CLAIMED BY MY FOUR ALPHAS

CHAPTER 5

ZAIRA

My heels met the ground as I stopped stretching to look for the man my mother had told me about. My full attention was now on her, and I watched her facial reaction and waited for some sort of crease in her brows that would tell me it was all a prank.

“You’re joking, right?” I questioned her.

The transition on her face from a smile to a concerned frown was enough proof for me to know that she was not joking.

“If anything, I wouldn’t joke with something like this. Even you know that, Zaira. He wants—”

“You can’t possibly want to be mated to Alpha Leo.” I shook my head in disbelief.

If that happened, I would be forced to take two of my mates as my stepbrothers. That didn’t make any sense.

“Why not? You should know he’s not a bad man. Besides—”

“No!” I protested before she could raise her point. “This doesn’t make any sense. You can’t have a mating ceremony…”

I paused as my thoughts started to steer in a different direction.

“Do his sons know? Kane? Ares? Damon? Zade? Do they know that their father has been seeing you?” I inquired. It wasn’t possible that Ares and Kane knew, right?

“From what I know, he hasn’t told them about it yet. He plans to announce it tonight, during the new moon festival dinner. I’m only telling you so you don’t have to be shocked when he announces it later tonight. If you’re afraid that his sons might protest or go against it, he’s assured me that they won’t find a problem with it,” she explained.

Not unless two of them were mated to her daughter.

“I can’t believe this.” I walked away, finding my way under a tree to clear my headspace and give it a thought.

If my mother and Alpha Leo got mated to each other, Kane and I, as well as Ares and I, would be forced to separate. Then again, who was to say it was necessary for us to go our separate ways?

I came to the decision that my mother’s happiness mattered to me more than anything. If getting mated to Alpha Leo would make her happy, I was not going to stand in her way.

“Zaira,” my mom called out to me as she joined me under the shade of the tree. “You’re upset about this. More upset than I thought you would be, honestly. Talk to me.”

“It’s nothing too serious. I just thought you… You brought it up so unexpectedly, and it was a lot of news for me to bear. I had to give it a thought for a while, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry for keeping it from you this long. There were times when I absolutely wanted to tell you. We just wanted to make sure first, so we wouldn’t give ourselves hope, along with the people who are around us. I really thought you would be excited, so I told you before you could hear it from him first.”

“I am happy, Mom.” I took her hands in mine.

“I can’t wait to see the faces of his sons when he publicly announces it,” she laughed, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink.

“You’re happy with him,” I commented. “I can tell.”

“I am.” She nodded.

I had only a few hours to convince Ares to go with me to Kane’s penthouse so that I could tell them about this and all three of us could have a conversation about it.

~~

“I am not going with you to Kane’s penthouse.”

I gave Ares an incredulous look, tilting my head in disbelief as I wondered what his problem was. Had I not sounded serious enough for him to understand that this was an emergency?

“All three of us have something alarming to talk about,” I told him, practically saying the same things I had been saying to him since I reappeared in front of his door.

“If we can’t talk about it under this roof or on my turf, I am not going with you. Kane and I have our unresolved differences, so I refuse—”

“I’m mated to Kane,” I blurted.

“Is this your way of trying to get me to go with you to my brother’s penthouse?” He crossed his arms. “Because I can assure you that it’s not working. You felt the mate bond with me just an hour ago, didn’t you?”

“I did,” I confirmed, “but I also felt the same connection with Kane last night.”

For a moment, it felt as if I had taken Ares and placed him in a time trap, where everything seemed to be frozen, including him.

By the time he fully regained his control, he pulled me into his room and slammed the door.

“What exactly do you mean by that, Zaira? Last night? You met Kane last night, and you felt a mate bond with him? Doesn’t check out to me. I need you to start explaining.”

“That’s not the most important thing right now. I’ll explain everything when we find Kane and all talk at once. Has your father told you he’s been seeing someone?”

“I have no interest in who my father sees and who he doesn’t,” he replied.

“During the new moon festival, he’s going to announce that he will be holding a mating ceremony with someone,” I told him.

“Again, I don’t care—”

“Your father will be having a mating ceremony with my mother.”

Ares whipped his head at me as if I had said the most outrageous thing he had ever heard – maybe I had.

“What do you mean by that? Your mother? Who told you that?”

“She told me by herself. Why do you think I’m here to talk to you as Kane?” I answered.

“What did you tell her when she gave you the news?” He frowned, eager for my answer. “Did you just accept things the way they are? We need to stop this.”

“We can’t,” I argued. “I want my mother to be happy.”

“And you? Don’t you at least want to be happy? You should try doing things for yourself before thinking of others, and that’s something that even my father had told me a lot. You just let her have your approval for the mating between them both? You didn’t even tell her the truth about us for her to think about it? Why do you get to think of someone else’s happiness if they’re not thinking of yours?”

“Let’s not talk about that right now. We need to find Kane.”

Ares didn’t answer me. He only looked frowned, staring at me.

“By any chance, have you seen any of my other brothers recently? Damon and Zade?”

I shook my head in response. “I haven’t. Why?”

“If you’re mated to Kane and me, who’s to say you’re not mated to Damon and Zade as well?”

I wanted to give it a thought, but I shoved it out of my head.

“It’s not possible. I can’t have four mates. Having two of you as my mates is already enough mystery for me. I can’t deal with that possibility.”

“As much as you don’t want that to be true, you should consider it.”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” I sighed.