Claimed By A Father And Son

Are You Jealous ?

~Elena~

“He has a mate. What’s her name again…Veronica right? Zia said, casually, like she was talking about the weather or the fact that the sky was blue.

And I swear to the Moon Goddess, my entire soul just… evaporated. Like, poof. Gone. Body still standing. Heart still beating. But everything else? Gone. Dead. Vapor. Ascended. I just stood there, blinking like I’d been hit in the face with an actual silver bat.

“I’m sorry, he what?” I asked, even though I’d heard her perfectly. Even though every single word had hit me like a truck with Lucian’s scowling face printed on the front. My voice cracked like a haunted flute.

My palms were sweating so bad I almost dropped my own hands. I don’t even know what that means, but that’s how it felt.

Raina was chewing her gum slower now, like she was enjoying this way too much. “Yup. Lucian Blackthorne is technically… kind of… possibly… maybe bonded.”

And I just— I could not breathe. My entire chest caved in. My brain started glitching like I’d been unplugged from reality and someone was trying to reboot me with a potato. I started shaking my head so hard my ponytail hit me in the face.

“You’re telling me I’ve been rooming with someone’s mate? Like—like actual mate-mate? Like bonded? Fated? Moon Goddess-approved? Claimed and kissed and cuddled and—and—oh my God—sexed-up and scented—?!”

Zia raised both hands like she was calming a wild animal. “Okay, first of all, no need to combust. He hasn’t claimed her.”

I blinked at her. “What do you mean he hasn’t claimed her?! Isn’t that the whole point of having a mate? You sniff, you bond, you bite, you boom?”

Raina shrugged like the whole world wasn’t tilting off its axis. “I hear they f**k all the time and he still hasn’t marked her.”

I choked. Literally. I made a weird squeaking noise and slapped my own chest like that would stop my soul from trying to leave my body. My wolf went silent for once.

My heart was doing backflips and my brain was just this loud, echoing static. I blinked at her, mouth wide open, because what the actual hell did she just say?

“You—what—what do you mean they f**k all the time?” I asked, and my voice sounded like I’d been punched in the throat. “How do you even know that? Who told you that? Why would you say that to me? Are you trying to kill me?”

Raina popped her gum like she hadn’t just dropped a nuclear bomb in my already collapsing emotional reality. “People talk,” she said with a shrug. “I’m just repeating what I heard.”

“Oh my God,” I croaked. “I need an inhaler. I need a sedative. I need a new life. Because you’re telling me I’m living with a guy who’s actively sleeping with a mate he refuses to mark, and staring at me like I’m a snack and a threat at the same time?”

Zia was grinning again. She looked like she was watching the juiciest drama unfold and I was the tragic main character getting eaten alive by plot twists. “That’s the weird part,” she said, crossing her arms like she was about to present evidence in court.

“But I thought they were together?” I whispered, already regretting asking.

“They are,” Raina said with that fake-innocent tone girls use right before ruining your mental health. “They’ve been promised since last year. Arranged or something. Alpha tradition. But the fact that he hasn’t marked her? That’s not just weird. That’s suspicious.”

Zia nodded like this was all perfectly logical. “He’s Alpha. He could’ve marked her the second she turned eighteen. That’s the law. That’s the bond. That’s the whole point. You get a mate, you bite, you bond, you boom—done. But Lucian Blackthorne? He didn’t bite. Not even a nibble.”

I blinked again. “So… you’re saying they… sleep together. But he hasn’t claimed her. Like no bond. No scent. No mating mark. Nothing.”

Raina gave me a look. “I mean, that’s what people say. That he’s not touching her like that. Not really. That she’s mad about it. That she’s obsessed. That she’s trying to make him jealous.”

I stared at both of them like they’d summoned this entire drama from some dark spellbook just to torture me. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

Zia smirked. “Because you live with him.”

“Because he stares at you like he wants to devour you,” Raina added, eyes dancing.

“Because maybe he hasn’t marked her… because he wants you.”

That was it. That was the final straw. I just stared at them, open-mouthed, my brain short-circuiting so hard I forgot how to breathe for a second.

“Stop,” I whispered. “You cannot say things like that to me. I will combust. I will die. I will explode in a fireball of embarrassment and trauma, and my ghost will sue this school for emotional terrorism.”

Raina leaned in like a devil. “What if you’re his real mate?”

