After He Left Me to Freeze, I Rejected Him as My Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Half an Inch

In the medical wing the Alpha shrugs off the doctor's warning, a tiny cut on Odette's arm outranks Willa's collapse, and she swaps her emergency contact. His last text: the twelfth test is tomorrow.

By the time they got me onto a bed in the pack medical wing, I could hear my own pulse in my ears.

The pack doctor cut my sleeve open from wrist to shoulder.

The skin underneath had gone purple.

"Her lips are turning blue-black," he said to the nurse. "Get hematology on the phone. Now."

"I'm all right," I said, and the words came out as a whisper.

"You are not," he said. "This is acute hemolysis. Your blood is breaking apart."

The door banged open.

Kellan came in with Odette tucked under his arm, his coat still around her shoulders. He had his phone in his other hand.

"Stop treating her like she's dying," he said. "She does this every time."

"Alpha, I have to disagree."

"Doctors always give the worst case." He didn't even look at the monitor. "She's a wolf. A little cold doesn't kill a wolf."

"It kills a wolf with her disease," the doctor said.

Kellan ignored him and held up his phone. The photo from the freezer was on it.

My knees on the ice. My forehead against the door. My fingers blue.

"Put this up at the venue before the ceremony," he said into the phone. "Yes, that one. Big."

The wolf who was going to officiate our marking said something back, and Kellan smiled.

I pulled the oxygen mask off my face.

"Delete it," I said.

He actually looked surprised.

"What did you say?"

"Delete it, Kellan."

He opened the photo again right in front of me, so I could see it.

"Willa, if you can't handle it, don't start something with me. Every person in this pack watched you today. You put on a half-dead act so that we would all feel sorry for you. Isn't that right?"

"Her blood pressure is dropping," the doctor said. His voice shook. "Alpha. Another ten minutes in that cold and she would be dead."

For one second Kellan's face changed.

He took a step toward the bed.

Then Odette made a small sound and swayed against the wall. She slid down it in a neat slump, and her arm fell out of her sleeve.

There was a cut on it. It was less than half an inch long, and it had barely bled.

Kellan was across the room before she finished falling.

"Dette? Dette, look at me. Why is it bleeding?"

He took her wrist and bent his head and blew gently on the cut.

Then he rounded on the nurse. "What is wrong with all of you? The freezer door was broken and nobody noticed?"

Nobody had broken any door.

I had spent half an hour on my knees in that freezer, and he had called me ungrateful.

Odette bled a few drops, and he was ready to put the whole pack on trial.

I lay back and watched, and for the first time in twelve years it did not hurt.

The doctor was holding a tablet to log my intake. I took it out of his hand.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"My emergency contact," I said. "Take Kellan off it."

He stared at me. "Luna, are you sure?"

"I'm not your Luna. Put my father. Duncan Rook, Meadowland."

I typed his number myself. My thumbs barely worked.

Under Relationship I deleted the word Mate and wrote Nothing.

The doctor didn't argue. He saved it.

I motioned to the paramedics standing by the door.

"Hospital," I said. "Please."

They came forward with the stretcher.

"Hold on." Kellan was still crouched with Odette against his chest, but he had heard. "The ceremony is tomorrow at ten."

"Alpha, we need to run tests," the doctor said. "If her counts are as bad as I think, she has to be admitted."

"She'll be there at ten," Kellan said.

He said it to me, not to the doctor.

"Or that video goes wherever I want."

I didn't answer.

Odette lifted her head from his shoulder. Her eyes were wet and her cheeks were pink again.

"Kel, don't be cruel to her," she said. "She's sick. Let her go."

"You're too kind," he said, and kissed her hair.

The paramedics looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked at me.

"Take me," I said again.

Kellan jerked his chin at the door. "Fine. Let them admit her if they want to. She's still at the ceremony at ten."

Then he went back to Odette and walked her out with his coat around her.

They had me on the stretcher and halfway down the hall when my phone buzzed on my chest.

Kellan had texted: Test twelve is tomorrow. You'll love it.

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