Double Trouble, Triple Heat

Chapter 20

Joseph is different without the corporate mask.

Gone is the polished executive, the man who hid his obsession behind expensive suits and professional smiles. What stands before me now is pure predator—eyes glittering with madness, body coiled with violence barely restrained.

"Daughter of a hunter and a Prime," he muses, circling closer. The hunters keep their rifles trained on us, but Joseph waves them back. He wants this moment for himself. "Do you have any idea how rare that makes you? How valuable?"

"I'm not a commodity."

"You could have been mine." He stops circling, faces me directly. "We could have ruled both worlds together. Hunter and wolf, united in you. I saw it the moment you walked into my office—all that power, sleeping just beneath the surface."

"You're insane."

"Maybe." His grin sharpens. "But I'm winning."

He gestures at the chaos around us—distant gunfire, howling wolves, the forest alive with violence. "Your father's on his way to personally kill your alpha. Poetic, isn't it?

Robert Mitchell, greatest hunter of his generation, putting down the wolf who defiled his daughter." Joseph's eyes gleam. "You rejected me, Sera. So I'm destroying everything you love. Making you watch while it all burns."

Luna's hand finds mine in the darkness. Squeezes once.

I squeeze back.

"One problem with your plan," I tell Joseph, keeping my voice steady.

"What's that?"

"You forgot about the wolves."

Luna shifts.

One moment she's standing beside me, human and tense. The next, a massive silver wolf explodes from where she stood, launching at the nearest hunter before he can pull the trigger. Her jaws close around his throat and he goes down screaming.

Chaos erupts.

The other hunters open fire, but Luna's already moving—a blur of silver fur and flashing teeth. I don't think. I just run.

My body moves faster than it should, faster than a human. Wolf instincts I didn't know I had guided me through the dark forest—ducking branches, leaping roots, finding paths I can't see but somehow sense. The trees blur past. Behind me, gunshots and screams.

I'm not fast enough.

Joseph's hand closes around my arm, yanks me backward. I slam against a tree, bark biting into my spine, and then his hand is at my throat.

"Did you really think you could run from me?" His breath is hot against my face, his eyes wild. "I've been chasing you for months. Across cities, across states. I know how you think, how you move, how you breathe."

His fingers tighten, cutting off my air.

"I could take you right now." His voice drops to something intimate, obscene. "Give you to my men before we put you down like the animal you're becoming. Would you like that? One last taste of human attention before—"

Something surges inside me.

Not thought. Not decision. Pure, primal rage—my wolf, dormant so long, finally breaking through the spell that's kept her sleeping. I feel her howl inside my chest, feel her fury become mine.

My nails sharpen into claws. Power floods my veins, golden and burning. My eyes flash with light that isn't human.

And I rake those claws across Joseph's face.

I feel flesh tear beneath my fingers. Feel the hot spray of his blood on my skin. Feel satisfaction so deep and animal it should frighten me—but it doesn't. It feels right. It feels like justice.

Joseph screams—a sound of pure agony that echoes through the forest—and releases me. His hands fly to his face, blood pouring between his fingers in dark rivers. I've torn him open from cheekbone to jaw, four deep furrows that will scar forever.

If he lives.

"You bitch," he chokes out, blood bubbling on his lips. "You fucking—"

I don't wait to hear the rest. I run.

The forest swallows me, dark and endless. I don't know where I'm going—just away. Away from Joseph, away from the hunters, away from the violence that's consuming everything I love.

I feel Dominic's presence—closer now, fighting his way toward me. I feel Caspian as well, wounded but alive, refusing to fall. Feel the pack rallying, pushing back against the hunters.

Gunshots crack through the trees. Howls echo from every direction. I run until my lungs burn, until my legs shake, until I burst into a small clearing and nearly collide with a massive black wolf.

Dominic.

He's wounded—blood matting his dark fur, one ear torn—but alive. His golden eyes find mine and flood with relief so intense I feel it through the bond like a physical embrace.

More wolves emerge behind him. Caspian in silver form, favoring his wounded shoulder. Luna, muzzle stained red. A dozen others, battered but fighting.

But there are hunters too. Stepping out of the trees on the other side of the clearing, rifles raised. More emerging by the second, surrounding us.

And one figure stepping into the moonlight.

Tall. Gray-haired. Face weathered by decades of violence. He moves with the easy confidence of a man who's killed more times than he can count.

His rifle is raised, pointed directly at Dominic's head.

Robert Mitchell.

My father.

He looks older than I remember. Grayer. The lines on his face have deepened, carved by years of violence and grief I'm only now beginning to understand. He wears tactical gear like a second skin, moves with the easy confidence of a man who's killed more times than he can count.

His rifle is raised, pointed directly at Dominic's head. Professional. Steady. Ready to pull the trigger without hesitation.

For a moment, I think he doesn't see me. He's focused on Dominic—the massive black wolf, clearly the alpha, clearly the threat. His finger tightens on the trigger.

"Dad!"

The word tears out of me before I can stop it. A child's cry, desperate and raw.

He freezes.

Slowly, so slowly, his gaze shifts from the wolf to the woman standing beside it. The woman with blood on her hands and gold flickering in her eyes. The woman who just placed herself between a hunter's rifle and a werewolf.

His daughter.

The rifle wavers.

"Sera?" His voice cracks on my name. Breaks on it. "What are you—why are you—"

"Put the gun down, Dad."

"You're with them." It's not a question. His face cycles through emotions too fast to track—shock, horror, denial, something that might be grief. "You're one of them. My own daughter is one of them."

“Please don’t do this, dad, I beg you!”

“Sera—, how could you be with… wolves?”

"Even if I am, I'm your daughter. That hasn't changed."

"You're defending monsters. You're—" His eyes drop to my stomach. To the bump that's barely visible but unmistakable if you know what to look for. If you've seen it before on your own wife, decades ago.

The color drains from his face.

"Oh god. Sera." His voice is a whisper now, broken and horrified. "What have they done to you?"

"They haven't done anything to me." My voice shakes, but I hold his gaze. "I love them, Dad. Both of them. And I'm carrying their child. Your grandchild."

The silence that follows is absolute.

Around us, wolves and hunters stand frozen. Everyone watching. Everyone waiting to see what Robert Mitchell—legendary hunter, killer of dozens—will do when faced with his own daughter.

His rifle wavers again.

But it doesn't lower.