Double Trouble, Triple Heat

Chapter 21

Time freezes.

The forest holds its breath. Wolves crouch, ready to spring. Hunters hold their rifles steady. And in the center of it all, father and daughter stare at each other across twenty years of lies.

"Sera?" Robert's voice breaks on my name. The rifle trembles in his hands—the first time I've ever seen him uncertain. "What are you—why are you here? Why are you with them?"

"Dad." I keep my voice steady, even though everything inside me is shaking. "Put the gun down."

"Don’t you remember what I’ve always taught you? They're monsters." But he doesn't sound convinced anymore. He sounds like a man watching his entire worldview crumble.

"They kill people. They—" His eyes track my position again—standing between his rifle and the massive black wolf. Protecting it. Protecting the alpha of the pack he came to destroy.

"No," he whispers. "No, you can't be one of them. I kept you away from this. I protected you—"

"I'm something else." My voice cracks. "Something you and Mom made together."

The truth crashes over him visibly.

I watch him piece it together—Lena's heritage, the daughter who never showed signs of being anything but human, the pregnancy that's changing everything. His face cycles through denial, horror, grief, and something that might be understanding.

His daughter, half-wolf. Pregnant with wolf children. Everything he spent twenty years trying to prevent, happening anyway.

"Your mother." The words come out strangled. "She was—"

"A Prime. The most powerful wolf of her generation." I take a step toward him, and behind me, Dominic growls a warning. I feel his fear through the bond—terror that my father will shoot me, that I'm walking toward the man who's killed dozens of our kind. But I don't stop. "You knew, didn't you? Eventually?"

"I didn't know when we married." His rifle lowers an inch. Two inches. "I loved her, Sera. I loved her so much it didn't matter what she was."

"Then what happened?"

Before he can answer, Joseph emerges from the trees.

Blood streams down his ruined face, four deep furrows from my claws painting him in red and black. He staggers, but his eyes burn with fanatic rage.

"Shoot her!" he screams at Robert. "What are you waiting for? She's one of them now! She's carrying their spawn!"

Robert turns the rifle toward Joseph instead.

The movement is smooth. Professional. The rifle that was pointed at Dominic's head now aims at the man who brought him here.

"You told me we were cleaning out a threat." Robert's voice is deadly calm. "You didn't tell me my daughter was here."

"She's an abomination!" Joseph's voice rises to a shriek. "Her mother was a beast, and now she's breeding with monsters! Can't you see what she's become?"

"I see my daughter."

"She's not your daughter anymore! She's—"

Robert shoots Joseph in the shoulder.

The crack of the rifle echoes through the clearing. Joseph spins, crying out, blood spraying from the wound. Non-lethal, but the message is clear.

Chaos follows.

Hunters look at each other, confusion rippling through their ranks. Their legendary leader just shot one of their own. Robert Mitchell, who's killed more wolves than any man alive, just defended one.

"Sir?" one of them asks uncertainly. "What are your orders?"

Robert doesn't answer. He walks toward me while wolves growl but hold back—I feel Dominic's restraint through the bond, his trust in my judgment even when everything in him screams to attack.

My father stops a few feet away. This close, I can see how old he's become. How tired. How broken.

"Your mother," he says again, voice breaking. "I didn't know what she was when we married. She was just... Lena. Beautiful, fierce, impossible to forget. I loved her from the moment I saw her, and I thought she was human. I thought we'd have a normal life."

"But you found out."

"After you were born. One night I saw her shift—just a glimpse, a flash of gold in her eyes before she changed back." He swallows hard.

"I couldn't accept it. I'd been raised to hate her kind, trained to kill them since I was younger than you are now. My father, his father before him—generations of Mitchells, hunting wolves. And suddenly the woman in my bed, the mother of my child..."

"You couldn't reconcile it."

"I tried." His voice breaks. "God help me, I tried. But every time I looked at her, I saw the enemy. The monster. I couldn't separate the woman I loved from the creature I'd been taught to destroy."

Tears stream down my face. "Dad..."

