The Forbidden Mate: Claimed by My Ex's Alpha Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Sharps Bin
Jarrett rejects Geneva in front of the hospital board and closes her stray clinic; she drops his ring in the sharps bin, then defies him to save his uncle, the Alpha, shot with silver, and her torn bond catches on the heart in her hand.
My mate rejected me at one in the morning, while I was putting stitches into a stray's hand.
I was on stitch six when the basement door banged open.
Jarrett came down the stairs first, in his navy blazer.
Mirabel Gaskell came down on his arm.
Behind them were two men from the hospital board, still in their golf jackets.
The kid on my table was nineteen and had cut his palm open on a fence at the ranch where he slept in the barn.
He smelled Jarrett and went stiff.
"Hold still," I told him. "He's not here for you."
I was wrong about that.
"Geneva," Jarrett said. "We need to talk."
"I'm working."
"This won't take long."
Lucille set down the tray of gauze and pushed her reading glasses up into her silver hair.
She looked at Mirabel's hand on his sleeve.
Then she looked at me.
I put in stitch seven.
Jarrett cleared his throat, the way he did before toasts.
"I, Jarrett Rutledge, reject you, Geneva Coulter, as my mate."
It went into me and came out the other side.
Seven years.
Seven years of feeling his heartbeat whenever he walked into a room.
It ripped out of my chest in one long pull, and the room tipped sideways.
My needle hand shook once.
I pressed my hip hard into the edge of the table until it stopped.
The kid stared up at me with his mouth open.
"Doc," he whispered. "You're bleeding from the nose."
"I know."
I wiped it on my shoulder and put in stitch eight.
One of the board men looked at the floor.
The other one looked at his watch.
Mirabel smiled at me with her red mouth.
"Don't make it sad," she said. "Everybody knew it was coming except you."
Jarrett lifted his chin.
"Mirabel will stand beside me as Luna at the full moon. And this clinic closes Friday."
Lucille made a sound.
"Closes," she said. "There are seventy strays in this valley, Jarrett."
"Then they can find a valley that wants them."
"The hospital isn't a soup kitchen," Mirabel said. "The board agrees."
The board men both suddenly needed to check their phones.
I tied off stitch eleven.
I snipped the thread.
Then I peeled off my gloves and dropped them in the bin.
The ring had been on my left hand for seven years.
His grandmother's moonstone, in a plain gold band, because a Rutledge never puts silver on a wolf.
I worked it over my knuckle.
I walked to the red sharps container on the wall, the one full of used needles and scalpel blades.
I dropped the ring through the slot.
It rattled all the way to the bottom.
"There," I said. "It's yours. Dig it out."
Lucille snorted so hard her glasses fell onto her nose.
Jarrett's face went blotchy pink from the collar up.
"You're making a scene."
"You brought the audience."
Then every phone in the room went off at once.
So did my pager.
I read it while the board men read theirs.
ALPHA. GSW CHEST. SILVER. ETA 4 MIN.
The color left Jarrett's face so fast it was almost funny.
"My uncle."
He grabbed the board man nearest him.
"Call the chief of surgery. Get him in here."
"The chief lives forty minutes out," I said.
"Then he drives fast."
"Silver in the chest doesn't wait forty minutes. I'm the trauma surgeon on tonight."
Jarrett stepped into my path.
"You're not touching my family. You're nothing to this family now."
He said it loudly, for the board.
I looked at him for one second.
"Then fire me after," I said.
I walked around him and took the stairs two at a time.
Lucille was right behind me, swearing under her breath the whole way up.
The ambulance bay doors were already open.
Four pack wolves carried him in on a stretcher, still half in their hunting clothes.
Boyd Gaskell, our Beta, came in behind them with a rifle slung on his back and his ruddy face all crumpled up with worry.
"Rogues," he kept saying. "Damn rogues on our own ridge."
Stellan Rutledge was the biggest man in Hollin Creek, and he looked small on that stretcher.
His black beard was wet with blood.
His lips were gray.
The hole was just left of his breastbone, and the skin around it had gone black and wrinkled.
Silver.
He opened his eyes when we hit the trauma bay lights.
They were very dark and very calm.
"Doc," he said. "Where's my nephew?"
"Upstairs. Planning your funeral."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
Then his eyes rolled back and the monitor screamed one long flat note.
"He's gone," one of the wolves said.
"He's not," I said. "Lucille, open the tray."
There's no gentle way to do what I did next, and I didn't try to find one.
I opened his chest.
The silver had stopped just short of his heart, a dull gray lump in the muscle, burning everything it touched.
I pulled it out with my fingers and dropped it in a steel dish.
It rang like a bell.
His heart sat still.
I took it in my hand.
It was big and heavy and warm, and it didn't move.
I squeezed.
I let go.
I squeezed again.
"Come on," I said. "Not tonight. You don't get to die and leave him the seat."
On the fifth squeeze, it kicked against my palm.
Then again.
Then on its own, strong and steady.
The monitor started to beep.
The wolves at the wall let out their breath in one big rush.
And I felt it.
Not in my hand.
In my chest, under my scrubs, in the raw hole where Jarrett had been ten minutes ago.
A second heartbeat.
His.
It caught in me, and this time it didn't tear.
It held.
Every wolf in that room lifted their head at the same time.
Lucille's hands froze on the suction.
"Gen," she said very quietly. "Your scent."
I didn't have to ask.
I could smell it on myself.
Pine and cold air and gunpowder.
Him.
I looked up.
On the other side of the trauma bay glass stood Jarrett, with Mirabel and the board behind him.
He was staring at my hands inside his uncle's chest.
I watched his nostrils flare.
I watched him smell it too.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend