Defy The Alpha(s)

Chapter 501: Father "Doctor." Micah shot to his feet the moment she stepped out.

The woman in the white coat didn't even get a full breath in before he demanded, "What's going on?" She paused at first, then exhaled like someone about to deliver bad news. "According to the scan, she took suppressors." Micah blinked. "What?" "She took too many of it from the look of the result" the doctor clarified. "However, we've flushed her system, and pumped her stomach clean." "What?!" Micah was still trying to wrap his head around it. Suppressors? Was Adele out of her mind? Was he really that horrible? The doctor said, "It's a good thing you brought her in when you did. Any later, and it could've gotten worse. Possibly even fatal." Micah dragged a hand through his hair, ruffling it in frustration. He was clearly losing his mind, unable to process Adele's reckless choice.

She went on to explain. "Suppressors are mainly to help feral wolves manage surges by silencing the wolf entirely. However, even such an act is unnatural. Think of it like rejecting a limb. Uncomfortable, right?" Micah couldn't speak. He didn't trust what would cout if he did.

"In Adele's case..." The doctor adjusted her coat nervously. "Her wolf didn't react well and lashed out against the drug itself, probably aggravated by the mating fever. You know how active wolves get during that time." Then cthe kicker.

"Who in the world takes suppressors during mating fever?" the doctor muttered, mostly to herself. "If I wasn't so careful, I'd think she was trying to " She stopped dead when her gaze collided with Micah's. He hadn't moved, but the look in his eyes made her blood run cold.

The doctor swallowed, cleared her throat, and stepped back quickly. "You can see her now, Your Highness." She turned and scurried down the hallway like her life depended on it.

Without wasting time, Micah went in to see her.

The room didn't look like a hospital at all, and it was his doing.

Micah ordered that she be treated privately and quietly. The room was large, almost too large for just one person, and painted in warm cream tones with soft, ambient lighting.

There was no beeping monitors, no smell of antiseptic, no scratchy sheets or ugly white tiles. Instead, the floor was polished wood, and a deep-blue armchair sat near the wide window, overlooking the city beyond. The place could pass for a penthouse suite if not for the IV line hooked to her arm.

Adele was asleep, wrapped in soft ivory sheets, her breathing steady and even. Her dark hair was spread across the pillow like ink, and her lashes fanned out over pale cheeks. She looked peaceful.

But that peace twisted something sharp in Micah's chest because beneath it, he saw the vulnerability. The kind that only cafter nearly dying.

Micah closed the distance between them, standing before her. Then his eyes fell on the mating rune.

Etched into her skin at the base of her neck, the ink-black mark stared back at him. Three intersecting lines, vertical and diagonal, met at the center, forming an "X" with a spine and two more offshoots branching like fangs.

Micah reached up and touched his neck. His own mark was two thick lines slashed in an "X," with two crooked prongs climbing out of the top like claws. It was different shapes but of the sbond.

He let out a slow breath, his hand dropping.

They called the mating bond a blessing. Micah almost laughed.

Blessings didn't feel like shackles. Blessings didn't hurt like this.

Even right now, staring at her asleep and breathing, his chest burned not with love, but sour and raw bitterness. She had taken suppressors during her mating fever knowing full well what it could do. She would rather poison her own body than be bound to him. Did she hate him that much? Was the thought of being his mate that unbearable? Micah's hands balled into a fist this time.

She could've died.

She could've died! And where would that have left him? Alone and eternally heartbroken? The bond didn't just break when one mate died, it shattered everything with it. The soul, will and the reason to live. The death of one usually took the other. Sby suicide. Sby grief. While sjust withered away, unable to breathe in a world where the other didn't exist.

She would've left him like that.

Did she even understand what she had risked? She should have just rejected him.

That pain would've been mercy compared to the idea of holding her cold in his arms watching her slip away because she couldn't bear to be his. Micah groaned, dragging a hand down his face and then gripping the edge of the bed to steady himself.

No. He wasn't going to recover from this anytsoon.

How was he supposed to love someone who hated him? The mating bond wasn't meant to fix thing, rather it was supposed to seal the love that was already there.

But between him and Adele? There had never been any of lust.

any of that. Maybe But that wasn't enough to survive a bond this deep. He let out a bitter laugh under his breath. "What a fucking joke." Perhaps Adele was right and the moon goddess did make a mistake this time.

And then without warning, Micah vanished into a dark mist, his body scattering like smoke. And before he could even react, he was slamming back into solid form, face first. Micah hit the ground hard, the wind punched out of his lungs.

"Shit," he groaned, pushing himself up on his forearms, breath wheezing in his throat.

His head snapped up, scanning his surroundings and realizing it wasn't the hospital room.

Oh, he knew exactly where. Fuck his life.

A figure was standing before him with eyes like steel and power radiating off him in thick, suffocating waves.

Micah's stomach dropped.

"Father," he acknowledged him, voice tight with tension.