The Alpha King's Human Mate novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Fever

They carried him to a room at the top of the hall with a bed the size of my uncle's truck.

I cleared everyone out except Osmond and the boy with the leather jerkin.

"Water, a lot of it," I said. "Clean cloths, a lamp, and boiling water for my instruments."

"I'll fetch it," said the boy, and ran.

Osmond stayed by the door with his arms crossed.

"I'm not leaving you alone with him."

"Then hold the lamp."

He held the lamp.

I cut the black shirt off Haldane and peeled the dressing away.

The wound I had stitched at noon was ugly now.

The edges had gone dusky and hot, and thin purple lines were reaching out from it across his chest.

"That's not infection," I said.

"It looks like infection to me," said Osmond.

"Infection doesn't spread this fast. It's been nine hours."

I pressed above the stitches with two fingers.

Haldane's whole body bowed up off the mattress.

"Sorry," I said. "Sorry, sorry."

His eyes opened, glassy, and found my face.

"Tavia."

"Don't talk. I'm going to open this up again."

"Do it."

"I haven't told you the part where it hurts."

"You will tell me later," he said, and shut his eyes.

I scrubbed my hands, snapped on my own gloves and cut the stitches one by one.

The wound opened, and the smell came up out of it.

It was sharp and sweet and bitter all at once, like a crushed stem.

I knew that smell.

I had smelled it in the pasture on a ranch down the valley the summer I turned nineteen, when four horses died in a night and my uncle swore for an hour in the truck.

I went in with the forceps.

Deep in the muscle, tight against the bone, I felt something small and hard.

It slid under the steel.

I drew it out and held it up to the lamp.

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