Sacrificed To The Triplet Alpha Kings

Chapter 179: Why Are You Just Telling Us This Now, Brother?

"It’s not three months."

Lucian’s voice cut through the room, still standing where he’d risen, his gold eyes fixed on Nicholas’s back with something between fury and desperate calculation.

"It’s no longer three months, brother," he continued, his voice hardening. "We found her a month ago. During the contract. That’s when the mate bond activated, that’s when we recognized her as ours, the clock started then, didn’t it? Not when she arrived back here three days ago." His jaw clenched. "We have less time than we initially thought we had."

Nicholas didn’t turn from the window, but Sebastian lifted his head from his hands, his expression paling as he did the math himself, confirming what Lucian had just calculated.

Lucian’s fury sharpened into something more pointed now. He took a step toward Nicholas’s back, his voice rising. "And why are you just telling us this now, brother?" The question came out raw, wounded beneath the anger. "Why didn’t you say it from the beginning? Since the first time we found out she was ours?"

Nicholas remained facing the window, his shoulders visibly tense beneath his shirt. When he finally answered, his voice was quiet, quieter than either brother had heard from him in years.

"Because we needed to send her away," he said. "To heal from the pain we had inflicted on her."

He turned then, finally facing his brothers, and something in his expression had shifted, the careful control fracturing just slightly to reveal the weight he’d been carrying in isolation.

"Do you think she would have accepted the bond after everything we did to her when she first came here?" His silver eyes moved between them, demanding they truly consider the question. "Do you think she would have accepted us knowing what we’d done to her during those sixteen days she was here?"

He let the silence stretch, forcing them to sit with the memory neither of them wanted to fully revisit.

"So that was the decision I made," he continued. "After what happened." His gaze settled on Lucian specifically now, "When you were fucking her."

Lucian flinched like he’d been struck.

"She completely went under," Nicholas continued, his voice steady despite the difficulty of the words. "She broke completely, became empty, hollow...and that happened just because we handled her wrong, because we pushed too hard, too fast, without understanding what she actually needed from us." His jaw tightened. "You think she wouldn’t have shattered worse if we’d forced the bond on her then? If we’d marked her while she was already breaking apart?"

The memory hung in the room between them, Lilith’s whispered pleas, her empty eyes, the way Sebastian had carried her to Agnes while all three of them stood in horrified silence at what they’d done. Nicholas had relived that image more times than he cared to admit over the past several weeks, the specific horror of watching someone break because of them, because of what their nature had demanded without their permission.

Lucian’s fury seemed to drain out of him at the reminder, replaced by something heavier, more contemplative. He looked at Nicholas, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost its earlier edge.

"And what happens if we do not mark her within the timeframe?" he asked, quieter now. "What will happen to us?"

Nicholas held his gaze for a long moment. Then he moved back to his chair, sitting down slowly, deliberately, as if the weight of the answer required the stability of the movement.

"Then we go feral," he said, his silver eyes moving from Lucian to Sebastian and back again. "Completely. Permanently." He paused, and something flickered across his composed expression, the first genuine crack in his control since they’d entered the office. "And we kill her in the process."

The words landed like a physical blow.

Lucian stared at his brother, his mouth opening slightly as if to respond, but nothing came out. Slowly, without any further protest, he moved back to his chair and sat down heavily, his face dropping into his hands, his fingers pressing hard against his temples as if he could physically hold back the horror of what he’d just heard.

Sebastian’s dark eyes moved between his brothers...Lucian, hunched and shaking slightly, still processing the horror of the revelation; Nicholas, composed but visibly exhausted, carrying the burden of having held this alone for two years.

"Nicholas," Sebastian said finally, his voice quiet, careful. "How long have you known this?"

"Since the night Father told me," Nicholas said simply. "Two years."

"Two years," Sebastian repeated, something like disbelief coloring his voice. "You carried this alone for two years."

"There was no reason to burden either of you with it before we found her," Nicholas said. "It was theoretical. A future problem, not a present one." His silver eyes flickered with something almost apologetic. "I didn’t expect to need this information so soon. I didn’t expect to find her at all, honestly. Not really. Not the way it happened."

Sebastian leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair, processing everything that had just been laid before them. The kiss from the day before, his desperate, uncontrolled moment in the library....suddenly carried new weight, new urgency. Not just the pressure of the approaching full moon, but the pressure of a clock that had been running far longer than any of them had realized.

Lucian finally lifted his head from his hands, his gold eyes red-rimmed but clearer now, the earlier fury replaced by something more focused, more determined.

"So what do we do?" he asked, his voice rough. "How do we build genuine trust, genuine willingness, in the time we actually have left? Weeks. Maybe two months if we’re fortunate."

Nicholas didn’t answer immediately. His gaze moved to the window again, to the estate grounds beyond, to the life that continued outside these walls unaware of the impossible timeline now hanging over all of them.

Sebastian broke the silence instead, his voice steady despite everything they’d just learned, despite the fear that had settled into all three of them like a physical weight.

"Now that we know we have a deadline," he said quietly, looking directly at Nicholas, "what do we do, brother?"