Claimed By The Four Alpha Demons

7. The Forbidden Wing

Callie’s POV

The fog hadn’t lifted. If anything, it had grown thicker overnight, wrapping around the mountain like a wet wool blanket.

My alarm had gone off at six, jarring me out of a restless sleep filled with charcoal eyes and the smell of ozone. Briarcliff had been freezing, my grandmother’s boiler was on its last legs, much like the rest of the estate, and I had shivered through my morning coffee, huddled in a thick cardigan that did nothing to chase away the damp chill settling in my bones.

I checked my phone for the tenth time since waking up.

No new messages.

Liam hadn’t texted. Not a “Good morning,” not a “See you tonight,” not even a generic “Hope the cleaning goes well.” Just a blank screen staring back at me, reflecting my own tired face.

“He’s busy,” I told the empty kitchen, my voice sounding small and unconvinced. “He’s working for us. For this house.”

I looked around at the peeling wallpaper and the water stain spreading across the ceiling like a map of a forgotten country. I loved this place. I loved the history of it, the memories of my grandmother baking scones in this very kitchen. But lately, fighting for Briarcliff felt less like preserving a legacy and more like drowning in a money pit.

With a heavy sigh, I grabbed my keys and headed out into the gray morning.

The drive to Grimstone Hall was treacherous. The visibility was near zero, forcing me to crawl up the winding switchbacks. But as I approached the iron gates, something strange happened.

The headache that had been pulsing behind my temples since I woke up…vanished.

The moment the gates groaned open and I crossed onto the Hawthorne property, a sudden clarity washed over me. And it was…physical. The air in my car seemed to vibrate, buzzing with a frequency that made my teeth ache in a pleasant way. It was like stepping from a stuffy room into a crisp, autumn breeze.

I parked the car and hurried to the service entrance, checking my watch. 7:55 AM.

“Five minutes to spare,” I breathed, smoothing down my uniform, a simple black tunic and trousers that Britta had provided. It was utilitarian, but at least it was warm.

I entered the kitchen, half-expecting another ambush. But the room was empty. The stainless steel gleamed under the harsh pot lights, and the only sound was the hum of the massive refrigerators.

A note sat on the center island, written in elegant, sharp cursive.

West Wing. Third door on the left. Don’t touch anything electronic. - G

“Succinct,” I muttered, crumpling the note and tossing it into the recycling bin. “Don’t be late. Don’t touch. Don’t breathe too loud.”

I took a deep breath, grabbed my cleaning cart, and headed for the heavy double doors that separated the main house from the forbidden territory.

Britta had called the West Wing the “heart of the beast.” She said the staff didn’t go there because the brothers were “particular.” Now, standing in front of the dark oak panels, I hesitated. The wood looked older here, the varnish darker.

I pushed the doors open.

The air inside was instantly cooler, smelling of cedar, old paper, and that distinct, metallic tang you smell right before a thunderstorm breaks, and the corridor was dimmer than the rest of the house, lit by sconces that cast long, flickering shadows against the stone walls.

“Hello?” I called out softly.

Silence answered me. Not the dead silence of Briarcliff, but a heavy, watchful silence.

I walked down the hall, counting doors, the wheels of my cart squeaking on the plush runner. One. Two. Three.

The third door was slightly ajar, and a faint blue light pulsed from within, rhythmic and steady.

I knocked. “Housekeeping.”

No answer.

I pushed the door open with my hip, dragging the cart inside.

“Holy…”

I stopped dead. This wasn’t a bedroom. It wasn’t an office. It looked like the command center of a spaceship that had crashed into a Victorian library.

The room was circular, lined with bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling, but instead of books, the shelves were crammed with servers, tangled wires, and strange, glowing artifacts that looked like high-end prototypes. Monitors lined the walls, displaying scrolling lines of code, heat maps, and live feeds of…was that the forest?

And in the center of the room, surrounded by a ring of screens, sat a man.

He was facing away from me, slumped in a high-tech ergonomic chair. He was shirtless.

