Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 195

Amelia hadn’t come back. She no longer occupied the space inside her shell. The shape of her body, the cadence of her speech, the way she tilted her chin, all of it belonged to her. But none of it was her.

What stood behind the metal bars was a version of Amelia wearing her skin like armor, moving with the poise and detachment of someone studying us rather than reuniting with us. Each time she turned her head toward me, it was Like watching someone else inhabit her bones.

The softness I used to see when her eyes met mine was gone. Her gaze swept the room with surgical precision, cataloguing weaknesses | hadn’t realized were visible. The tilt of her smile was deliberate and practiced. Her voice lacked warmth, and her stillness didn’t suggest peace, it radiated the tension of a trap wound tight. She wasn’t calm, she was just waiting to pounce.

Simon had suggested calibrated resonance sweeps, low frequency tests spaced just enough to echo the cadence of the bell tones without replicating the full sequence.

We had tried everything else, and all of it had failed. Every personal attempt I’d made to reach her, every familiar scent or memory or word, had either been met with blankness or baited cruelty.

This wasn’t about bringing her back anymore. It was about understanding what she’d been turned into, about making sure we knew exactly what we were trying to contain. Thelab itself had been upgraded for this, steel and tempered glass, adaptive protocols, four-tier security override. But none of us trusted it to hold her.

The lighting buzzed overhead with a hum just sharp enough to grate. The air carried that bitter antiseptic sting that clung to skin and clothes. I stood close enough to the viewing panel that my breath fogged it slightly. Hers didn’t, or maybe I just didn’t want to see the proof that something inside her had gone cold.

She stood with her weight evenly distributed, shoulders relaxed, gaze forward. Her arms hung at her sides, unmoving. She didn’t blink often or shift her stance. Her body held the quiet tension of a soldier before a mission, not hesitant, but controlled and waiting.

Simon began the resonance test. The first tone passed with no visible response. The second rang a little longer, and I caught a tick in her jaw. The third played, lower in register, and she smiled, not cruelly, not even with pleasure, but with a deliberate kind of focus. Her pupils constricted and then she moved.

She struck the barrier with her fult body weight. The sound was dense, bone and muscle hitting reinforced steel. The room shuddered slightly from the force. I stepped forward without thinking. Simon flinched and muttered something under his breath.

She stayed pressed there, palm splayed across the panel.

Her chest rose evenly. No panting, no signs of exertion.Her lips curled.

“You still flinch,” she said, tone almost conversational. “I taught myself not to.”

She tapped the glass twice with her knuckles. “You taught me how to move,” she continued, her voice level and almost fond. “You’re the reason I know how to kill wolves before they shift. Want me to explain it back to you?”

I didn’t speak. Giving her anything would only make it worse.

She spoke anyway.

She began listing the weak points and the angles of

• attack, walking me through the steps like a training session. She explained how to rupture the carotid before the shift could protect it, how to fracture a sternum with a barehanded strike, and how to cripple a forearm with enough force to prevent a shift-triggered transformation.

Her voice didn’t change inflection. She spoke like she was reciting a lesson plan.

They were my strategies. Every single one of them. And she delivered them with the same detachment I had once used to teach her, back when I thought preparing her was the same as protecting her.

Then she leaned forward, close enough that her breath smudged the surface between us. “Your blood was delicious,” she murmured, her mouth barely moving. ”

Should I say thank you for the meal?”

Simon stepped sharply to the side. “Cut it. No more tones,” he said to the technician, voice taut.

I didn’t move.

She turned her head again, this time toward me. “Jenny,” she said, with mock sweetness. “She was your first blade.

You trained her to cut. You watched her become the thing she is now.”

I stayed silent. It was the only thing I could do.

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