Page 1 of The Alpha's Triplets

Chapter 1 - Eleanor

Eleanor’s head throbbed furiously as the cab sped down the highway toward her town. For someone who hardly ever got drunk or hungover, she’d pushed herself to the limits of intoxication the night before.

She looked a mess. She didn’t need to see a mirror to know. Her wolf whined and growled with displeasure. Now that she’d left her human friends, she could let her out again, but her protests made Eleanor consider locking her back up. If only for a few hours.

She groaned again and shifted in her seat, and the driver glanced at her through the rear-view mirror. “You okay, miss?”

Eleanor rolled her eyes, thankful that he couldn’t see them through her thick shades. “Just drive,” she muttered.

He scoffed and said something under his breath, but left her alone. Country music from the radio filled the tiny suburban and made Eleanor nauseous. She considered telling the driver to turn it down but decided the stress of speaking was not worth the effort.

She stared out the window instead, at the endless rows of pine trees that passed by in a flash. This was always the worst part for her. Returning home—to a small town, to the elders. To boredom.

She loved her wolf and she loved being part of her pack and Starlight Valley too. But there were times she wished she was an ordinary girl, free to mix and mingle with her human friends without fear of discovery. Free to live among them and have a permanent life in their society.

She wasn’t ordinary, though. To her best friend, Carla, and the other girls, Eleanor was the daughter of wealthy parents who liked to live in seclusion and travel the world.

Everything her friends knew about her was a fabrication. They thought she was a college student who took classes online. They thought she lived in a different city and only came to Silver Springs to manage her family’s estate. They thought she washuman.

That sure beat saying,Hey guys, I know I look normal, but I can turn into a seven-foot wolf at will, and rip you to shreds. I enjoy running through the woods and drinking the blood of animals I kill.

So, she kept her romps short, and never stayed long enough for anyone to ask her too many questions. Despite her precautions, her pack elders constantly gave her grief about her trips into human society.

“You don’t just risk yourself, Elena—you risk our entire pack and our species as a whole with your actions,” one of the elders, Tony Sorensen, had lectured her the last time she’d been gone. “I need you to be more responsible and to act with more restraint. If not for yourself, for your kind.”

She’d made sure to give him a piece of her mind before stomping out of Xander’s study, of course. She hated when they spoke to her as if she were a child. She’d had enough of that from her parents. She wasn’t going to stand it from the elders. She knew exactly what she was doing and she had a right to live her own life.

She loved Xander fiercely but she sometimes wished he came to her defense when her lifestyle choices were put under a microscope.

Instead, he’d stand aside, allowing her to defend herself. And often, she did a botched job of it, and always left those encounters feeling like a petulant child. That always got on her nerves.

In Xander’s defense, though, he was the only one who never berated Eleanor. Not openly, at least. On a few occasions, he’d calmly asked her to consider the wisdom in what the elders were saying. Her reactions had been so fiery that he’d stopped altogether.

She let out a deep sigh. Knowing the elders, they were probably waiting for her at the moment, with another yammering lecture on her questionable life decisions.

She saw the sign that said “Deepwood Town, 20 Miles,” and groaned again. When the driver glanced at her through the rearview mirror, she glared at him. He frowned and turned his eyes back to the road.

Home Sweet Home.

She did her best to straighten out her hair as the car turned off the highway toward Deepwood. The streets were busier than usual for a Sunday afternoon, and Eleanor sat up in the cab.

There were people huddled in groups everywhere she looked and she was immediately alarmed. In a small town like Deepwood, where everyone usually minded their own business, this was a strange sight.

Had something happened while she was away? She wasn’t sure. Xander hardly ever called her or left her messages unless it was important. She checked her phone again to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. She hadn’t.

The traffic increased as she drew closer to her family mansion at the edge of town. When she arrived at her house, there was a small crowd of people outside, and a line of people entering and leaving the building.

What the hell?

She paid the driver and stepped out of the cab. She pulled her hoodie over her head tightly and kept her face down as she weaved through the crowd into the house.

She could feel her heart smashing into her ribcage in dreadful anticipation, and she bit her lip. What were all these people doing here? They didn’t look mournful or somber, so she was sure nothing tragic had happened. Still, what were these people doing here?

The source of the disturbance was clear as soon as she entered the house. In the middle of the living room, the pack’s elders had set up a table and there was a queue of young women waiting to see them.

Eleanor stood to the side and watched the spectacle curiously. There was a red velvet cushion in the middle of the table, and on the cushion was a fist-sized obsidian rock. It had white markings on it that looked like runes, but she was too far away to be sure.

As she watched, a woman sat down across from the elders, and the chief elder gestured for her to pick up the black rock. The woman did so and held onto it for a few seconds, watching the rock expectantly.

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