Page 57 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

Marcus

I reach Mia before Jessa does.

The child’s whole body is locked and jerking on the trampled grass, her heels drumming, her small hands curled into fists. Bella’s still shaking her by the shoulder, crying out her name. Jessa drops to her knees and gets both arms beneath her daughter to lift her.

The smell hits me a half-second before her fingers close. It’s cloying, wrong, and it climbs the back of my throat. There’s no mistaking it.

“Don’t touch her.”

She doesn’t stop. Her arms are already sliding under Mia’s back.

“Jessa.” I close my hand over her wrist and stop it cold. “Don’t touch her.”

“Let go of me.” She wrenches against my grip, wild-eyed. “What’s wrong with you, let go of me, that’s my—”

“She’s been poisoned with wolfsbane.”

“With what?”

I leave the question where it is and turn to Bella instead. The girl’s face is soaked, her breath hitching in gulps she can’t get ahead of.

“Bella. Look at me. What happened?”

“We went to get the peanuts.” Her words come apart between sobs. “There was a man. He kept watching us the whole time, Uncle Marcus, and he gave us something.”

“He gave you what?”

“It was cotton candy. He said it was free.” Her chin crumples. “Mia ate hers. I didn’t want mine.”

On the grass beside Mia’s slack hand sits a paper cone, pink spun sugar half gone. My stomach turns over.

Jessa rounds on me. “Why would she take candy from a stranger? She knows better than that.” Her voice breaks. “What is wolfsbane, why is she shaking like that, what’s happening to my daughter?”

I look at her properly for the first time since Mia went down. There’s no calculation in her face, no guard, nothing held back behind her eyes. She doesn’t know. The word means nothing to her at all.

Then I look down at the child convulsing in the grass, and a cold realization fills me, my previous doubts now hardening.

One kind of creature reacts to wolfsbane. Only one. A human child eats spun sugar coated with wolfsbane and gets a stomachache, nothing worse than that.

She’s a hybrid.

“She needs a healer.” I get my arms under Mia and lift her against my chest. Her head lolls into my shoulder, too light, too loose.

“There’s a hospital four blocks down.” Jessa’s already up.

“We’re not going to a hospital.”

“What?” She stares at me. “She’s seizing, Marcus, she needs a doctor, she needs—”

“A healer can treat her.”

“A what?” Her voice climbs into the dark. “A healer, what does that even mean, do you mean a doctor?”

“No.” I’m already moving, Mia’s weight tucked close. “It’s something else. A doctor won’t know what’s in her, and he’ll watch her die trying to figure it out.”

Jessa grabs my arm hard enough to bruise. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m not letting you walk my kid off into the dark to some—”

“She won’t survive a hospital.” It comes out as a snarl, low in my chest. “Look at me. Trust me on this one thing. I won’t let her die, I swear it to you.”