Page 109 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

I help her to her feet. “You have nothing to fear. From any of us. I know you have questions, and this time I’ll answer them. But for now, let’s head home.”

I hold out my hand, and when she doesn’t take it for a moment, my heart seizes, the rejection obvious.

Then she slowly reaches out and curls her hand around mine, whispering, “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jessa

I’ve counted the cracks in the ceiling twice, and both times I lose the number halfway through. Sleep won’t come. I roll onto my back, shift to one side, then the other, the sheet knotting around my ankles. Every time I close my eyes, I see Mia’s eyes turning gold and the claws pushing out through her fingertips. I hear the growl that came up out of her chest when she went after Sloane.

A shifter. A non-human.

The child that I could have sworn I knew better than anyone is a shifter. And I’ve seen now what a shifter is. A large looming wolf, terrifying as it approached me. Will she look like that in a few years?

Will it change how I feel about her?

The answer comes before I’ve even finished asking the question. My answer to Marcus hasn’t changed.

Turning on my back, I throw an arm over my eyes, trying not to think of what I witnessed today. I don’t know why I didn’t run away screaming. All I know is under the fear was something else, a strange sort of calm. Like somewhere deep inside, my soul knew him, felt safe with him.

“Damnit.” I sit up in bed, frustrated.

Easing out of bed, I pad down the stairs on bare feet and slip past the door the girls are sleeping behind. The kitchen still holds a trace of bleach where the glass got swept up. My hand goes for the milk out of habit when I open the fridge, then stops on a bottle of beer, cold under my fingers. Milk isn’t going to fix what’s wrong with me tonight. But alcohol might.

I take the beer out to the patio and drop into a chair, tucking my legs up under me. The first swallow is bitter and cold. I let my head fall back against the seat and look out at the black wall of trees where, two nights ago, everything I knew about the world changed.

My life used to make sense. I kept a spreadsheet for everything. Now my daughter is going to be a wolf, and here I sit on a shifter’s patio at one in the morning, drinking his beer.

A board creaks behind me. I glance over my shoulder, already knowing who it is.

Marcus crosses the deck in nothing but a pair of pajama pants slung low on his hips. He’s bare from the waist up, the wound closed over already, only smooth skin where I watched him bleed. I look at his chest before I can stop myself, then lower, then drag my eyes up to his face and hope the dark hides it.

It doesn’t.

“Want to touch?” His mouth curves.

“No, thank you.” I take another sip so my mouth has somewhere to be. “Touching you is what landed me in this mess to begin with.”

He laughs softly and drops into the chair across from mine, angling it so he’s facing me straight on. “How are you holding up?” he asks.

“It doesn’t feel real.” I turn the bottle between my hands.

“I can imagine.”

I hold the beer out across the gap between us. He takes a pull off it and hands it back. His fingers graze mine on the return, enough to prickle up my whole arm.

“Ask me anything.” He rubs the nape of his neck. “The only thing I ever kept from you was this, the shifter part. I couldn’t tell you.”

“But you did.”

“I had to, sooner or later.” His eyes hold mine. “I just couldn’t work out how to say it without you running for the hills.”

“Bit hard to run for the hills.” I stare into the dark. “My own kid’s going to sprout fur someday.”

That drags a huff out of him. “She’s not going to turn into a wolf and stay one.” He leans forward, forearms on his knees. “She’ll gain the ability to shift back and forth, whenever she wants it. That’s a different thing altogether.”

“And what does that mean for her? For her life?” My voice comes out smaller than I’d like.