The Forbidden Mate: Claimed by My Ex's Alpha Uncle novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Mirabel

I went down the loft ladder so fast I skipped the last four rungs.

Stellan was ahead of me.

He reached her first and caught her before she went down in the gravel again.

She flinched from him.

"I've got you," he said. "Easy."

He carried her into the barn the way he'd carried the old woman out of the fire.

Lucille came out of the farmhouse in her robe and slippers.

She saw who it was and stopped dead in the yard.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"Get the tray," I said.

"Gen."

"She's sick, Lucille. Get the tray."

Lucille looked at me for one long second.

Then she went for the tray.

Mirabel lay on the steel table, shivering so hard it rattled.

Her lips were cracked.

Her red lipstick was gone.

Without it she looked very young.

Along the insides of her wrists, under the pale skin, was that faint gray stippling.

I didn't need to smell her blood.

I drew it anyway, and smelled it anyway, and it was there.

Old pennies.

"How long have you been throwing up?" I said.

"Four days."

"Where's your car?"

"In a ditch. A mile back." Her teeth chattered. "I turned my phone off. So he can't find me."

"Who can't?"

She didn't answer.

I put two lines in her and opened the fluids.

The pharmacy tech brought me the drug that binds the silver.

We had five doses left.

I gave Mirabel one.

Lucille watched the plunger go down and said nothing at all, which was louder than anything she could have said.

The fluids ran.

The shivering eased.

After an hour, some color came back into her face.

Not much.

Enough.

Stellan stood at the foot of the table with his arms folded.

Lucille stood by the door.

The kid with the stitched hand sat on a hay bale in the corner, pretending to read a feed catalog.

Mirabel looked at the ceiling of the barn for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

"Why did you do that?" she said. "You know what I did."

"You were sick. This is a clinic."

"I put the silver in his bag."

The barn went very quiet.

The kid put the catalog down.

"Not the login," she said. "Not somebody using my sticky note. Me."

Her voice was flat and fast.

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