Mated To The Crippled Alpha

Chapter 477: BLOOD STAINS EVERYTHING

The two men moved toward me without a word, and every instinct I had screamed at once. I was already burning up , head pounding, skin too hot, the cold making everything feel slow and far away , but fear cut through all of it like a blade. I ran.I collided straight into Vito.

I stumbled back, staring up at him with my heart hammering, caught completely between two bad things. My face had already been flushed from the fever. Now it went pale. "It’s , it’s you."

I didn’t know whether running toward him was better or worse than running away. I didn’t get to decide. His hand closed around my wrist and he pulled me behind him in one smooth motion, putting himself between me and the two men. He wasn’t much older than me, but something about the way he stood , the stillness of it, the weight of it , made the air in the room shift.

"Move aside," he said. His voice was flat and cold, carrying the kind of authority that doesn’t ask permission.

The two men actually flinched. They bowed their heads slightly. "Mr. Blackwell, Ms. Blackwell instructed us to,"

"She’s still useful. Leave her to me and get out."

"Yes, Mr. Blackwell."

Wisteria appeared in the doorway, her face still marked from the night before, her expression barely containing the fury underneath. "Vito, what exactly are you doing? Why are you protecting this girl? She scratched my face. I was only going to take her hands and feet , it wouldn’t have affected anything important."

"That’s enough." His voice dropped lower, which somehow made it worse. "I said she’s useful. Get out."

Wisteria’s jaw tightened. She and Vito were close in age, but she knew better than to push him past a certain point. She had seen what happened when she did. She held his gaze for one long, simmering moment, then looked at me with eyes that promised this conversation wasn’t finished.

"You better remember this," she said, and left.

The room settled. I was still standing behind Vito, watching him with every ounce of wariness I had left. "What are you going to do to me?" My voice came out rougher than I intended. "Cut off my legs, or,"

The floor tipped sideways.

The last thing I registered was Vito’s arm catching me before the darkness took over completely.

I came back to myself slowly, in pieces , warmth first, then the dull throb behind my eyes, then the unfamiliar ceiling above me. I was in a bed. A real one, with a blanket pulled up to my chin. Somewhere nearby, I heard Yael’s small voice say, with total calm, "She was sleeping."

Vito’s hand was on my forehead. His frown deepened. I was running a real fever , I could feel it in the way everything ached, the way even breathing felt like effort.

He left and came back with medication. I was too out of it to cooperate. He said something about taking it, that I’d feel better, but my body wasn’t interested in listening to instructions. I heard him sigh, and then I heard Yael’s indignant little protest , "Vito, my bottle!" , and then something cool and plastic touched my lips and I drank without questioning it, because my body remembered that shape, remembered bottles from when I was smaller, and it just knew what to do.

Yael sulked from across the room. "My bottle."

"I’ll buy you a new one," Vito told him, patting his head. "She’s sick. We have to look after her. Okay?" Yael nodded, not fully satisfied but willing to accept this.

Vito checked my temperature. When his fingers touched my hand, I grabbed on without thinking, the way you grab for something solid when the world feels unsteady. I thought he was my brother. In that warm, half-awake place between sleeping and waking, I was completely sure of it.

"Jake," I murmured. "I’m so cold. Hold me."

He was quiet for a moment. Then I felt the bed shift, and he lay down beside me, and I tucked myself against his side and held on, and whispered, "Jake. I’m so scared."

I don’t know what I expected him to do. He just put his hand on my back and patted it, slow and steady. "Don’t be scared. I’m here."

"You’re so kind, Jake," I said.

His body went slightly tense at that, but he didn’t pull away.

He had never felt anything in particular when Wisteria clung to him , she had always been sharp-edged, brittle in the way of someone who learned early that softness gets you hurt. And Yael was different; Yael was his brother and that was its own familiar weight. But this was something else. This small girl with her fever-warm skin and her absolute trust in someone she thought he was , it did something strange to his chest, something he didn’t have a name for. Like a door opening in a room he’d kept locked. He patted her back again, and something in him quietly decided: whatever came next, he would do what he could for her.

The fever broke a few hours later. I woke up hollow with hunger, my throat scraped raw. I said my brother’s name before I remembered where I was, reached for water before I’d even opened my eyes. Someone put a bottle in my hand and I drank half of it in one go.

Then a different discomfort announced itself, and I opened my eyes fully.

The ceiling was still wrong. Still not home.

"You’re awake," Vito said.

I curled up immediately, pulling my knees in, watching him from across the pillow with the specific wariness of someone who has been burned recently and is not ready to stop being careful. He looked back at me steadily.

"I’m not going to hurt you. You can trust me."

I checked. My hands were there. My feet were there. I uncurled, just slightly.

He leaned over and touched my forehead with the back of his hand. "Your face is still red. Still feverish?" He checked properly , "Normal now. Does anything hurt?"

"I," My face went hot for an entirely different reason. I looked away from him.

"What’s wrong?"

"I need to," I couldn’t finish it. I was nearly six years old and I had never had to tell a boy I needed the bathroom, and the embarrassment of it sat like a stone in my chest.

Vito waited. His patience ran out before I found the words.

"What is it?"

"I need to,"

Too late.

I felt it happen and I couldn’t stop it, and then the tears came all at once, the kind that come when everything has been too much for too long and this is simply the last small thing. I was sobbing before I could stop myself , not just about this, about all of it, about the dark corridor and the terrible room and Wisteria’s hand on my head and my sister’s face in the water and Jake not being here,

Vito’s hand went still. He looked at me. He understood.

The silence stretched.

Then: "It’s okay. Yael does it too sometimes." He said it simply, without cruelty, without the laugh I’d been bracing for. "I’ll get you something to wear. Wait here."

I stared at his back as he left. Is he actually a good person? The question sat in my chest without an answer.

He came back with clothes , his own, since his brother’s wouldn’t fit. He pointed me toward the bathroom and changed the sheets while I cleaned up. When I came back out, I was swimming in his shirt, shoulders slipping, sleeves hanging well past my hands, wet hair stuck to my face. I had never learned to button a shirt properly , at home there had always been someone to do it for me.

Vito looked at me for a moment. Then he crouched down in front of me, buttoned the shirt from the bottom up, and rolled the sleeves back until my hands appeared. He did it matter-of-factly, without making me feel small.

I looked at him when he was done. "Vito," I said. "I’m hungry."

He sighed , the sigh of someone recalculating how much they have taken on today. But the corner of his mouth shifted, just barely.

"Yes, my princess," he said. "I’ll get something ready."