Page 105 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“I think so.”

I look around the mess in the kitchen. “Tell me exactly what happened here, Jessa.”

Her head comes around. “I already told you. Sloane came in and went batshit crazy.”

“You said the girls were fine.”

“They are!” But her eyes don’t meet mine.

“Then why do I smell Mia’s blood in here?”

Jessa goes still. “What do you mean, you can smell her blood?”

“I mean exactly what I said. I can smell her blood.”

“You can’t.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Marcus. Nobody smells somebody’s blood and knows whose it is. Blood is blood. It all smells the same.”

“It doesn’t smell the same to me.”

Her hand comes down. She stares at me across the ruined island, and I watch a decade of fear crawl back into her eyes. It’s the same fear that met me on a rainy road with a dead car and a pepper spray she never had.

“Do you want to tell me what happened,” I ask, “or do you want to keep going?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Jessa.” I come around the island until there’s a foot of air between us. “You think you’re protecting her. You’re not protecting her from me.”

“Stop it.”

“I need to know what Mia did,” I say low. “More than that, I need to know what you saw.”

Her eyes go wide, and what floods them isn’t anger. It’s terror, and it’s aimed at me.

“My daughter didn’t do anything.” The words tumble over each other. “She got into the middle of it, so I pushed her out of the way. That’s all.”

“You still don’t trust me.”

“That isn’t—”

“After everything, you’d rather lie to my face.” I drag a hand down my jaw. “Whatever you’re keeping her safe from, I want the same thing you want. I need to know what you saw and what Sloane saw.”

Jessa’s mouth sets. “Sloane saw nothing. I don’t understand why you’re making this into something.”

Rage crashes through me, and it comes out of my chest before I can stop it. “Damn it, Jessa, Mia is my daughter too!” The sound tears out of me in a register no human throat makes, and the glass in the cabinets hums. “We’re a family. You, me, and her. You can’t keep locking me out of my own—”

Something small breaks across the kitchen behind me. Bella stands at the bottom of the stairs in her pajamas with one hand on the banister. Three steps above her, Mia blinks at us with her hair mashed against one cheek, hauled out of sleep by the sound of me shouting.

“Mia’s your daughter?” Bella whispers.

My daughter’s mouth hangs open. She looks at me, then at her mother, then back at me.

“Bell.” I put a hand out. “Come and sit down. I’ll explain everything.”

Bella takes a step back instead. “You said the three of you are a family. It was you, Mia, and her mom.”

“Bella—”

“What about me?”