Page 58 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

She’s caught between her mother’s instinct and the desire to listen to me. I see her frantically trying to decide who to trust in this moment.

“Fine.” The word’s torn out of her. “Fine. If anything happens to her, Marcus, I won’t ever let you off.”

“Nothing will happen to her.”

We rush to my car, ignoring the startled looks of the people around us. Bella climbs in the front while Mia and Jessa are in the back. My niece keeps looking toward Mia, silent tears streaking down her face. I can hear Mia’s shallow and uneven breathing as I drive toward the pack territory. My wolf is coiled, tense and very focused.

Jessa watches the streetlights thin out as houses give way to pines. “This is your part of town.” Her voice has gone careful, suspicious even through the panic. “Why are you taking us to your house?”

“I’m not.”

We turn off the main road into the lanes that wind back through the trees. I pass the cut that climbs to my own gate without slowing. Deeper in, where the canopy closes over the road and the dark gets thicker, there’s a low compound the pack keeps for its healers.

The windows are lit warm when we pull up. I race out the door and throw open the back, snatching Mia from Jessa and running inside, the others behind me.

“I need a healer now,” I roar. “She’s been poisoned.”

A woman comes through from the back, gray hair pulled off her face, sleeves already shoved up. Zaheela’s been mending pack bones since before I could walk. She takes one look at the child in my arms, and the warmth drops off her face.

“What happened to her?”

I step in close so only she can hear it. “It’s wolfsbane. Don’t say the word out loud, not in front of the mother. Treat her for it.” My voice drops lower still. “She hasn’t shifted yet.”

Zaheela’s eyes snap up to mine. “That isn’t possible.” She backs off a step. “A child reacting to wolfsbane, I have to bring this to the alpha—”

“You’re bringing it to no one.”

I let the weight into my voice, the thing I’ve kept leashed for ten years. It doesn’t bend her will. It presses on it, a hand at the back of the neck that every wolf below a born alpha feels.

“You treat her, and you keep the alpha out of this.”

Zaheela’s chin dips before she’s chosen to do it, her shoulders rounding under the pressure. “Yes.” The word comes out hushed. “Of course.”

“The mother doesn’t know what the girl is.” I hold her gaze. “She doesn’t learn it from you, not a word of it.”

“She hears nothing from me.” She nods quickly. “I understand you.”

She lifts Mia out of my arms and turns for the back room, calling over her shoulder for someone to bring her kit. Jessa lunges after them.

I catch her around the waist. “Stay here.”

“Get off me.” She fights me, all sharp elbows. “That’s my daughter, you don’t get to keep me from—”

“You can’t help her in there.” I hold her still without hurting her. “I can. Stay out here with Bella.”

“You don’t get to tell me to stay away from my own child.” Her voice breaks.

She grabs two fistfuls of my shirt instead of swinging at me. “What happened to her, what is wolfsbane, why is she reacting like that, what’s going on, Marcus, talk to me.”

“Jessa.” I take her face in both my hands and make her look at me. “Snap out of it. I need you calm and out here with Bella, who’s terrified, if you haven’t noticed.”

Her breath shudders out. Bella’s pressed into her side, small and shaking. Jessa looks down at her, and that does what none of my words could.

“I’ll look after our—” The word’s halfway up my throat before I catch it. I bite it off and start again. “I’ll look after Mia. I promise you that.”

I leave her in the front room and go through to the back. Zaheela’s bent over Mia, who’s laid out on a low cot, her color gone, her skin waxy.

“This was a heavy dose.” She doesn’t look up from her work. “Much too heavy. A child who hasn’t shifted shouldn’t react at all unless someone fed her something this concentrated on purpose.” Her hands go still for a moment. “I don’t know that she’ll live through it, Alpha.”