Page 20 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

He stares at me. “You’re letting her work? I thought she was here to raise Luca.”

“Her hours are Luca’s school hours. What she does with her own time has nothing to do with me.”

He grins down at the desk and doesn’t push the topic. “Fine.”

“And the school. Have him enrolled by the end of the day because he starts tomorrow.”

“Consider it done.” He gets up, then stops with a hand on the back of the chair. “What about the disease? Are you certain it’s dormant genesis syndrome?”

His words have me looking over at him, and I don’t answer immediately. Dormant genesis syndrome is a disease that targets young shifters, and until a few decades ago, it was considered incurable. Shifter children can only undergo the transformation once they hit puberty because that is when their wolf is fully mature.

My eyes flicker at the healer’s report from the compound. Our kind calls it a disease, but it’s a defect, one that awakens a young shifter’s wolf way before its time. A child is not equipped to shift, and the death is painful as the wolf tries to force the change and the child’s young mind resists.

Damien comes to sit across the desk from me, my silence giving him all the answers he needs. “We need to get a healer—”

“No alpha has ever been a half-blood. Luca has alpha blood in him.” I cut him off.

“I don’t understand,” Damien says cautiously. “He doesn’t have it then?”

I pause, considering how to explain it to him. “I sensed his wolf, but I don’t think his symptoms will show the same way it would in a normal shifter child. Luca’s wolf isn’t completely awake, but it’s there and semi-aware. It recognized my alpha magic and submitted last night.”

Damien freezes. “You were able to suppress it?”

I nod. “I still want a healer to give him a checkup, but he’s been running around unaffected.”

“We can monitor him then, watch him across the lunar interval to find out.” Damien leans forward. “Once the wolf is awake, it’s hard to put it back to sleep. The drugs the healers developed have worked, but they have to be taken at every lunar interval to make sure the wolf stays in slumber. Should I prepare the drugs for him just in case? We have four months, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

I meet his gaze. “Do it. And bring Healer Salar to stay in the mansion. Tell him I want him transferred as the alpha’s household healer for the next two years. He has the most knowledge about this.”

Damien nods. “I’ll handle it.”

He walks out, and in the silence of the room, the unspoken words linger. If Luca’s symptoms don’t present like the others, the chances of the newly developed drugs not working on him is higher.

❦ ❦ ❦

My household runs like clockwork. There is a set time for everything. Chaos is the one thing I don’t tolerate. However, I didn’t anticipate that the addition of two individuals under my roof would be the catalyst to destroy my well-oiled machine.

Nobody shouts in the mansion. So when I’m coming down for breakfast and hear loud voices, I freeze for a moment. The shock is followed quickly by irritation. Whoever dared to raise their voice is going to be unemployed within minutes.

As I approach the dining room, I realize the voices are coming from the direction of the kitchen. It is when I recognize one of the voices that I take a detour into the one room of the house I’ve never had reason to visit.

Copper pans hang over the middle of an island the length of two rooms, and Ariela is at the far end of it in yesterday’s sweater with her hair scraped up, holding a plate. The cook stands on the other side with a spatula in her fist. Neither of them has heard me.

“He doesn’t eat mushrooms,” Ariela is saying, and she’s still being polite about it, which tells me she’s said it more than once already. “That’s all I’m telling you. Give him something light, or step aside and let me make it.”

“You don’t come into my kitchen.”

“I haven’t. Twice now I’ve stood right here and asked you nicely.”

“Then tell me what you need and let me work.”

“I did tell you.” Her voice climbs half a step. “You refused.”

The cook’s lip curls. “I’m not letting a human touch my utensils.”

I stop at the door.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ariela retorts. “You’re just as human as I am, so get off your high horse. Are you letting me make my son’s breakfast, or are you making what I tell you to make? He doesn’t eat any of these fancy things.”