Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings novel Chapter 77

Chapter 77: What Happens To Us After That?

"I’m not asking," Nicholas said quietly. "I’m telling you. Tomorrow, we let her go. We escort her to the gates of Shadowmere if she wants us to. We watch her walk away. And we don’t follow. We don’t try to change her mind. We don’t break the contract. We let her choose her own life."

Sebastian turned from the window, and his expression was haunted.

"And the bond?" he asked. "When she’s gone and we’re still feeling it pulling at us, still feeling her through the connection even though she’s miles away...what do we tell ourselves then?"

"We tell ourselves that we did the right thing," Nicholas replied. His voice was steady, but his hands were shaking again. He clasped them together to hide it. "We tell ourselves that we loved her enough to let her go."

The words hung in the air, heavy with a truth that none of them wanted to accept.

Lucian moved to the desk and placed his palms flat on the surface, leaning across until he was face to face with Nicholas.

"That’s the most painful thing I’ve ever heard," Lucian said quietly. "And I hate you for being right."

Nicholas’s jaw clenched. He turned away and walked to the window, looking out at the darkening grounds beyond. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

"I hate myself for being right," he said. "I hate every second of this. I hate that we have to let her go. I hate that tomorrow she’s going to leave, and we’re going to stand here and pretend that it doesn’t feel like we’re tearing ourselves apart. I hate that Kael is screaming at me right now, demanding that I go to her room, mark her, and bind her to us forever."

The honesty of it struck Sebastian like a physical blow. Nicholas never admitted weakness. Nicholas was the control, the strategy, the cold logic that kept them all from falling apart.

But standing at the window with his shoulders tense and his hands clenched into fists, Nicholas was clearly falling apart.

"Why?" Lucian asked, and there was genuine desperation in the question. "If you hate it as much as we do, why are you insisting we do this?"

Nicholas closed his eyes.

"Because the alternative is becoming a monster," he said quietly. "Because keeping her here against her will, bonding her without her true consent, would fundamentally destroy the men we’ve been trying to become. Because I would rather die than have her look at us the way she looked at us that first night....with fear instead of choice."

He opened his eyes and turned to face his brothers.

"And because," Nicholas continued, his voice dropping to something raw and honest, "I love her. Not as an alpha loves an omega. Not as a wolf loves a mate. But as a man loves another person, enough to let her go even when every instinct I have is screaming at me not to."

The words shattered something in the room.

Lucian’s head came down to the desk. His entire body was shaking.

Sebastian sank back into the chair, his face in his hands.

And Nicholas stood there, surrounded by the broken pieces of his brothers and the weight of the decision he had made for all of them.

"Tomorrow," Nicholas said finally, his voice steady again now that the truth was out. "Tomorrow at sunset, we escort her to the gates of Shadowmere. We smile and wish her well. And we let her go."

"And then what?" Sebastian asked from his chair, his voice muffled. "What happens to us after that?"

Nicholas looked at his brothers, at Lucian’s bent form, at Sebastian’s collapsed posture....and he felt the full weight of what he was asking them to endure.

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