Page 108 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

He lifts me off the floor into his chest. His mouth closes on the base of my neck.

I feel his teeth.

Then heat breaks out of the bite and floods through me. My spine bows up off the tile while my hands claw into his shirt. There’s a scream coming out of me with air behind it, real air, more air than I’ve had since the gun went off.

Something snaps taut inside my chest.

A line pulls tight between him and me. Everything in him pours down it at once: terror, rage, grief, a wanting so enormous that there’s no room left in me for my own. His arms lock around me.

So much…feeling. The world must have been gray and black before because now it’s color everywhere, such vibrant colors. And my eyes aren’t even open yet.

Then there’s a presence in my mind, something large and massive, a beast who nuzzles me, rubbing against me in greeting.

Mine. Its voice is gravelly and filled with dark possessiveness.

Yours, I agree dazedly.

Then the whole world goes out.

❦ ❦ ❦

I come up out of the dark with my whole body humming, and everything is too much at once. My skin feels charged. Underneath that, my heart is pounding, though not from fear exactly. I lie there for a few seconds with no idea where I am or what year it is.

Then my eyes track sideways and find him. Callum is in a chair pulled right up against the bed, my hand inside both of his. His eyes are on my face. The relief in his eyes is mixed with this warmth blossoming inside my chest. It’s not me. It’s not my feeling. But it belongs to somebody.

“Callum.” My voice has been sanded down to nothing.

He’s got an arm behind my shoulders before I’ve finished, lifting me a few inches, and a glass is brought to my mouth. I take a few grateful sips.

“You’ve been out for quite a few days. I’ll get you something to eat.”

He starts to stand. My fingers close around his wrist, and although there’s nothing in the grip at all, he stops anyway.

“What’s happened to me? Why is everything so loud?”

He sits back down on the edge of the mattress, then pulls me into his chest with his hand spread over the back of my head. “Because my magic is running through you.”

For a while I stay exactly where I am, listening to his heart, which I can also hear far too well. Then the sentence catches up with me, and my hand goes to the side of my neck.

There’s a raised curve of skin at the base of it, sitting where his thumb has rested a dozen times. It doesn’t hurt. It’s about the size of my two fingers, and under them it feels like a crescent.

I pull back to look up at him. “You marked me.”

He holds my eyes without one bit of regret in him. “If there’s one thing I apologize for, it’s that I did not have your consent for this.” His thumb moves once against my shoulder. “I had no choice, Ariela. You were seconds away from dying. I couldn’t lose you.”

Green tile comes back to me all at once, the stacked chairs, the rope, the sound Luca made.

“Luca.”

“He’s fine. It took him two days to revert to his human form. He’s exhausted. He’s been sleeping. He just gets up to eat and then goes back to sleep.”

Two days as a wolf. My six-year-old spent two days as a wolf, and I was unconscious for all of it. I lean back against the headboard and try to get my head to slow down. “What happened to Isabella?”

“She’s dead.”

His voice is calm, but my chest has gone tight in a way that has nothing to do with the hole somebody put in it. It takes me a few seconds to understand that this is not my emotion.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.