I froze, my eyes tracing the line of his spine. He was lean, wirier than Raiden or Ace, but his back was defined by corded muscle that shifted as he typed furiously on a keyboard. And he wasn’t tattoo-free either. A geometric pattern, sharp angles and binary code mixed with unrecognizable symbols, crawled up his left arm and disappeared over his shoulder.

“I said housekeeping,” I tried again, my voice a little louder.

The typing stopped abruptly.

He didn’t turn around immediately. He tapped one final key, and the screens around him shifted from red to blue.

Then, he spun the chair.

It was Nate. The quiet one. The one with the glasses and the hoodie from yesterday.

Except now, the glasses were perched on top of his head, tangled in messy dark hair, and the hoodie was nowhere to be seen. His chest was smooth, pale, and rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm.

His green eyes narrowed behind a stray lock of hair. He didn’t look surprised. He looked…irritated.

“You’re early,” Nate said. His voice was softer than his brothers’, lacking the gravelly aggression of Raiden or the silky danger of Ace. It was precise. Clipped.

“Five minutes,” I said, gripping the handle of my cart to stop my hands from fidgeting. “Greyson said eight sharp. I like to be punctual.”

“Greyson likes control,” Nate corrected. He stood up, stretching his arms over his head, and satisfying pop echoed in the quiet room. “I like variables. But not when they walk in unannounced.”

He walked toward me, weaving through the maze of cables on the floor with practiced ease. He stopped a few feet away, leaning against a stack of servers that hummed with a low, menacing sound.

“This is a mess,” I said, my housekeeper instincts overriding my sudden shyness at being locked in a room with a shirtless billionaire. “How do you even find anything in here?”

“I don’t look,” Nate said, tapping his temple. “I listen. Everything in this room has a frequency, Callie.”

“Right,” I said slowly. “Technological metaphors. Very Silicon Valley.”

“Not a metaphor,” he murmured. He looked at me, his gaze drifting from my eyes to my hands, then to the air around me. He squinted, as if the air around me was hazy. “You’re louder today.”

“Excuse me?”

He nodded toward a monitor on his left. The jagged green line on the screen was spiking erratically. “Interference. Yesterday, in the kitchen, it was a hum. Today, it’s a buzz. Did something happen?”

A chill sliding down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature.

A buzz.

That was exactly how I’d described the feeling inside my own head this morning. A constant, low-level buzzing that sat behind my eyes. But that was internal. That was a headache, or stress, or a lack of caffeine. It wasn’t something someone else could hear.

“How…” I trailed off, swallowing hard. “How can you tell?”

“The monitors,” he said, gesturing vaguely to the wall of screens. “And my ears. High stress levels affect bio-electric fields. It messes with the sensors.”

I stared at him. “My stress is messing with your computer? That’s…not how computers work. And how would you know what my head feels like?”

“It is when the equipment is sensitive enough,” Nate countered, ignoring my second question. “And when the stress is…specific. Is it the fiancé? The one who isn’t here?”

I blinked, unsettled. It felt like he was looking right through my skin, seeing the nerves firing beneath the surface. Was I shaking? Was the ‘buzzing’ making me vibrate in a way I couldn’t see?

“Why does everyone in this house know about my relationship status?” I snapped, defensive anger bubbling up to cover my confusion. “Is there a memo on the fridge? ‘Torment the new girl about her absentee boyfriend’?”

“We don’t need a memo,” Nate said simply. “We observe. Pattern recognition is my specialty. And the pattern says you’re unhappy, but you’re too stubborn to admit it.”

“I’m not unhappy,” I lied, my voice tight. “I’m busy. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

He reached out.

For a second, I thought he was going to touch my face, like Ace had. But he didn’t. He just reached past me and grabbed a can of compressed air from my cart.

“The servers,” he said, holding up the can. “They overheat if the vents get clogged. The dust in this house…it’s not normal dust. It’s heavier. Sticky. It carries a charge.”

“I noticed,” I said, watching his hands. They were elegant, long-fingered, but scarred with tiny burns and nicks. “Britta says it’s just old house dust.”

“Britta isn’t an engineer,” Nate said quietly.

