The Forbidden Mate: Claimed by My Ex's Alpha Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Slug

Jarrett and the Beta want her off the case for kin-claim, but the silver slug she pulled out carries the pack armory's own stamp, and Stellan wakes and orders everyone out but her.

Jarrett put his hand flat on the glass.

His lips pulled back from his teeth.

For one second I saw his wolf in his face, yellow-eyed and furious.

Then Mirabel touched his elbow and he was a man in a blazer again.

I looked down.

I still had a heart in my hand.

"Lucille," I said. "Wires. Then we close."

"Yes, Doctor."

She never called me Doctor unless people were listening.

I stitched the hole in the muscle where the silver had been.

The burned tissue around it was gray and stinking, and I cut every bit of it away.

A wolf heals almost anything by morning.

Silver is the one thing he doesn't heal, because the body won't even try.

It took me two hours to close him.

The whole time, his heartbeat knocked in my chest, half a beat behind the monitor.

When the last staple went in, I stepped back and my knees nearly went.

Lucille caught my elbow without looking at me.

"Sit down before you fall down," she muttered.

"After."

"It's always after with you."

We wheeled him into recovery at a quarter to five.

His face had some color in it now.

His big hands lay open on the sheet, the knuckles scarred from fights older than me.

I checked his pressure twice.

Then I went out into the hall and walked straight into Boyd Gaskell's belly.

He smelled of gun oil and cold coffee.

He put both hands on my shoulders, warm and heavy.

"Doc," he said. "You did a fine thing in there."

"He's not out of it yet."

"No, no. Course not."

Behind him, Jarrett leaned on the wall with his arms crossed.

Mirabel sat in a plastic chair, typing on her phone with two red nails.

The board men had gone home.

Boyd squeezed my shoulders once more, then let go.

"Problem is," he said, "what we all smelled in there."

"It's called a caught bond," I said. "I didn't order it."

"It's called kin-claim," Jarrett said. "You latched onto my uncle to get back at me."

"I was holding his heart, Jarrett. He was dead."

"Convenient."

"Which part? The dying?"

Boyd held up a hand between us, smiling.

"Now, now. Nobody's blaming anybody tonight."

He turned the smile on me.

"But you can see how it looks. A woman with a claim on the patient can't be his doctor. Pack rule and hospital rule."

"The chief can take him over," Mirabel said, not looking up. "He's on his way."

"An hour too late," I said.

"And you'll want to go home," Boyd went on, very kind. "Get some rest. Take a few days. Leave your badge at the desk."

Jarrett pushed off the wall.

"Out of the building, Geneva. Tonight."

Lucille came out of recovery behind me.

She was five foot two in her purple scrubs, and she walked right between Jarrett and me.

"He's her patient till he's stable," she said. "That's the law upstairs, not your law down here."

"Move, Lucille."

"Make me, Your Highness."

Jarrett's eyes flashed yellow.

Lucille's did too.

She'd been a stray for thirty years, and she didn't drop her gaze for anybody.

Boyd laughed and clapped Jarrett on the back.

"Let the ladies have their night," he said. "Morning's soon enough."

Then he looked at me again.

"Where's the round you dug out, Doc? We'll want it for the rogue hunt."

"Pathology," I lied.

"Course," he said, and smiled.

I walked away before my face could do anything.

The scrub room was empty.

The steel dish was still on the counter where Lucille had set it, with a towel thrown over it.

I lifted the towel.

The slug sat in a little pool of my blood and his.

It was flattened on one side from his rib.

I picked it up with a gauze pad and carried it to the scrub sink.

I ran the hot water and scrubbed it with a brush, the way I scrub my own hands.

The blood came off in pink threads.

I turned it over under the light.

On the base was a tiny stamp.

A crescent moon, pressed into the metal.

I knew that mark.

Every wolf in the Rutledge Pack knew that mark.

It was on the silver rounds in the pack armory, the ones they kept locked up for rogues.

No rogue had ever held one.

My hands went cold under the hot water.

Somebody in our own pack had put our own silver through his chest.

The door behind me creaked.

I closed my fist around the slug.

A housekeeper backed in with a mop bucket, yawning.

"Sorry, Doc," she said. "Mr. Rutledge wants the sharps bin downstairs opened. Something about a ring."

I nearly laughed.

"Tell him to wear gloves," I said.

She left.

I unzipped my scrub top, slid the slug into my bra under my left breast, and zipped back up.

It was still warm from the water.

When I came back to recovery, the hall had filled.

Four pack wolves in hunting jackets.

A night nurse with a chart.

Boyd by the window, talking low on his phone.

Jarrett in the doorway, blocking it.

Mirabel behind him, holding a clipboard with a form I could read from there.

TRANSFER OF CARE.

"The chief's parking," she said. "You can sign it or not. Doesn't matter."

Jarrett held out a pen.

Behind him, on the bed, Stellan's eyes opened.

He didn't move anything else.

He just looked across the room, past his nephew, past the clipboard, straight at me.

I felt his heartbeat jump under my own ribs.

Then his voice came out of him, rough as gravel.

Every wolf in the room went still.

"Everybody out," he said. "Not her."

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