The Alpha’s Enemy Claims His Human Mate Chapter 11

The Alpha’s Enemy Claims His Human Mate Chapter 11

## Barrett

For one full second I could not read my own phone screen.

I was looking at it, and Elena’s name was on it, and the call had ended, and I did not understand which of those things was real.

I lifted my eyes.

She was there.

My wife was in a wheelchair.

I’d just wanted to keep her from overreacting. From turning a routine check-in into another argument. I hadn’t expected her to walk up to the doorway and see it for herself.

“Elena —”

I was on my feet before her name was out of my mouth. My mother said something behind me. Sophia made a small, careful noise. I heard neither of them. I rounded the bed. I got past the doorframe.

The corridor was empty.

The wheelchair had taken the first corner and was already gone.

Reid.

Alpha.

Find her.

A beat.

Alpha, I have been trying. She left the Crescent at six-forty on foot. She walked south toward the legal district. I lost her on Elm. I did not —

She is in this building, Reid. Right now. She is in a wheelchair.

The longer beat this time.

On it.

I dropped out of Mindlink and dialed her from my phone the way a human husband would. It was the only instinct that still worked.

The line rang once. It clicked.

The number you have dialed is not accepting calls from this contact.

I held the phone away from my ear the way a man holds out a weapon that misfired.

My wife had blocked me.

I walked. I did not run. An Alpha running in his own territory was a photograph on somebody’s phone before he cleared the corridor.

I called Reid again on a private line.

“I don’t have eyes on them, Alpha. Hospital security just lost the camera that covers the east wing.”

“Lost.”

“Offline, routine cycle.”

“Convenient.”

He did not argue with me.

“The wheelchair,” I said. “The wheelchair, Reid. What is the wheelchair.”

A silence.

“Sir. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“The Crescent lost her at six-forty. She told me not to follow her. I did not follow her. Alpha — I did not know she had been hurt.”

The word hurt went into me sideways.

I closed my eyes for one second. Long enough to count. She had called me.

Three times.

I had been standing in the private wing of this hospital with my hands on my knees, watching Sophia’s monitor, because Sophia had fainted in my office at noon and I had not been willing to bet an unborn child’s life on what I could not see. I had silenced my phone.

No.

I had silenced my phone after I answered it. I had answered it and ended the call. I had seen my own wife’s name come up on the screen and I had pressed the red button.

I had not done that.

I knew that I had not done that.

I pulled up the call log. The call log said that I had.

“Barrett.”

My mother. Behind me, in the corridor.

I did not turn.

“Barrett, look at me. What is the matter with you. There is a woman lying in a bed carrying your heir, and you bolted out of that room over —”

“Mother.”

“— over that girl sulking in the hallway. She has been sulking for a week. She is a grown woman —”

“She is not sulking.” My voice was louder than any voice I had used on my mother since I was twenty. “She is in a wheelchair, Mother.”

Sophia’s voice floated in from the doorway behind her. Small. A little breathless.

“Alpha — this is my fault. If I had not fainted. If the baby —”

“It is not your fault, my sweet girl.” My mother’s hand went out without even turning and patted the air near Sophia’s. “Don’t you take on another person’s burden. That human of his always finds a way to make other women feel guilty.”

“Mother.”

She tipped her chin up at me. It was her remembering-me-at-twenty face — the one she used when she wanted me to remember she was the woman who had taught me to be an Alpha.

“Darling. I am going to say what no one else in this Pack will say to you. Let her go.”

“What.”

“Let her go. Set her up in an apartment. Pay her well for three years of service. Sophia will carry the name. Sophia will give us the heir. Sophia will wear the robes. The Pack has waited long enough. You have played house long enough.”

Sophia made a noise that could be heard as disagreement, and then remembered she should not make it.

I turned on both of them.

“Enough.”

My mother’s mouth closed.

“Sophia is a surrogate. Sophia is a professional. Sophia is carrying a child I authorized because my wife was ruining her body trying to carry mine. Do you understand me. My wife. I want to hear that sentence from each of you. Say it.”

They did not.

“I am not divorcing Elena. I am not demoting Elena. I never want to hear a plan for replacing her in this corridor or any other corridor in this hospital. Do we understand each other.”

Sophia looked down at her hands.

My mother looked down at her rings.

I turned and walked toward the elevator.

—

## The Third Person

Mrs. Halloran watched her son’s back until the elevator doors closed him inside.

Then she turned to the younger woman standing in the doorway.

“Sit down before you fall, my dear. You have had a long day.”

Sophia lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.

“Mrs. Halloran —”

“He’ll come around,” she said.

She’d done what needed to be done. When that woman’s name had flashed on Barrett’s phone at Sophia’s bedside, she’d reached over and pressed the red button. Twice. The third time, she’d answered and hung up immediately.

Barrett’s attention belonged where it mattered. On the baby. On the Pack. On the partnership with Vitalis Corp. Not on a human wife who contributed nothing to the family’s future.

She hadn’t expected the woman to show up at the hospital. That was an inconvenience. But inconveniences could be managed.

She reached across and took Sophia’s free hand and pressed it, with the precise pressure of a woman who was not asking.

“You worry about that baby, darling. I will worry about making sure that

girl does not stand between you and this family. We understand each other, do we not.”

“Yes, Mrs. Halloran,” Sophia said softly.

Mrs. Halloran smiled.

“Good girl.”