The Three Alphas Who Denied My Triplet Babies Came Back... novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Five Candles

On her triplets' fifth birthday three black SUVs pull up and Thane Kincannon kneels in the mud. Her older son says the men have their eyes.

My daughter blew out all five candles before I finished singing.

"That's cheating," said my older son, who had been counting.

"It's my cake," she said. "I decide when it's done."

My younger son already had his face in the frosting.

It was a gray Saturday in Harlow Bend, Idaho, and the rain had only just stopped.

I had strung paper lanterns across the back fence of our rented house and borrowed six folding chairs from the clinic.

Four kids from the neighborhood sat on them, eating cake with their fingers.

My boss stood at the grill in an apron that said Kiss the Vet.

"Happy birthday, you three," she called. "Sorrel, you're burning the hot dogs."

"I am not."

I was, a little.

I was twenty-four years old, a vet tech with a tuition loan and a lease, and I had never been happier than I was in that yard.

I had built every bit of it myself, from the day I got off a bus with a stomach full of babies and forty dollars.

My daughter climbed onto a chair and tapped her paper cup with a spoon.

"I want a speech," she said.

"You can't just demand a speech, honey."

"Then I'll make one." She cleared her throat. "I am five. I am the oldest, even if they say they're older."

"I'm older by four minutes," said my older son.

"Nobody asked you."

"Mom did, at breakfast."

The neighbor kids were laughing.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and laughed too, and that was when I heard the engines.

They came up our dead-end street slowly, one behind another.

Three black SUVs, long and clean, with tinted windows and Montana plates.

I stopped laughing.

They pulled up across the front of our fence and shut off their engines together.

My boss turned from the grill. "Friends of yours?"

"No," I said.

I knew I was lying as I said it.

The driver's doors opened all at once.

Three men got out.

I knew them by how they stood, before I could see their faces.

Thane came around the lead car first, even bigger than I remembered, and he looked straight at me over the fence.

Lorcan stepped out of the second, in a dark coat, and his eyes went to the lanterns and the cake and the children.

Gareth was last, and he held onto the door of his car for a long moment.

They looked older.

None of them said anything.

"Kids," I said, in a voice I barely knew. "Go inside with the neighbors. Now."

"But the cake," said my younger son.

"There'll be more cake."

"Mom." My daughter was still standing on her chair, staring at the men. "Those are the men from my dream."

I stopped breathing.

"What dream, baby?"

"The one with the big gray wolf," she said. "He sits at the foot of my bed. His face is sad."

My older son stepped up beside me and stood very still.

"Mom," he said, "they smell like us."

Before I could answer, the gate scraped.

Thane had opened it.

He came through and walked across the wet grass to the middle of our yard, past the lanterns and the folding chairs, and he stopped in front of me.

He looked at me for a long moment, and then his eyes went to the three kids.

His whole face changed.

He went down on both knees in the mud.

His voice cracked on the first word.

"Sorrel," he said. "Please."

Behind him, Lorcan came through the gate, and then Gareth.

They didn't stop. They walked out onto the grass and knelt down one after another, in their good clothes, in the wet.

Three Alphas on their knees in my backyard.

My boss let the spatula fall onto the grass.

I felt the old howl rise in my chest, the one I had heard walking down that mile of gravel, and my warm hands closed into fists.

My older son looked from them to his sister to me.

"Mom," he said quietly. "They have our eyes."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend