Page 9 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

So I let my alpha power move through me and into him. It won’t fix anything. All it does is press the symptoms down for a day, maybe less, but at least he’ll be out of this misery for a while. Under my palm, his body grows cooler, and his breathing eases. The tension goes out of his jaw, and his hand uncurls against the pillow.

“What did you do?”

Ariela is at my shoulder, shoving me with both hands, which moves me perhaps an inch. Then she gets past me to put her own palm where mine was. Her jaw goes slack.

“How is his fever coming down?” She looks up at me. “It’s been up for so long. No medicine was working. What did you do to him?”

I ignore her frantic questions, my eyes on my son. The child I was forced to have through surrogacy because my own mate left me way too early. The boy that was supposed to be my heir to the pack. No, who will be my heir.

“You’ve had my child living in squalor.”

“Excuse me?” She turns so fast her elbow catches the bedframe. “This isn’t squalor. Just because you probably live in some glass tower doesn’t mean the rest of us are in a gutter. We do fine here.”

“I’m aware of what you earn, Miss Reyes.” I glance up at the water stain in the ceiling corner, then at the tape along the window frame. “Frankly, I’m surprised you’re not on the street.”

Color goes up her neck and into her face. “You can’t come into somebody’s house at midnight and start insulting it,” she snaps. “How were you raised?”

“Better than this.”

“You’re a piece of work.” She breathes out hard through her nose.

“Where is the boy’s mother?”

“I’m his mother.”

“You’re not.”

She takes hold of my wrist, closing her hand right around it and pulling. I still can’t account for what happens next, which is that I let her. She walks me out of the bedroom, pulls the door shut behind us, and doesn’t stop until we’re back in the front room.

“Don’t ever say that where he can hear you.” Her voice has dropped to almost nothing. “I adopted Luca when he was four days old. My name is on everything he has. He’s my sister’s son.”

“Where is your sister?”

“She died having him.”

Everything in me goes still. Six years of investigators, six years of a surname that led nowhere, and all this time she’s been in the ground.

I try not to let this news get to me and study her. “Six years,” I tell her. “You’ve had that money for six years and you’re making him live like this?”

“What money?” Ariela narrows her gaze at me.

“Your sister,” I say coldly, “took five hundred thousand dollars out of an account I opened for her, the money she was only supposed to access once she had given birth to the child and handed him over.”

The woman before me gapes at me and then bursts into laughter. “My sister never had half a million dollars in her life,” she retorts. “She was in debt when she came to me. She was living in a women’s shelter. If she’d walked out of anywhere with that kind of money, would she have lived her last few months like that? Or would we be living in this part of town?”

I give her a withering look. “I know greed, Miss Reyes. Why spend on the child when you can spend it on yourself?”

Ariela wets her lips. “You’re a very special kind of deluded, Mr. Vance. But I guess we all need our fantasies.”

“Give me her full name.” I can have it myself in under an hour, but I want it from her.

“Maya Reyes.” Her chin comes up again. “Are you telling me my sister was your surrogate, and you didn’t even have her name?”

I stiffen. “She gave us a different surname. Why would she do that?”

Ariela’s expression twists, and a spasm of grief crosses over her face. “I don’t know why. But she never told me she was a surrogate. I’m not surprised, though. Her ex-husband took her for everything and left her with crushing debts. She must’ve been desperate.”

Her lower lip trembles before she firms it. “Either way, I am Luca’s mother and his legal guardian. Before you say anything further, you’d better make sure you understand that. And I am not handing my child over to someone who claims paternity.”