Page 90 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

The sister grabs Bella by the collar, slams her onto the floor, then pins her with a knee. Jared stands over me. His fist comes down twice more, my ears ring, and I can’t get my hands high enough to stop the third.

“Mia, run!” The scream tears out of me. “Get out of the apartment!”

She doesn’t run.

My daughter is throwing herself at a two hundred plus pound man with everything in her, clawing at his arm. Her hand comes away red. Four deep furrows are torn through his sleeve into the meat of his forearm. Her nails—no, those are not nails, those are claws, black-edged dangerous claws extending from the edges of my daughter’s fingers. She looks up at him, and her eyes burn gold. The sound coming out of my little girl’s chest is one no human should possibly be able to make.

Jared reels back, staring at his own arm, then at her in shock. “What the hell are you?”

She leaps toward him, and I see him raise his fist. Without a second thought, I get to Mia first, pushing her under me with my back to him. My arms wrap around her protectively as I wait for the blow to come.

It never does.

Instead there’s a growl, low enough that I feel it through the boards under my knees, and Jared makes a choking sound.

I lift my head to see that Marcus is standing over us with his hand around Jared’s wrist.

He looks pissed.

Chapter Nineteen

Marcus

The diner sits eleven miles out of town. I don’t know why Adrian wanted so much secrecy, but I’m not going to argue with him. The cup of coffee in my hand has long gone cold.

The bell over the door rattles, and for the umpteenth time, I look over. A balding man enters, nodding to the waitress. Just behind him is Adrian. He crosses the floor and drops into the seat across from me. Reaching into his jacket’s pocket, he pulls out a folder and sets it on the table.

“What is this?” I ask.

“Open it.”

There’s one page inside. My brother’s name sits at the top, the date beneath it, four lines under that. His death is put down to a rogue attack with no assailants identified and the case marked closed. No autopsy is attached, no witness is named, nobody has written down the names of the people who entered that house. Ten years of Daniel in the ground, and this is the paper that stands for him.

“What the hell is this?” I look up at him. “Is this the whole case?”

Adrian doesn’t answer me. The scar through his brow pulls tight, and his knuckles have gone white where his hands lock together.

“That’s all there is.” He keeps his voice under the clatter of plates. “I pulled every scrap with your brother’s name on it, and that came out.”

“This is a receipt. Nobody investigated anything.”

“I know what it is.” He leans in. “Look, I know that your uncle worked this personally with two men. They were very detailed, from what I recall. This can’t be it. But this is all I could find. Maybe someone removed the rest of it.”

I turn the folder over. The card is clean, no crease down the spine, the corners still stiff where a thumb would have worn them soft.

“No.” I set it down between us. “This is all there was. Just look at the state of the file. So either my brother’s death was never investigated at all or somebody swapped the folder out and slid this empty one into its place.”

Adrian goes quiet. “Look at the bottom of the page,” he mutters.

I look. The signature sits there in blue ink, angled exactly as it’s been angled on every birthday card I’ve opened since I was six years old.

It’s my uncle’s, and I let out a hiss.

“There’s no way.” I push the folder an inch away from me. “He didn’t sign this.”

“Signatures get forged.”

“He loved Daniel.” The name scrapes coming out, so I stop and drag in air. “Better than he loved me, some days. Daniel wasn’t alpha-born. Neither is he. My uncle took him everywhere from the day he could walk, and he practically raised him as his own son while my father was busy raising an heir.” My throat closes. “After the murders, he gave me weekly updates.” I try to remember what he told me, but it’s all a blur. My mind was a mess back then. “Nobody does all that and then signs four lines on a page. Maybe this is an early draft. It isn’t the real one.”