The Triplet Alphas' Regret

[CASSIAN POV]

Violet’s eyes were slightly hooded over and shimmery with tears. She sniffled, her nose moving and twitching slightly as she did.

To most people, she was a sight to behold. To be fair, Violet was an extremely beautiful woman, and she knew how to make herself appear even more so with the use of a few calculated tears and angles.

Yes, I wasn’t stupid enough to miss the fact that sometimes, she pretended to seem weak and fragile to get my attention. Part of me liked it. After all, who wouldn’t like the fact that she would make the effort to pretend just to get my attention?

It was endearing, and a sight like this was sure to make my heart melt for her if this were any other day.

However, for some reason, now all I could feel was a rush of irritation whenever she spoke. Her voice sounded almost grating in my ear, especially when I compared it to Briar’s voice.

I paused. Why did Briar suddenly come to mind? I guess my brain was addled by the kiss earlier. It was all Briar’s fault, and Violet didn’t deserve my irritation. I forced myself not to frown, lest she thought that something was wrong again.

"No, nothing is wrong," I said, flippantly waving my hand. "Where are Rowan and Soren? Didn’t you tell them that you’re feeling unwell at all?"

Violet sniffled once more, a pained expression in her eyes. "I did," she said. "However, I was told that they’re currently busy with their tasks and are unable to visit."

Her hands scrunched the blanket, the fabric wrinkling under the tight grip of her long, manicured nails. I couldn’t help but notice that her hands looked pretty healthy for someone who was ill, especially after I saw Willow’s malnourished arms, along with Briar’s stick-thin ones.

Violet continued to speak, "I suppose I should be understanding. Alpha Rowan and Alpha Soren have been awfully busy the last few days because of Briar. She has been causing so much trouble for them that I can’t even be too surprised that they’ll need to run about fixing the problems she caused."

I couldn’t help but scoff. Violet couldn’t have hit the nail more right on the head.

Briar was a menace, and worst of all, my two idiotic brothers didn’t seem to realize that she had them wrapped around her finger. They were twirling and wriggling around her like rabid beasts desperate to mate, eagerly vying for her attention.

Back then, I accused them of being hoodwinked by what was between her legs, and frankly, it seemed like my words were still relevant even after we returned from the pack. Rowan and Soren had shot me no small number of glares every time I tried to remind them of what Briar did, their opinions on Briar turning a complete 180 the moment they got to spend time together.

Truthfully, I couldn’t understand why. Sure, she had a pretty enough face. No matter what, Briar was still a member of the Argyris family, a family with high breeding. Her family had produced powerful and exceptional wolves for many generations, second only to the Hadeon family.

Across the continent, our pack was one of the strongest, if not the strongest. As the Beta family of Shadowclaw, that meant that the blood that flowed in her veins had produced generation after generation of superior werewolves.

However, she had somehow managed to avoid all of that. Every good and powerful gene seemed to have gone entirely to Willow and Cedar, and Briar was left with nothing but a pretty face and a sharp tongue. She was the runt of the family.

I couldn’t help but sneer at the thought of the last conversation we shared.

However, it was also that thought that made my throat feel dry.

Subconsciously, I raised a hand to my mouth. My fingers touched my lips. I could still feel the softness of her lips pressed against mine in a tender kiss. There was a hint of sweetness that clung to her lips, tasting almost like honey. Just one taste didn’t feel enough.

For some reason, the more I kissed her, the more fueled my body became. At the same time, I grew hungrier and more desperate for more. It was almost as though the fated bond between us had ignited a fire in my wolf that I couldn’t hold back. I had turned into an animal, desperate to taste more of her.

I felt my body heat up as I imagined her body under mine. She was so small and frail against my larger frame. If I used even a little more strength, she could’ve easily snapped like a twig beneath my body weight.

And her voice― that soft mewl she had left out when I deepened the kiss. I could almost hear it ringing in my ears even now, along with her gentle pants of air as she desperately tried to catch her breath.

"―don’t understand what it is that she gave Alpha Rowan and Alpha Soren, for them to be so entranced by her. Do you think she poisoned them?"

A certain keyword snapped me out of my reverie, and I felt my heart skip a beat as I blinked, finally realizing where I was. I froze in disbelief.

I could not have been fantasizing about Briar, not when Violet was talking to me. I could not be falling under the same spell that captivated Rowan and Soren and turned them into pathetic, lovelorn, and lust-filled beasts whose moods rose and fell depending on how Briar spoke to them.

My hands automatically clenched themselves into fists, and I welcomed the pain. It helped me snap out of my mind’s deranged fantasies.

Clearly, the poisoning had fucked with my head. The poisoning that Briar was half-responsible for, I reminded myself. She still wasn’t in the clear, no matter what Soren said about it.

Violet noticed my strange expression, and she raised an eyebrow, leaning slightly towards me.

"Alpha Cassian?" she asked. "Are you quite alright?"

I sucked in a deep breath of air through my teeth when she moved closer. There was a strain in my pants, and I looked down to see that my member had somehow risen to attention in the last few seconds. A small tent now strained against the fabric of my sweatpants. The color merely emphasized its shape even further.

As Violet’s eyes traveled down, she let out a quick gasp of surprise. Her eyes widened, and her cheeks began to redden.

"Alpha Cassian..." Violet began, her voice sounding coy. "Do you... need some help? I could―"

"No!" I quickly shot out of my seat and turned away from her, pacing to the window. I could hear my heart racing violently in my ear.

Shit. She saw!

While Violet and I had actually slept together, I didn’t want her to actually see me pop a boner in my pants. I was supposed to be a respected Alpha who had control of his impulses. This sudden, unplanned boner was an unnatural reaction. I stopped having this problem the moment I crossed puberty!

I wasn’t some hopeless horndog― and I especially wasn’t popping a boner because my mind was recalling Briar’s kiss.

I wasn’t.

"...Oh," Violet let out a little sigh, sounding incredibly crestfallen that I was immediately filled with guilt for rejecting her. "Is it because... I’m not attractive to you anymore?" There was a small, choked sob at the end of the question, as though it had been forced out of her throat.

"No, it’s not that," I said through gritted teeth, making sure to keep my body turned away from her as I spoke. "You are not feeling well. I’m not going to get you to help me with this when you’re feeling under the weather. What kind of brute do you take me for?"

Also, somehow the thought of her touching me there filled me with the strangest sense of dread, instead of the anticipation that I felt before.

"But―" Violet continued to protest. "You’re my chosen mate. I should be helping you to relieve this stress of yours. I might be ill, but I’m not unconscious. Let me help you, Cassian."

"It’ll go away on its own," I said firmly.

Inhaling and exhaling deeply, I tried to calm myself and my lower half down. This was all Briar’s fault, and I didn’t want to think about her at all.

However, all routes in my head led to Briar. I remembered how our faces were a hairsbreath away from each other as we yelled and argued, to that time in the spare room where I fell on top of her on that bed, to me lying on her lap in the infirmary, and finally to that wretched damned kiss that my brain continued to loop in high-definition, helpfully unearthing new details with every repeat watch.

The cock in my pants seemed to throb so hard it was almost painful. Was this a joke the Moon Goddess played on me?

Or maybe, this was just Briar’s plan all along.