Knots of the Hybrid Queen: Claimed by Four Alphas

Chapter 9: WALLING

Riven found me in the library that afternoon. I didn’t hear him come in. That should have bothered me more than it did — I’ve spent two years making sure nothing gets close without me knowing — but the library had this quality where sound moved differently. Thick rugs, floor-to-ceiling shelves, the kind of quiet that felt intentional instead of empty.

I was sitting in one of the deep leather chairs near the east window with a book I wasn’t reading, just holding, staring at the same paragraph for the third time and not absorbing a single word of it.

My head was too full.

Four alphas. Four different approaches. Four versions of the same impossible thing I wasn’t supposed to want and definitely wasn’t supposed to feel pulling at something low in my chest every time one of them got close enough for my biology to notice.

"You’re thinking loud."

I looked up.

Riven was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and that unhurried quality he had, like he’d been standing there for a while and was in no rush to announce it. Dark hair, dark eyes, the kind of face that gave away exactly nothing unless he wanted it to.

Right now he looked faintly amused.

I closed the book. Set it on the side table. "How long have you been there."

"Long enough to feel you cycling through four different exit strategies." He pushed off the doorframe. Came into the room proper. "You asked me to teach you to wall the link. I’m here."

My chest tightened. I made myself breathe through it. "Now?"

"You’ve met all four of us. Your biology is awake. The link is going to keep getting louder until you learn to control it." He stopped a few feet away. Close enough to be in the conversation, far enough to let me have space. "So yes. Now."

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I stood up, crossed my arms over my chest, and lifted my chin slightly. "What do I do."

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. Closer to approval.

"First, stop thinking of it as an invasion." He moved to the chair across from mine. Sat. Gestured for me to do the same. "The link isn’t me breaking into your head. It’s a channel between us. Right now it’s open because your instincts don’t know how to close it yet."

I sat back down. Slowly. "And walling it means what, exactly."

"Walling means you decide what goes through and what doesn’t. Think of it like..." He paused. Considered. "A door with a lock. Right now the door is wide open and I can feel everything you’re broadcasting. Once you wall it, the door closes. You keep the key."

"And you?"

"I knock." His voice stayed even. "You decide if you want to answer."

I studied his face. Looking for the catch. The place where this turned into something else.

He just looked back. Patient.

"Walk me through it," I finally said.

He leaned forward. Elbows on his knees. Hands loose between them. "Close your eyes."

I didn’t move.

"Selene." Quiet. No pressure in it. "I can’t walk you through this if you don’t trust me enough to close your eyes for thirty seconds."

My jaw worked. He was right and I hated it. I closed my eyes.

"Good. Now feel for the heat." His voice dropped lower. Steadier. The kind of voice you could follow in the dark. "Not the heat that pulses when one of us gets close. The baseline. The thing that’s been humming under everything since your suppressants broke."

I breathed in slow. Felt for it. Found it low in my chest, warm and constant, like an ember that had been banked but not extinguished.

"I feel it."

"That’s your hybrid core. Your bloodline awake." A pause. "Now follow it outward. There’s a thread running from that core toward me. You’ll know it when you find it."

I almost opened my eyes. Almost stopped. Instead I did what he said — followed the heat outward, tracing it like a map I’d never seen before but somehow knew.

And there it was.

A thread. Thin but present. Running from somewhere behind my ribs to... somewhere else. Somewhere him.

My breath caught.

"You found it." Not a question. He knew. "That’s the link. That’s what lets me feel what you’re feeling when it’s open."

"It’s—" I didn’t have words for it. The thread felt like it was made of light and heat and something older than both. "I didn’t know it was there."

"Most wolves wall it so young they never remember learning. For you it’s new." His voice stayed low. Steady. "Now here’s the part that takes effort. Imagine a door at your end of that thread. Just a door. Any door. Doesn’t matter what it looks like."

I thought about the door to my room at the pack house. Heavy wood. Iron handle. The kind of door that closed with weight behind it.

"I have it."

"Close it."

I reached for the imagined door in my head and pulled it shut. freēwēbnovel.com

The thread dimmed immediately. Not gone — still there, still connecting us — but quieter. Contained. Like sound through thick glass instead of open air.

My eyes snapped open.

Riven was watching me with something in his expression I couldn’t quite read. "How does that feel."

I pressed my hand to my sternum. The heat was still there. The thread was still there. But the constant awareness of him, the feeling of being observed from the inside out, had pulled back.

"Quieter." My voice came out rough. I cleared my throat. "I can still feel it but it’s not—"

"Not invasive." He finished the sentence for me. Then, softer: "That’s walling. You just did it on the first try. Most wolves take days."

Something in my chest loosened.

I’d been carrying the weight of his presence in my head for days without knowing how to put it down, and now I could. Now I had a door and a lock and the choice to open it or not.

I looked at him. Really looked. "Why did you wait until now to teach me this."

His gaze held mine. Steady. Unflinching. "Because you weren’t ready to trust me until now."

The honesty of it hit me sideways.

He’d been in my head. He’d felt me mapping exits, cycling through fears, filing things under later. He’d known exactly when I’d stopped seeing him as a threat and started seeing him as something else.

And he’d waited.

My throat tightened. I swallowed against it. "Riven—"

"You don’t have to say it." He leaned back in his chair. That unhurried quality settling over him again. "I know."

Of course he did.

The link thread between us pulsed once. Gentle. Like a knock on the door I’d just learned to close.

I looked at it in my mind. Considered.

Then I opened the door. Just a crack.

His presence flooded in — not invasive, not overwhelming, just there. Warm and patient and steady as everything else about him.

And underneath it, quiet but unmistakable, something that felt like relief.

He’d wanted me to learn to wall it. But he’d also wanted me to choose to open it again.

I closed the door softly. Kept the lock.

My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "Thank you."

He nodded once. Stood. Walked toward the library door and stopped in the frame, looking back at me with dark eyes that saw too much and always had.

"Selene."

"Yeah."

"It’s not just the link you’re walling." He said it gently. Carefully. "It’s all of us. All four. You’re still deciding if we’re safe."

My chest did something complicated.

He didn’t wait for an answer. Just walked out, footsteps unhurried, leaving me alone in the library with a book I wasn’t reading and a door in my mind I’d just learned to close.

And the uncomfortable realization that he was right.

I wasn’t walling the link.

I was walling them.