been looking forward to seeing her sister and meeting Lilith...five years old and already showing signs of magic even though Victor’s wolf blood was supposed to have suppressed it.

Instead, Victoria got a message through the emergency communication network the coven maintained.

The Morvaine estate was burning.

By the time Victoria arrived, it was already over.

The house, the beautiful sprawling estate that had been in their family for two hundred years was nothing but ash and smoking ruins. Bodies lay scattered across the grounds. Members of their coven who had tried to defend it. Humans who had been caught in the crossfire.

And their mother.

Elowen Morvaine lay in the center of the destruction with her eyes open and unseeing, her hands still crackling with residual magic from whatever final spell she had cast before she died.

Victoria had fallen to her knees beside her mother’s body and screamed.

The hunters had come. Had overwhelmed their wards. Had slaughtered everyone they could find.

And Victoria had not been there.

Had been miles away, safe and ignorant, while her family died.

Cassandra and Lilith survived only because Victor had gotten them out before the attack reached its peak. Had taken his mate and daughter and fled the Estate and took them back with him to Shadowmare.

But the damage was done.

The Morvaine coven was destroyed. Scattered. Driven underground or killed outright.

And Victoria spent the next twelve years in hiding, moving from territory to territory, always looking over her shoulder, always waiting for the hunters to find her too.

*Then five months ago*

Victoria felt Victor die.

She had not known she would feel it. Had not known that the bond between her sister and Victor was strong enough that even she...blood-related but not mated, would sense the moment it shattered.

She was in a motel room three states away when it happened. A sharp pain in her chest like something vital had been ripped out. And she knew immediately what it meant.

She got to Shadowmare two days later, and found Lilith beside her mother’s bed in the pack’s hospital room crying hysterically.

”She won’t wake up,” Lilith had sobbed. ”I don’t know what happened. They brought father home and she has been like this since then and she won’t wake up....”

Victoria had pulled Lilith into her arms and held her while she broke apart.

It was magical, she knew.

A mate bond severed by death. The trauma too much for Cassandra’s mind to handle.

And Victoria had not been there when Victor died. Had not been there when Lilith needed her most. Had not been there for any of it because she was too busy hiding.

Again.

She had erased Lilith’s memory of her ever being there that day, and she went back into hiding, which she deeply regret now, because if she had been around, if she had stayed then maybe her niece won’t have been forced into going to the Blackwood triplet to pay the damn debt Victor never owned in the first place in the first place

Victoria squeezed her sister’s hand and felt the tears spill over.

”I failed you,” she whispered. ”I failed you when the coven was attacked. I failed you when Victor died. And I failed Lilith when she needed me most.”