The air in the room shifted and became heavy, charged. I felt that strange pull again, the desire to lean closer to him. It was maddening. Why did being near him make the buzzing inside me settle into a purr?

“And what are you?” I asked. “Besides rich and eccentric?”

Nate looked at me then, really looked at me. His green eyes seemed to glow, illuminated by the blue light of the monitors.

“I’m the guy who keeps the lights on,” he said. “Among other things.”

He moved back to his desk, tossing the compressed air can to me. I caught it reflexively.

“Start with the vents on the north wall,” he instructed, his tone turning clinical again. “Don’t use water. Don’t use soap. Just air. And Callie?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t touch the black cables. Unless you want a shock that will stop your heart.”

“Comforting,” I muttered. “Thanks for the safety brief.”

I walked over to the bank of servers on the north wall and started spraying. Dust, thick, gray, and strangely sparkly, billowed out into the air.

As I worked, I could feel Nate watching me. I wasn’t just being paranoid. I could feel his gaze on my back, a tangible weight. But unlike Greyson’s stare, which felt like judgment, or Ace’s, which felt like hunger, Nate’s gaze felt like…analysis.

Like he was trying to solve a math problem that was standing in his room holding a can of air.

“So,” I said, trying to break the silence that was quickly becoming too intimate. “What is all this? Bitcoin mining? NSA surveillance?”

“Security,” Nate answered without looking up from his keyboard. “We have enemies, Callie. People who want what we have.”

“Money?”

“Assets. Power,” he corrected. “The ground you’re standing on…it’s valuable. More than you know.”

I paused, the can of air hissing in my hand. “My grandmother always said the mountain was special. She said the earth here breathed.”

Nate stopped typing. The silence stretched, thick and taut.

“She was right,” he said softly. “The earth breathes. And sometimes, it screams.”

A chill ran down my spine.

“Is that why you’re all so…” I waved a hand vaguely. “Intense? Because you’re guarding…what? A breathing mountain?”

Nate swiveled his chair around again. He looked tired. Like bone deep tired, the kind of exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix.

“We’re intense because we have to be,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Relaxing isn’t a luxury we can afford.”

He stood up and walked toward me again. This time, he didn’t stop at a respectful distance. He came right up to me, close enough that I could smell him…clean linen, soldering iron, and mint.

He reached out and, very gently, took the can of air from my hand. His fingers brushed mine.

Zap.

A visible spark, blue and sharp, snapped between our skin.

I yelped and jerked my hand back. “Ow! Static.”

Nate didn’t flinch. He stared at his own hand, then at me, wonder dawning in his eyes. He rubbed his thumb over the spot where the spark had jumped.

“That wasn’t normal static,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Too focused. The conductivity is…off the charts.”

He looked up, his green eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my knees buckle. He looked like he wanted to dissect me. Or keep me. I wasn’t sure which was scarier.

“You should go,” he said abruptly, his voice rough. “Go clean the library again. Or the kitchen. Anywhere but here.”

“But Greyson said—”

“I don’t care what Greyson said,” Nate growled, a dark edge bleeding into his tone. He turned his back on me, his muscles bunching with tension. “You’re creating too much interference, and I can’t think. The equipment is going haywire.”

“I’m just standing here!” I protested, hurt flashing through me.

“Exactly,” Nate said. “And you’re loud. Go. Before you short-circuit something expensive.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

I grabbed my cart and bolted for the door, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

I made it into the hallway, the heavy door clicking shut behind me, and I leaned against the stone wall, gasping for breath.

My hand, the one he had touched, was tingling. It wasn’t painful. It just felt…warm. Alive.

I looked down at my palm. There was a faint, red mark where the spark had jumped.

“What is wrong with this family?” I whispered to the empty corridor. “And how did he know about the buzzing? Can he see inside my head?”

But as I pushed off the wall and headed back toward the safety of the main house, I realized something terrifying.

The headache was gone. The cold was gone.

And for the first time since Liam had hung up on me, I didn’t feel numb anymore.

I felt awake.

And God help me, I wanted to go back inside.