Claimed by the Triplet Alphas

Outside in the afternoon light I turned to Axel and the full weight of what I had just done arrived.

"I'm sorry," I started. "I did not plan any of that. I saw you and I just…"

"Used me?" The corner of his mouth moved. "That was the most entertaining family event I have attended in years."

"But Derek is your nephew…"

"Derek is a man who has spent his entire life relying on other people. Someone needed to say what got said in there."

His brothers had stayed on the driveway. Colt stood with his arms crossed, watching me with an expression I could not yet read. Ryker had his hands in his pockets and was watching me with an attention that was not bothering to hide itself. Neither of them had said anything since the dining room. They did not need to. Whatever had happened in there was still in the air between all of us and all three of them were clearly aware of it in a way I was only beginning to catch up with.

Axel stepped closer. "You deserve better than Derek. That part was not performance."

He reached into his jacket and held out a business card. His fingers stayed on it half a second longer than necessary before letting go.

"I would like to take you somewhere proper. Talk properly."

I looked at the card and then at his face and felt the pull of it. The weight of everything he was that Derek had never come close to being. Then reality arrived, clear and firm.

"I can't," I told him. "You're a Slade. I just crawled out of that family and I am not stepping back in through a different door."

"Melania, I'm not…"

"It does not matter," I said. "You are still connected to them. I need a completely clean break. From all of it."

Something moved across his face. He took it in without arguing, which was more than most men managed when they did not get the answer they were looking for. He stepped back and gave me room.

"I heard you," he said. "The card has my number on the back. For when you are ready to have a real conversation about what happened in that room today. No expectations past that."

I looked at the card one more time. Then at his brothers. Colt had dropped his arms and was watching me with his jaw set in a way that said he had a great deal to say and was choosing not to say it. Ryker had not moved from the gatepost. He watched me with a steady, unhurried focus that was somehow more unsettling than the red had been.

"Goodbye, Axel."

I got into my car.

I did not look in the rearview mirror until I reached the end of the road. When I did, all three of them were still standing in the driveway watching me go. Three faces, three sets of dark eyes, the ink on their hands the only thing separating them.

I faced forward and drove.

Back at the hotel with my shoes off and a glass of water in my hand, I emptied my bag onto the bed. Tucked against the inside pocket was a second card. He had slipped it in somewhere between the driveway and the car door and I had not felt it happen. I turned it over. The same name. The same number on the back in clear, unhurried handwriting.

I thought about throwing it in the bin. I walked toward the bin with it.

Then I stopped.

I stood in the middle of the hotel room and looked at the card in my hand and thought about that dining room and the night before it and the word that had come out of all three of them at once in a single voice. I closed my hand around the card and did not put it down.

An hour later I was in bed with the lamp off when my phone lit up on the nightstand. Unknown number.

Two rings. Three.

I picked up.

"This is Ryker." Low and deliberate, something coiled underneath it. "I know what you told Axel. I want you to know he speaks for himself."

The line went quiet.

I sat in the dark and said nothing, because there was nothing adequate to say to that.

The line clicked off.

I sat with the phone in both hands for a long time in the dark and thought about three men who had looked at a stranger in a dining room and spoken the same word in the same breath without any rehearsal. I thought about red eyes and wolf tattoos and the particular feeling of being seen by someone who was not putting on a show of seeing you.

Outside the hotel window the city kept going the way cities do, and I lay back and stared at the ceiling and arrived at the only honest conclusion available to me.

I was completely in over my head.