Page 5 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“Who is this?”

The voice is older, roughened with sleep, and there’s something underneath it that’s already wide awake.

“My sister gave me this number.” There’s no spit left in my mouth. “Six years ago. Is this a doctor?”

A pause runs a beat too long. “She’s with a patient. I’m covering the desk.” Then, instead of offering to take a message, she asks, “What’s the emergency?”

So I tell her because there’s nobody else to tell. The fever that hasn’t come down in an hour, the dose that didn’t touch it, and the fit that stopped just a minute ago on the bed I’m sitting on.

“How old is he?”

“Six.”

“Is he registered?”

The word stops the breath in my throat. I’ve heard it once before in my life, through a gap in a door, six years ago.

“What do you mean, registered?” I hear my own voice come out wrong, too high and too fast. Six years of nobody answering, and the first person who picks up is using that word at me. She’s also the only person who’s ever picked up.

She doesn’t answer that. “Is the father present?”

“No.”

“Where is the father?”

“I don’t know.” My free hand has twisted the hem of my shirt into a knot I don’t remember starting. The silence that follows runs longer than the last one, and I can’t read a single thing in it.

“Where are you?”

I give her the district and the nearest cross street instead of the address, and I regret naming the district before the sentence is out of me. “There are no registered children in that district.”

There’s no anger in it and no urgency either. She doesn’t explain what registered means, or children of what.

“Who am I talking to?”

She doesn’t answer that one either. Instead she asks, “What color did his eyes go?”

Everything in me stops at once.

I haven’t said one word about his eyes. How does she know?

My blood runs cold, and every instinct tells me to end this call, to stop giving this woman more information.

I throw the phone across the room and then scramble after it to end the call, the woman’s voice still reaching me.

“Ma’am? Ma’am!”

I stare at the blank screen now, my heart pounding. Who was that? How did she know about his eyes?

My hands sweating, I set the phone aside and return to Luca’s side. He is still pale, but his seizure has become less severe. I gaze at him helplessly, and then after a few seconds, Luca makes a whimpering sound. “Mommy.”

I stroke his hair back. “What is it, baby? Tell me what to do.”

He nestles his face in my chest. “It hurts.”

“One more hour,” I promise him. “If you don’t get better in an hour, then fuck that. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

He just groans, and I feel like a monster over still hesitating. But I can’t get the voice of that nurse out of my head.