The Three Alphas Who Denied My Triplet Babies Came Back... novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not Mine

Sorrel shuts the door on the brothers and they talk through it: their wolves went silent the day she left. Her younger son opens the door and asks which one is Daddy, and all three say, Me.

"Get off my grass," I said.

None of the three men moved.

Thane stayed on his knees in the mud with his hands open on his thighs.

Lorcan's eyes were on my daughter, who was still standing on her chair with a spoon in her fist.

Gareth was looking at the ground.

"I'll say it once more," I said. "Get off my grass, or I call the sheriff."

"Call him," Thane said. His voice was hoarse. "We'll wait."

My boss took the neighbor kids out through the side gate in a silent line.

She gave me a long look over her shoulder as she went.

I picked up my younger son in one arm and put the other hand on my older son's shoulder.

"Inside," I told my daughter.

She climbed down off the chair slowly and kept her eyes on the men all the way to the back door.

I shut it behind us and turned the lock.

Then I sat the three kids down in the kitchen with the leftover cake and a stack of paper plates.

"Nobody opens that door," I said.

"Who are they?" asked my older son.

"People I used to know."

"The big one cried," my daughter said.

"I know, baby."

I went to the window over the sink and looked out through the slats.

They were still there.

It started to rain again, and none of them got up.

After a while Lorcan stood and walked to the back step.

I heard him sit down on it, on the other side of the door.

"Sorrel," he said.

He didn't raise his voice. He had never needed to.

"I know you can hear me."

I said nothing.

"Our wolves went quiet the day you left," he said. "All three of us, the same hour."

"Thane felt it first, on the border. His wolf simply stopped answering."

"Poor Thane."

"I'm not asking for pity." A pause. "I'm telling you why we're here."

"You're here because you want something."

"Yes."

He said it so plainly that I turned from the window.

"We want you to hear it," Lorcan said. "Then you can tell us to go."

"Say it, then."

"That night, after the hall, Father told each of us that you had taken money to disappear."

"He gave us each the same number."

"He said you'd gone through the main gate with a check and a bus ticket."

"That's a lie."

"I know that now."

"You believed it."

"We did." He was quiet for a moment. "Then I went to your mother's cottage, and it was empty."

"I drove to every bus station in the county, and Thane drove to the state line."

"Gareth walked the whole boundary on foot for two weeks and didn't sleep."

"For a woman who took the money."

"For a woman we couldn't find."

I leaned on the counter.

"Your number was dead," Lorcan said. "Your mother wasn't at home. We tried for a year."

"A year," I said.

"Five years, if you count the searching Gareth never stopped doing."

Something moved on the back step, and I heard Thane's voice, low and rough.

"We said it," he said. "In the hall. All of us."

"Three times," I said. "In a row. Like you'd practiced."

"We didn't practice."

"It sounded practiced."

There was a long silence.

"There's no excuse," Thane said.

"No," I said. "There isn't."

Behind me, the kitchen had gone completely quiet.

I turned around.

My younger son was standing at the back door in his birthday shirt, with frosting on his chin.

His small warm hand was already on the lock.

"Don't," I said.

He turned it anyway.

The door swung open.

Rain blew in, and the three men were standing on the step in a row, soaked to the skin, their faces open.

My younger son looked up at them seriously.

"Which one of you is my daddy?" he asked.

"Me," said Thane.

"Me," said Lorcan.

"Me," said Gareth.

They said it in the same breath, and then they looked at each other, and none of them looked away.

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