Page 22 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“Are you sure you’re right in the head?” Ariela gives me an incredulous look.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“If you have people you think would kill somebody over breakfast, why did you hire them?” She spreads her hands. “That’s dangerous. Do you hear yourself?”

This is what Damien was trying to tell me upstairs. She has no idea what she’s standing in. In eighteen hours, she has argued with me twice and put a member of my staff across an island, and she thinks the worst thing in this building is bad manners.

“I’m a powerful man in my community, Ariela.” I hold on to my patience with difficulty. “The people who work here are trained, and if you push them, they will hurt you. So be careful.”

For a while, she just looks at me, and then the color goes out of her cheeks because she’s decided to believe me.

“Was she really going to kill me?”

“Yes.”

“And you’d have let her hurt me?”

“That’s why I stepped in.”

“Oh.” She looks back over her shoulder at the kitchen door, and her throat moves. “I didn’t realize I’d walked into a viper’s den.”

“Write me a list of what Luca eats.” I put my hands behind my back. “We’ll go through it, then I’ll give it to the kitchen.”

She nods slowly.

“What will he have this morning?”

“He’ll have scrambled eggs and toast.” She pushes the loose hair off her face. “He’s not used to heavy food. Somebody in there wanted to give him a meat porridge.”

She still has no idea what his body needs. Then again, she’s kept that boy fed for six years on nothing at all. He isn’t small because of anything she did.

“Fine. But his meat intake goes up.”

“That’s fine,” she agrees. “But do it at lunch, or as a snack, when he’s already had something and can digest it. Not first thing in the morning.”

“Fine.”

Her hand is down at her side, and there’s a band of color coming up around the wrist where I took hold of her, four marks going purple already. I lift her hand and turn it over. Her fingers rest in my palm without any weight in them at all. My thumb is on the inside of her wrist, and her pulse starts to run under it.

She follows my eyes down. “Sorry. I bruise very easily. I’ve always been that way.”

I didn’t even hold her wrist that tightly and it’s already carrying my mark. I let go of her.

“Come and have breakfast. I’ll tell Reid what to make for him.”

“I’ll go and get Luca.”

She goes back down the passage. I watch her the whole way, and my wolf rumbles in satisfaction at the memory of our mark on her skin.

Chapter 5

Ariela

The incident in the kitchen still has me shaken by the time we drop off Luca at his new school.

“Are you sure he’ll be fine with that teacher?” I ask, twisting in my seat to look at the gates of Marchmont Academy.

Callum glances at me. “The teacher will accompany him for the whole week till he gets accustomed to the buildings and his classes.”