“I’m not!” I yelped. “I am not! I didn’t even want to live with him. I wanted a bed and a desk and maybe a window. That’s all. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this. I’m not ready for this! I’m still emotionally recovering from orientation!”

Zia grinned like she was loving every second of my meltdown. “But what if you are? What if the Moon Goddess made him for you, and that’s why he hasn’t touched Veronica?”

“No,” I said firmly, jabbing my finger in the air like I was casting a counter-curse. “No no no. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. I don’t want a cursed Alpha with a deadly ex who carries silver earrings and bites throats! I want peace! I want sleep! I want to graduate without being turned into a headline on PackTok!”

My wolf, of course, chose that exact moment to purr softly in my head like a b***h in love. “He wants you.”

“I swear to the moon, shut up,” I snapped in my thoughts. “You are not helping.”

“You want him too.”

“Shut up!”

Raina gave me this smug little look that made me want to scream and cry and maybe jump into a volcano. “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”

I blinked, horrified. “Thought about what?”

“Lucian. Naked. Growling. On top of you. Claiming you.”

My soul left my body. I gasped so hard I think I swallowed a mosquito. My face burst into flames. My brain just started glitching like a Windows 98 computer. “WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO ME?!”

Raina just smiled. “Because it’s fun watching you suffer.”

“Really? Really?” I said, backing away like they were both possessed by some giggling demon of drama.

“I need to move far away from you girls. Like spiritually, emotionally, geographically. I need distance. I need sage. I need new friends who don’t laugh while my life burns.”

Raina tilted her head, still chewing her gum like it was popcorn, and Zia was just beaming like I’d proposed to her or something.

“Oh, come on,” Zia said, stepping closer with that evil bestie energy. “We are here for life!”

“Yeah, babe,” Raina added, slinging her arm dramatically around my shoulders like I hadn’t just tried to escape. “You’re stuck with us now. This is a trauma-bonded sisterhood. No refunds. No returns. No exorcisms.”

I groaned so loud I think a bird fell out of the sky. “I cannot survive this. I’m telling you right now. I’m too soft for this kind of chaos. I cry at commercials. I cry when people raise their voice. I cried when I bumped my elbow last week.

“I am not built to be in a wolf soap opera where the unmarked mate is a certified assassin and the possibly-fated one is living with him in a room where the walls are thinner than my will to live.”

Zia giggled like I was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. “But your facial expressions are priceless. Like seriously. You should be in a show. You’re so expressive. So… alive.”

“I’m expressive because I’m in crisis!” I hissed. “I’m alive because I haven’t been killed yet. But the day is still young! Veronica could leap out of a tree at any moment like a werewolf ninja and claw me into a warning sign!”

Raina was just shaking her head like I was a baby deer. “Relax, Elena. If Veronica tries anything, we’ll help.”

Zia raised a brow. “Or at least we’ll record it and make sure you go viral.”

“I knew it,” I said, pointing an accusing finger at both of them. “You’re not friends. You’re chaos goblins in cute outfits.”

Raina winked. “And you love us.”

“No, I don’t,” I said way too fast, way too loud, way too defensive to sound believable. I even crossed my arms like that would somehow block the truth from leaking out of my pores.

Zia just raised an eyebrow, and Raina smiled like she knew I was full of s**t. But before they could say anything else—

“You’re jealous,” my wolf said in that slow, silky voice she uses when she’s about to ruin my mental peace. “About Veronica.”

I blinked hard. “Excuse me?”

“You’re jealous,” she purred again, drawing the name out like it tasted sweet. “Veeeerooonica.”

I almost tripped on my own feet just from how hard I clenched. “Oh my God. Shut up. Don’t say her name like that. I’m not jealous. I don’t even know her.”

“But you know she’s touched him.”

My mouth dropped open. “Can you not?! Like ever?! I’m literally trying to have a nervous breakdown in peace and you’re making it weird.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I was not thinking about Veronica having s*x with Lucian—”

“You just did.”

“I swear to the moon, I will shift just to throw hands with you.”

“Touched his chest. Kissed his throat. Maybe even rode his…”

“STOP IT!” I whisper-yelled, nearly slapping myself in the forehead. “Shut the hell up!”

But just as I was about to snap all the way and tell my own inner voice to go to hell..

“FIRST-YEAR IN THE RING. NOW!”

Dammit.