An Alpha's Claim

Fractured

'Josephine'. J smiled, she could get used to that.

'Josephine Anne Yardley.' She had the sudden urge to get it tattooed across her forehead, somewhere bold for all to see. She wanted everyone to know, wanted to shout it from the rooftops. But at the same time, she didn't want to wear it out – didn't want to whisper it too loud in case she broke the illusion. "Josephine." She murmured as she absently ran a hand over the little line of pictures across the top of her grandmother's fire place.

Her fingers hesitated over one of her. She had no idea that anyone had ever taken her picture as a child, but there it was. She was sat on her mother's lap, a little fist wrapped around her long dark hair. The photo was small, blurry, crinkled. She wondered who had taken it, had it been her father? The man she didn't remember.

She recognised her mother in a few of them, though much younger than her foggy memory, and a man that must have been her father. He was tall, his hair dark and short. His angled cheek bones reminded J slightly of her own. In one of the pictures, she could see his wolf in the background. A young boy playing in the front of the photo. The wolf watched him steadily, his silver eyes fixated on his child.

Had he ever looked at her like that?

She was not Harrison's daughter, she was not Caine's half-sister, she was not 'J'.

She is 'Josephine'.

"J. Josephine. Alpha...what do I call you now?"

J smiled as she turned towards Callie who'd been out for a run to work off some energy whilst J's grandmother nipped to a neighbour's house to collect some eggs, declaring they were vital for her world-famous brownies.

"J is fine." Deciding baby steps were necessary.

Callie smiled in return and nodded, though J noticed a tenseness in the action.

"There's someone coming, J, and it's not your grandmother."

J's eyes scanned the room, locating the exits and deciding where the person would attack from. She could hear the footsteps now, so she slunk behind a large, mahogany cabinet in the living room, Callie easily blending into the shadows. They both held their breaths as the handle rattled and the door swung open.

J, having automatically slid the blade from the belt on her jeans, gripped the blade in her left hand and steeled herself, ready to make the killing blow, but as she jumped out to face the intruder, she was so surprised that the blade clattered to the floor at her feet.

"D-D-Dad?" She whispered, her knees bowing as she took a step towards him.

-

Panic flickered across the man's face, spying the knife discarded at J's feet. His eyes darting between the growling wolf in the corner and the woman stumbling towards him. The woman before him who was clearly older and therefore definitely not his daughter.

"Umm...no?" Caleb offered as he dodged the woman's out stretched arms and squared his shoulders.

How he hadn't scented these two intruders on his way up to the house, he had no idea. He blamed his gran's insistence on wearing lavender perfume all the time. His wolf hated it, it clogged up his nose and made it impossible to decipher what was what. Which is probably exactly why she wore it. His grandmother was tricky like that. A wily old wolf. She was also the loveliest woman he'd ever known, and she had raised him single handedly for the last 17 years.

Now that he was closer, he could scent the woman in front of him. She was strangely familiar, though he was positive he'd never seen her before. He'd have remembered those scars.