Page 59 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“Don’t call me that.” The correction’s out before I’ve thought about it. “I’m not the alpha.”

She goes quiet. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped. “She won’t last without her shifter parent’s blood.” She straightens up. “The girl’s a hybrid, half ours and half human.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s in her scent. A grown shifter’s nose would miss it. Mine doesn’t. A hybrid runs different from a pure-blood, even at this age.”

I look at the child on the cot, and my heart thunders in my chest as I whisper, “What if she’s mine?”

Zaheela’s head comes up slowly. She studies my face for a long moment. “Are you certain?”

“I think she’s mine.”

She crosses to a cabinet and comes back with a needle, a length of tubing, a stand. “Then we test it while we treat her.” Her hands move while she talks, swabbing the inside of my elbow. “If she’s yours, your blood will clear the poison out of her. She’s young and half-formed still, so your blood will override whatever’s in hers.” The needle bites in. “If she isn’t yours, you’ll start reacting to the wolfsbane instead. You’ll know inside a few minutes which way it falls.”

“Do it.”

I sit. The line runs warm out of my arm, down the tube, into the small, still figure on the cot. Zaheela watches the girl, watches me, watches the clip she’s fixed to Mia’s finger.

The minutes drag.

My own pulse holds steady. No burn climbs my throat, no swelling, no reaction. Then Mia’s chest lifts on a deeper breath, then another. The pallor washes out of her cheeks by degrees. Her fists, locked tight since the grass, ease open against the blanket.

She’s stabilizing.

Relief hits first. Under it is a joy I shouldn’t be feeling with a poisoned child in front of me, wild and stupid, impossible to stop. My blood is fixing her. Only one thing on Earth could make that true.

She’s mine.

I put my free hand over my eyes. The tears come before I can stop them, and I let them fall. For ten years I didn’t even know her name.

“Do you need a moment?” Zaheela asks quietly.

“No.” I drag my hand down my face. I look up at her. “Jessa doesn’t know that I know. You don’t tell her any of this, not what the girl is, not whose she is, none of it.”

Zaheela holds my eyes.

“No one else hears it.” I let the pressure slide back into the words. “Not another healer learns of it, not the alpha himself. This is an order.”

She lowers her head, and there’s a deference in it reserved for an alpha and no one else. “As you wish.”

She checks the line and slows the flow, watching Mia’s breathing settle into a steadier rhythm. “She’ll need a few days of rest, and she’ll need you close.”

“Why does it need to be me?”

“Her wolf was sleeping, too young to wake.” Zaheela smooths the blanket over the girl’s legs. “They all sleep at her age. The poison dragged it toward the surface, and your blood finished pulling it up. Now it’s awake when it has no business being awake.” Her mouth thins. “It has to go back under. A child this young can’t shift because her wolf isn’t grown enough to survive the change. If it stays up, it’ll tear her apart from the inside out.”

“How does it go back under?”

“It needs to feel safe.” She nods toward me. “You’re its sire. Stay near her, and her wolf will settle back into sleep. A few days should manage it.” She starts packing the bloodied swabs away. “Until then, she’ll slip. Her claws may come through. The eyes may turn color, then turn back. None of it holds steady while the wolf sinks down.” She glances over at me. “Ready yourself for it, and the mother too, if you can do it without telling her why.”

“I’ll handle Jessa.”

“Should I bring the mother in?” Zaheela pauses at the cabinet. “What is she to you, how am I to refer to her?”

I look toward the door Jessa’s waiting behind. “She’s mine.” The words come out without my deciding them. I hear myself say it and don’t take it back. “She’s mine. You treat her with the utmost respect.”

I lean over the cot and brush the damp hair off Mia’s forehead. Her skin’s warm again, alive under my hand. I press my mouth to her temple and stay there a second longer than I should.