The Triplet Alphas' Secret Mate

Chapter 36: Familiar

Scarlett’s POV

​I flinched as if he’d struck me. Save me? The word echoed in my head, sounding entirely wrong, almost unreal. It didn’t fit him... it didn’t fit this situation.

I wanted to ask what he meant, to make sense of it, but the threat of the Rogue King’s camp was enough to make my legs move before my mind could catch up. I scrambled into the seat, pulling my knees to my chest and trying to take up as little space as possible, as if shrinking myself could somehow make me invisible.

​The door slammed shut, sealing out the sounds of the forest. The SUV began to move, the ride so smooth I couldn’t even feel the road.

​"You’re bleeding," Ethan remarked after a few minutes of suffocating silence. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at a tablet in his hand, but his nose—his Alpha senses—clearly picked up the scent of the blood on my skin.

​I touched my bruised cheek, my fingers coming away red. "It doesn’t matter," I whispered, my voice cracking.

​"It matters to me," he replied, finally turning his head to look at me. His gray eyes were unreadable. "I paid a high price for ’undamaged goods.’ Don’t make me regret the investment, Scarlett."

​My breath hitched. He knew my name.

​"You... you know my name?" I whispered, the sound barely audible over the hum of the engine.

brow furrowed, a flicker of something—disappointment? annoyance?—crossing his

rising, but everything

at him properly then, trying to ignore the bruising pain in my ribs and the cold metal of the choker. His jaw was sharp, his gray eyes like polished flint, and there was an air of absolute, terrifying authority about him that felt familiar. I

voice trembling. "Do

He simply turned back to his tablet,

forward, the guards on duty didn’t just step aside—they bowed their heads in deep, silent

finally rising past my exhaustion. "What do you want

a long, winding path lined with ancient

phone began to vibrate. He picked it up immediately,

I was being led out, the last thing I heard before the heavy door thudded

​"I have her."

head back toward the darkened glass of the SUV, but I couldn’t

the cool night air. The soldier didn’t touch me, but he stood close enough

mansion, wishing the ground would open and

say a word; he simply

seemed to touch the sky. As we passed, members of the household staff stopped what they were doing and bowed deeply, their eyes fixed on the floor. He didn’t acknowledge

he going to have me? Right now? I was a mess of mud and blood, and I was... I was a virgin. The thought of his cold, flinty eyes and his massive strength being used