The Fake Daughter Sold Her Blood, So the Alpha Bought Her Back novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Cut Off

Her doctor says the account is closed, her senses wake without the pills, and she collapses in an alley beside Rhys's car.

I didn't call the number on the card.

I didn't trust a man who was engaged to Sabrina, no matter how gold his eyes went.

But I did leave the next pill in the bottle.

I told myself it was a test, and that one skipped dose would prove the card was a lie.

I woke up at six the next morning with the whole building talking inside my head.

The couple downstairs were arguing about a car payment.

The laundromat's dryers roared through the floor.

A pipe in the wall ticked, and I could hear the water moving inside it.

I sat up on my mattress and my knee didn't hurt.

Yesterday it had been purple and the size of a grapefruit.

Now there was a yellow shadow on it, and the swelling was gone.

My hands were shaking, so I held them between my knees.

Then I put on my jacket, because I needed someone to tell me what was in those pills.

The doctor's office was twelve blocks away, and every block was loud.

A bus passed and I smelled the driver's coffee through the glass.

A man on the corner had a sandwich in his bag, and I could have told you it was turkey.

I breathed through my mouth and kept walking.

The receptionist looked up when I came in.

"Ms. Ransome," she said. "You don't have an appointment."

"I need my doctor, and I need a refill."

She tapped her keyboard and her smile slipped.

"Your account was closed yesterday afternoon by the payer. I can't release anything."

"The payer is my father."

"The payer cancelled it in writing. I'm sorry."

Her heart was beating very fast.

I could hear it, and I knew she was lying about something.

I pushed past her and opened the door to the exam room.

The doctor was at his desk with his coat already on.

He had treated me since I was a child, and he had never once looked at me the way he did now.

"Willa, you can't be here."

"What's in the pills?"

"Iron. You know that. You've always been anemic."

"Then give me iron."

He said nothing.

His pulse jumped in his throat, so loudly that I almost flinched.

"You're lying," I said. "I can hear it."

He stood up and backed against the window.

"I was told to stop," he said. "That's all I can say. Please go home, drink water, and don't go near anyone."

"Told by who?"

He picked up his phone and held it between us.

"Leave, or I call security."

I left.

On the sidewalk the light hurt my eyes, and I had to put my hand over them.

A fever was climbing up my neck.

My skin was too tight, and my gums ached along the top row of my teeth.

I took three steps toward the corner and stopped.

A grey car was parked at the curb with its engine running.

The back window rolled down, and Rhys Hargrove looked out at me.

He was paler than yesterday.

"Get in," he said. "Please."

"No."

"Willa."

He had said my name.

I had said it once, to Sabrina's phone, and he had kept it.

"You followed me," I said.

"Yes."

I hated that he said it so easily.

"I'm not getting in a car with a man who asked who gave the order, when he already knew."

His jaw tightened.

"That's fair," he said. "Walk, then. But you're about to go down, and I'd like to be near when you do."

"I'm fine."

I walked away from him into the alley behind the pharmacy, because it was the nearest shade.

My knees went halfway down the first brick wall.

I slid, and the pavement came up under my hands, and the sound of the whole street turned into one white roar.

My bones were burning from the inside.

I heard a car door.

I heard a cane hit the pavement, then drop, and then footsteps that were running.

Arms came under me and lifted me off the ground.

He was too weak to be carrying anyone.

I felt it in the way his arms trembled.

He carried me anyway.

"Stay with me," he said against my hair. "Breathe. I've got you. I've got you."

I tried to say something cruel to him.

I only got out his name before the dark came.

I woke on a bed so soft I thought I was dead.

There was a tall window, grey light, and the city a long way down.

Water was running in another room.

I turned my head and saw him in a chair beside the bed, in his shirtsleeves, with his cane across his knees.

He had dark shadows under his eyes and he hadn't slept.

"Where am I?"

"My apartment. You were out for nine hours."

I sat up too fast, and the room tilted.

"The pills," I said. "What were they?"

"Not iron." He leaned forward. "They were a suppressant, Willa. A strong one. It's been keeping your wolf asleep for six years."

"I don't have a wolf."

"You do," he said. "And you've been selling me my own medicine."

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