The Alpha's Secret Twins

[Skyler’s POV]

The last time I didn't finish my task in time, Kailani held my hand over the kitchen burner for ten seconds. She counted out loud and smiled in my face while she did it.

That was for one unpolished mirror.

Tonight, there are forty feet of marble between me and sunrise, and the Alpha of Shadowcrest arrives at dawn. I don't think about my hands, I just scrub when I hear a small sound of bare feet dragging across a cold stone.

A sound I'd know in the dark, underwater, half-dead.

"Ashton," I don't turn around, "it's the middle of the night, baby."

"You weren't there, Ma." He says it the way only a six-year-old can—equal parts accusation and heartbreak, voice is thick with interrupted sleep.

I set the brush down and open my arms. He walks into them headfirst, the way he's done since he could walk at all, his wild dark hair rough against my chin. When he pulls back to look at me, those amber eyes blink slowly.

His father's eyes, too serious for his age.

I've spent six years learning to look at them without flinching.

Learning not to think how everything might have been different if only his father was with us all the way. To forget about the stranger who left me alone and pregnant with twins, in the pack who hates me for my father’s sins.

"River had the nightmare again," he whispers. "The one with ‘cruel wolves’. But I told her they weren't real, and I held her hand until she went back to sleep."

Something moves through my throat that has no name. I smooth the hair from his forehead, press my lips there. He's warm and solid and so terrifyingly small.

"That was very brave and kind of you. You're such a good brother, Ash. You know that? My sweet little boy."

He pulls back to study my face like he always does—too carefully, too young, like he's checking for something he's afraid might fall.

"Mama." He reaches up and almost touches my swollen lip, then thinks better of it. "I don't care that we don't have a dad. I'm going to take care of you and River. Like a real man. So you don't have to be scared anymore."

No child should carry that in his chest.

Five years old. He was five when he decided this. Six now, and he's never once taken it back.

I pull him in before he can see my face, because there are things a mother doesn't get to show her son. I hold him, and I breathe, and I get my face back into something usable. "Let's get you back to…"

The door slams open as my stepsister Kailani sweeps in like a natural disaster in silk pajamas. Her dark hair is perfect even at this hour, because of course it is, while she’s vibrating with the kind of excitement that makes my stomach tighten.

Then her gaze drops to the marble and her mouth thins. "What is that?"

One streak, maybe six inches, where a faint shadow of grime remains. My hands have been bleeding into the wash water for two hours, but sure. One streak. "I'll fix it, I was just…"

The slap comes without wind-up. Palm across my mouth, head snapping sideways as my lip splits in the same groove worn from repetition.

Then her foot catches the bucket and dirty water rushes across my knees, my pants, the section I've already finished.

"Start over, bitch. Alpha Leon is coming today, my future husband deserves perfection!" Her voice is bright and pleasant. "Soon I’ll become Luna of the Shadowcrest, one of the strongest packs on the continent. And you’ll better treat me accordingly, or I…"

Ashton steps forward and my blood goes arctic. His small fists are clenched tight at his sides. "Don't talk to my mom like that!"

His voice doesn't shake. I don't know how his voice doesn't shake.

Kailani's hand rises immediately, to get him out of her way, and I am moving before I've thought to move, between her hand and my son. The blow catches my cheekbone with a crack that rings through my skull.

She examines her palm like I've inconvenienced her.

"Three hours." She smooths her pajama top. "Everything perfect." A pause, precise as a blade. "Or we're done, Skyler. You know what done means."

The door clicks shut behind her and I kneel there for a moment. Two points of damage, my face doing its careful arithmetic of pain.

Then I turn to Ashton. His chin is wobbling and he’s working very hard at controlling it, but it is still the most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen. I grip his shoulders, making him look at me.

"Listen." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. "You never step in front of her. Never. Whatever she does to me—you take River, you go to our room, and you lock the door. Always. Do you understand me?"

His chin wobbles once before he controls it. "But she hurt you…"

"That doesn't matter. What matters is your safety. Yours and your sister. That's it." I press my forehead to his. "Promise me, Ashton."

"I promise," he whispers, hating every syllable.

I walk him back to our room—our glorious eight-by-ten closet in the servants' wing—and check that River's still asleep. Thumb in her mouth, while I helped Ashton to get in bed and smoothed her silver-blonde hair fanned across the pillow.

After closing the door softly, I return to the marble.

My hand stills when the wire ring on my finger catches the light. Twisted metal, worthless to anyone but me. Their father made it from a piece of wire at the Moon Goddess Festival seven years ago. Slipped it onto my finger with warm steady hands, and promised he'd find me.

Turned out he gave a fake name, fake personality. Vanished before dawn, and left me with a ghost to chase across packs that had never heard of anyone named Silas.

The pregnancy turned me from the wolfless embarrassment of our pack, the dead tyrant’s daughter, into the wolfless whore. Seven years of scrubbing, washing, raising other people's children alongside my own, all for the privilege of not being thrown onto the street.

Better pack’s slave and punching bag than a homeless twin’s single-mother.

I twist the ring one last time after finishing the cleaning, muscle memory for fools. As the pack house wakes, the whispers find me through walls and around corners.

"They say Alpha Leon ended the war by breaking every pack that refused to kneel," one of the kitchen girls hisses as she passes. "No one who challenged him survived."

"I heard his wolf is the size of a horse!" Her friend giggles, half-terrified. "And he runs an empire on the human side on top of it—security company, weapons, I don't know. Everything that sounds civilized and isn't."

"Goddess help Kailani on her wedding night, is all I'm saying." They laugh and disappear around the corner.