"I drove her away. Said terrible things—called her an animal, a beast, a mistake I'd made in the dark. Told her I'd take you, raise you human, keep you from becoming what she was." His shoulders shake. "She left. I thought that was the end of it."

"But it wasn't."

"She came back." His eyes go distant, haunted by memories he's clearly replayed a thousand times. "Weeks later. In the middle of the night. I was on patrol with other hunters—we'd had reports of wolves in the area. And then I saw her."

His voice drops to a whisper.

"She was in wolf form. Running toward our cabin. Toward you." He closes his eyes. "I didn't recognize her. I just saw a wolf, heading for my daughter. I raised my rifle and I..."

He can't finish.

He doesn't need to.

"You shot her." The words come out hollow.

"She shifted back as she fell." Tears stream down his weathered face now. "Changed from wolf to woman right there in the snow. And I saw her face. I saw Lena. My Lena. Reaching for me, trying to say something, but there was so much blood..."

"Dad—"

"She died in my arms." His voice shatters completely. "I held her while the life left her eyes. She was coming back for you, Sera. Coming to see her daughter one last time. And I killed her for it."

He meets my eyes.

"I've spent twenty years trying to outrun that moment. Killing wolves, pretending each one was justice instead of penance. Keeping you away from this world so you'd never know what I'd done." His face crumples. "I murdered your mother. The only woman I ever loved. And I've been too much of a coward to tell you the truth."

The truth, finally. So much worse than anything I imagined. My mother didn't die in some distant battle. She died in my father's arms, killed by his own hand. She came back for me, and he shot her for it.

I should hate him. Part of me does—a raw, screaming part that wants to claw his face the way I clawed Joseph's.

But I also see the man before me. Broken. Destroyed by his own actions. Living in a hell of his own making for two decades.

"I kept you away from this because I thought I was protecting you," Robert continues, voice barely audible. "I see now I was just hiding. From what I'd done. From what you might become. From the guilt that's been eating me alive since the night I pulled that trigger."

"Dad." I step closer, and I don't know if I want to embrace him or strike him. "I don't—I can't—"

Movement at the tree line.

More hunters arrive—a dozen, maybe more, drawn by the gunshot. They take in the scene: Robert standing with his daughter, wolves at her back, Joseph bleeding on the ground.

Joseph staggers to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulder.

"You see?" He points at Robert with his bloody hand. "You see what they've done to him? The legendary Robert Mitchell, brought low by wolf pussy—"

"Shut up," Robert snaps.

"—protecting the same monsters he's spent his life killing! His daughter's a whore for beasts, carrying their mongrel young, and he's going to let them live?" Joseph turns to the other hunters, rallying them. "Kill them all! The girl too—she's not human anymore!"

Some hunters raise their rifles. Others hesitate, looking at Robert.

"Mitchell?" one asks. "Sir, what do we do?"

Robert looks at me. At the wolves behind me. At the man who used him as a weapon against his own daughter.

Then he raises his rifle.

Not at wolves. At hunters. At his own people.

"You want to hurt my daughter?" His voice carries across the clearing, steady and cold. "You'll have to go through me."

Stunned silence.

Joseph's face twists with fury. "You're choosing them? Over your own kind? After everything you've done?"

"I'm choosing my family." Robert's eyes find mine, wet with tears he's not bothering to hide. "I couldn't save your mother. I was the one who took her from you. But I can save you, Sera. I can finally do something right."

The hunters don't know what to do. Their leader, their legend, standing against them. Some lower their weapons. Others keep them raised, waiting for someone to make the first move.

The clearing becomes a powder keg, waiting for a spark.

And through the bond, I feel something else.

Dominic's wolf, pulling back. Giving Robert space. Trusting him—trusting me—in a way that goes against every instinct.

Behind us, Caspian shifts to human form. Naked, bloody, still favoring his wounded shoulder. He moves to stand at my side.

"Sera," he says quietly. "Whatever happens next, we're with you."

I reach for his hand. Squeeze.

My father. My mates. My pack.

Everything I love, standing on the edge of a knife.

And Joseph Webb, bleeding and furious, about to tip us all over.