Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

Lilith’s POV

The heat was gone.

That was the first thing she noticed when she opened her eyes.

She checked twice because she didn’t trust it.

Still gone.

She lay there and just.....breath. In and out. Waiting for it to come back the way it always came back. That clawing burn. That desperate need that had owned her body for five days straight.

Nothing.

She almost laughed but she couldn’t because her her throat felt raw. Her legs felt like jelly. Every muscle she had was registering a complaint and some of them were registering two. She felt like she’d been taken apart and put back together by someone who’d lost the instructions halfway through.

But the heat was gone.

She sat up slowly and that was when she saw the windows.

Both of them. Just....gone. The frames were there. The stone was there. But the glass was outward somewhere, and cold morning air was coming straight in like it lived here now.

She stared at that for a moment.

Then she looked at the floor.

The crack went from the bed all the way to the door. Deep and clean and straight.

”Something happened last night.”

Something bigger than the heat.

She knew that. She’d felt it....or she thought she’d felt it. Gold light pouring out of her skin. The air going dense and bright.

Or maybe she’d dreamed it.

She looked at her hands.

Normal. Both of them looking pale like always.

She pressed them flat against her thighs and sat there and tried to remember what had happened last night.

The crack in the floor was real.

The missing windows were real.

The mark on her throat.....

Her fingers found it before she finished the thought.

She hadn’t decided to touch it. Her hand just went there. Two fingers pressing against the skin just below her jaw and Immediately she touched the still sensitive skin she let out a painful cry ”Oh!”

The wound was still raised and still felt warm. It has a shape she could trace with her fingertips. The shape of teeth. His teeth.

She sat on the bed with her hand pressed to her throat.

Her brain kept sliding off the edges of what it meant. Every time she tried to think about it directly, her thoughts just....skidded.

She dropped her hand from her neck.

Okay. Fine. Maybe not yet. Maybe she shouldn’t think about that for now.

She got up. Found her clothes folded on the chair by the door....Agnes, it had to be Agnes.....and got dressed one piece at a time like her body needed instructions for every step. There was water on the nightstand. Someone had left it. She drank all of it and stood there holding the empty glass for a moment.

She was alone.

All three of them....gone. The bed was a wrecked. The room was cold. But she was the only one in it.

She went back to the bed and sat down and pulled the cover over herself.

She looked at the crack in the floor again, The empty window frames. The cold coming in.

She was still looking at the crack when the door opened.

Immediately Nicholas entered his silver eyes found hers immediately like he’d known exactly where she’d be sitting.

Her hand instinctly went back to her throat.

She didn’t remove it from her neck, she just stared at him standing at the door.

He looked back at her. At her hand. At the mark underneath her fingers.

Then he walked in. Closed the door quietly behind him. And pulled the chair right up beside the bed and sat down.

She noticed his tiredness immediately, that look of a man who hadn’t slept in a very long time.

He looked back at her.

”How are you feeling?” he asked.

She almost laughed.

”That’s your opening.”

A smile appeared on his face but he concealed it fast.

”How are you feeling now?” he asked again.

She dropped her hand from her throat slowly.

”Tell me what happened,” she said.

He held her gaze for a moment.

Then he told her about everything that happened last night.

Controlled and measured. Each word chosen carefully. He told her about Kael taking over his body and marking her. She listened and didn’t interrupt.

When he stopped she sat with it for a moment.

”Did you choose it,” she said.

Nicholas looked at her face for a very long time before he replied. ”Kael chose it,” he said.

She looked at him.

”That’s not what I asked.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

”No,” he said. ” It’s not.”

He didn’t answer but the way his jaw moved slightly, the way his eyes held hers and didn’t change.... that was the answer. And they both knew it.

She looked away first.

Looked at the crack in the floor. Followed the line of it from the bed to the door and back again.

”What does it mean,” she said. ”Practically. What changes.”

”Everything,” he said. Then....”You’re the Alpha’s marked mate. Every wolf in this territory already knows. It was felt. It can’t be undone.”

She absorbed that information.

”So I didn’t have a choice,” she said.

He held her gaze.

”Would you have chosen differently?” he said.

Lilith looked at him and decided not to answer the question.

And she didn’t answer, and he didn’t force her to answer the question either.

Because the answer was complicated and they both knew it was complicated.

The silence stretched between them.

Then he did something she didn’t expect.

He reached out.

Slowly and deliberately. Two fingers. He pressed them lightly to the mark on her throat....barely contact, just the tips of his fingers against that raised warm skin....then he went completely still.

His jaw tightened.

She watched his face.

Watched something move through it and she held still, didn’t move, didn’t breathe too loud. Just watched his face in that unguarded moment like it was something she needed to memorize before it disappeared.