Chapter 2

CONNOR KINCAID

“Put it on and hop onto Shane’s arms. You are ours now”

I said that minutes ago, my wolf barely able to contain the overwhelming feeling inside of us.

Landon O’Connor has owed us for eons and tonight the mission was to take Brackenridge away from him.

To destroy him and his weak betas.

The mission however changed.

The night took us all for a ride and even if my brothers don’t say it, we all felt it. Shane most especially.

We are Alphas. Apex predators.

More importantly we are rogues and we live by it with pride.

Rogues however never have the privilege of getting a mate. Believe me, we’ve searched, and for a time, we were good with that.

Mate or no mate, Shane, Neo and I had each other. Brothers till death. Brothers who ruled the world for years without following the rules of this realm.

That was until her-

The woman with the raven dark hair, full pink lips, high cheekbones and a face so pretty it pissed me and my brothers off.

We smelled her in a crowd of people.

We knew who she was before we told her to strip so we could confirm our suspicions.

As I said rogue never have mates. Yet tonight-

“Put me down!” she shrieks, hitting Shane’s chest, trying to claw his neck but my older brother pretends he can’t see her nor can he hear her as his hands still remain caged around her waist.

“This is so unnecessary, if you are going to kill me just kill me now”, her mini-breakdown hovers inside the car we are in.

She’s cute but I’m weary of her.

We all are.

She is not supposed to exist and yet here she is. In our car, in our presence, in Shane’s arms.

‘She is ours. I want to smell her again. I want to touch her.’

My wolf grumbles and I ignore him for the better part of the journey.

“What do they call you?” Neo asks her.

He’s seated next to Shane. I can tell he’s struggling like I am, not to reach out and touch her.

The difference between us is Neo has always been bold and I have always been cautious.

As he asks that question, his hand reaches out and wipes the tears on one of her cheeks.

“Don’t touch me!” She recoils from Neo’s touch, leaning into Shane’s chest more and I can tell my older brother likes it.

He is lucky. Lucky to hold her and have her sweet scent cover his.

“Landon never gave you a name?” Neo asks.

‘We should have killed that bastard’

“It doesn’t matter if you are all going to kill me anyway”

She hasn’t read the room and understood what’s happening right now.

She thinks we are cursed. We think she is a miracle.

She hates us. We wish she didn’t exist because she’s a weakness the Kincaid brothers can’t afford to have.

And more importantly our wolves can trace her wolf locked inside her, begging to be freed and we want to be the ones to do that.

“Give him the name, princess”, Shane commands.

“Will you let me go if I do?”

She’s too naïve, it’s too cute to watch.

“Yes. I’ll ask my driver to turn around and I can take you back to your ex-mate”, Shane lies.

She thinks about it for a moment before turning to Neo and whispering,

“River. My name’s River”

River. Yeah, she looks like a River, she sounds and smells like a River too.

“I’m Neo. How old are you, River?” Neo still continues.

She’s young. Looks like twenty or twenty-one. My instincts are on twenty-one.

“Turn this car around and take me back home. You promised”, her eyes are glossy like she’s about to cry again as she looks up to Shane.

For the first time since we entered our Range, Shane looks at her. Really looks at her.

“That’s before I heard your name, princess. We are your home now, River”

Before she screams again at any of us, the car comes to a stop.

I’m the first to open the door and leave the confines of it.

Once my feet crunch the grass beneath, I inhale the fresh air that’s at least helping me breathe in through the full moon.

A full moon that was supposed to strengthen us while we raided Brackenridge and burnt Landon O’Connor to the ground.

My brothers follow behind me, Neo standing next to me and Shane struggling somewhere with an angry River who’s still shouting ‘you rogue bastards’ over and over again.

Our driver, Gio, turns the car around and drives away.

Neo and I glance at our cabin up ahead and we start walking towards it.

“I can’t believe she’s been in Brackenridge all along. We’ve searched cities for her, we’ve killed looking for her”

“I know”, I say because it’s the truth and a few months ago we accepted our fate.

A fate without a mate.

“She hates us”, Neo chuckles.

“I know”

We have just kidnapped her from her home. Of course, she hates us.

“Shane’s worried. We should all be worried”, Neo finishes once our feet land on the porch of one of our old cabins in Brackenridge.

I punch in a code by the door and the door clicks from the inside indicating it’s open.

The cabin still looks good as new, it might be old from the outside but from the inside we’ve modified it to look a lot more like our apartments in New Hawk.

Neo moves to the kitchen and a minute later he comes back with two bottles of water, one which he tosses to me.

Shane comes through the main door a second later, carrying River like she’s nothing but a piece of light furniture.

He dumps her on the couch.

“Stay”

“Are you going to kill me now? Is this it?”

“There’s food in the kitchen, help yourself if you want to. There’s a bed upstairs too. A word of advice before we leave, don’t try to do anything stupid River. One wrong move and I might just let my wolf do what he wants to do with you. Don’t test me”

She’s sitting on the couch, my shirt on her and every time we lock eyes, I feel myself slip into her inches by inches.

I can’t let that happen. I can’t let her-

Shane tips his nose at us. An indication that he wants us to follow him outside and we do just that.

The thing about being triplets is that somehow, we know what one is thinking, we have a sense when one of us is in trouble and we absolutely know when a problem that we can’t solve arises.

The wind breezes against us harshly, the full moon heightens our senses, our anger, all our emotions.

Neo was right minutes ago. Shane is worried.

He has been pacing in front of us like an angry pup, pushing his hair back instead of doing what we do during times like these.

We let our wolves free. We run together. We hunt together. That’s how problems are solved among us.

He turns to us and says,

“We can’t take her with us”

I laugh, “She is already with us if you haven’t noticed”

“Besides we found our mate, we couldn’t leave her even if we tried”, Neo adds with a smirk.

“She is not our---”

“Shane, you felt it when we smelled her. You are the only one who has touched her enough to know she is in fact our mate. We are not leaving her”

This time I don’t know if it’s my wolf talking or myself.

“We could leave if we wanted, Connor. All we have to do is- “

“Shane”, Neo warns, his voice as hard as granite.

“Killing her is the best choice we have at the moment. Who cares about fate? She is a risk to us and everything we’ve built. She’s weak without her wolf and even with her wolf our enemies will crush her. I vote we kill her and move on”

‘We are not killing her’, my wolf retaliates.