Claimed by My Bestie's Alpha Daddy novel Chapter 213

The first thing I saw was the boy.

He couldn’t have been more than seven, curled in a shallow pocket of shadow behind a broken stone pillar. His clothes were stiff with dirt, and his arms were locked tightly around his knees like he was trying to disappear into the stone. His eyes were wide and glassy, but it wasn’t fear that hit me first. It was the pulse, his resonance reached me before his face registered, jagged and unsteady, jumping in every direction without focus or control.

It was early resonance. Raw and unstable, but unmistakably a sleeper agent. Like me.

I moved slowly because I understood how easily an untrained mind could spiral when the signal hit too hard. I crouched low, keeping my hands open and my voice steady. “Hey,” I said. “I can feel you. You’re not broken.”

His head jerked up. “I didn’t mean to,” he said, voice cracking. “It just started. I heard bells first, and then I couldn’t stop it. My body moved like it wasn’t mine. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

I stayed crouched beside him and asked gently, “You heard bells?

Before it started?”

He nodded, shame creeping into his expression. “In my head. Not like real ones. They just… started ringing, and then everything changed.”

I didn’t let go of his hand. “That wasn’t you. They used you. But you didn’t want to do any of it, and that matters. You came back. You’re not gone.”

“I know,” I told him gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Behind me, a wolf stirred, reacting to the wild signal still bleeding off the boy’s body. I didn’t turn. I centered myself, inhaled once, and sent asoft pulse in the wolf’s direction until it quieted again.

The boy flinched. “They said I wasn’t supposed to feel anything yet.

That it only happens when you’re older.” He hesitated, then added, ” But when they hijacked me, I felt something else. I think it was my wolf. It was like he woke up in the middle of it all, and he couldn’t stop what was happening either. He was scared too.”

“You’re early,” I said. “That’s not bad. It just means you’re strong.”

He looked at me cautiously, eyes narrowed. “You’re strong. Were you early?”

“No,” I said. “I was very late, but I got here eventually.”

His breathing slowed slightly. I reached out with a tether of resonance, light and patient, not to pull him in but to meet him where he already stood. His pulse wavered, then slowly began to mirror mine. He + reached out and took my hand, and when I helped him stand, he held on tightly.

The signal in the area was getting stronger. We weren’t at the center of the flare yet, but it was spreading faster than expected. One of the wall monitors flashed red as the relay nodes flickered between active and unstable. This cluster wasn’t calming down.

Then came the scream, high and raw, coming from deeper in the facility.

I turned to the nearest guard. “Stay with him. He’s syncing too fast to be left alone.”

A woman stumbled into view, catching herself against the wall with one arm pressed tight to her ribs. Her sleeves were torn, her eyes wild with panic, and her breath came in short, ragged gasps.

“Please,” she said. “He didn’t mean to. He’s still in there. He’s stuck.”She started to collapse, and I caught her by the waist, easing her weight down slowly.

“Where is he?”

“Second chamber,” she said. “He didn’t come back.”

I didn’t wait.

Inside the chamber, a man was suspended in mid-lunge. One arm was raised, his jaw locked, and his body shook with tension no one should be able to hold. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, completely empty.

“Can you hear me?” I asked, stepping closer.

There was no response. No blink, no twitch, no change in breath.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t belong to them,” I said. “You don’t have to stay like this.”

Still nothing.

Instead of forcing my resonance directly into him, I reached outward, toward the emotional connection he still held with her, her fear, her hope, her refusal to let go. I let that be the path.

“She’s here,” I said. “She didn’t run.”

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