Page 60 of The Alpha Wolf’s Secret Baby Boy

My mate. She’s still in there. I know she is.

“We can save her,” I breathe through the mind link, more to myself than anyone else. “We have to—”

Something heavy crashes against the back of my skull and pain explodes through my head.

The warehouse spins violently as my knees buckle beneath me, my vision swimming while distant shouts echo around the room.

The last thing I see before darkness claims me is Poppy’s blood-red eyes fixed on mine, filled with desperate apology, before everything disappears.

Chapter 16 - Poppy

I feel myself stirring long before I can open my eyes, my eyelids heavy, as if weighed down by lead. I drag in a breath that burns my throat like it’s scorched.

Coughing and spluttering as I finally open my eyes, I try to bring a hand to my mouth when I feel a restraint around my wrist stopping my arm halfway up. I frown as I look down, vision blurred, only to discover that I’m chained to a bed.

Thick silver cuffs bind chains to metal posts on either side of me, and in shock I try to sit upright, but I fail another attempt to move. Dragging my eyes down to the coldness around my ankles, I see that there are more cuffs around them, binding me to the foot of the bed.

My face contorts with confusion, my head throbbing as it becomes nearly impossible to make out where I am. I can hardly remember what I was doing to end up here, on this bed, in what appears to be the Nightclaw clinic.

I recognize the white tiles with a strip of blue mosaic patterns running across the middle of the wall on my left.

But why am I here…?

Where’s Daniel?

“Daniel?!” I exclaim as the flicker of a memory flashes across my mind.

Daniel was missing. He’d been kidnapped from outside the school. And then…

I don’t know what happened.

Except that I must have been hurt. It would explain the nauseating pain that suddenly shoots through my veins, blooming from my neck like a venomous bite. And the more I focus on that pain, the more it grows outward, and nothing can stop its torture.

Not even my inner wolf.

I can’t even feel her…

Gasping as I look down at my bound wrist, I suspect that the cuff is made of silver, not just binding me to the bed, but severing me from my inner wolf so that I can’t feel her.

Instinctively, I try reaching for my neck, needing the one source of reassurance I can find in moments like these. But my hands can’t reach my neck, and the coolness of the chain is missing.

I gasp as I look down, only to find my chest bare where the pendant should be.

Crap!

“Poppy…?”

Ingrid’s voice snaps my head up, and I see her standing at the door with Connor beside her.

“You’re awake!” she cries out in relief, and my brows furrow when she doesn’t immediately come inside.

Instead, she turns to her husband, and he whispers something quietly in her ear before she nods tentatively and steps in. He closes the door behind her, but his shadow darkens the frosted glass between the wooden frame.

It’s like he’s standing guard outside.

“What’s going on, Ingrid?” I ask when she doesn’t move away from the door, her eyes flitting around the room as if she’s hesitant. “Why am I tied to this bed?”

I flinch when another sharp bout of pain shoots through my neck, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.