Page 78 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

My hands are trembling, and Marcus says coldly, “She was targeted because she was a kid by someone who was watching her for a long time, who knew exactly what she wouldn’t say no to.”

“You’re scaring me,” I whisper.

“Good.” He holds my stare, unblinking. “Fear’ll keep you careful. But you’re safe here, both of you. Nothing gets through that door while I’m in this house.”

Watching him stand there, so certain, I believe every word. That’s the problem. “I know,” I say. The words give me away, and I don’t try to take them back. Under all the fear, I trust him with her. I don’t know when that happened, and I don’t like what it means.

Marcus’s throat moves. His mouth opens on an answer he doesn’t give, then his eyes drop from mine. “For now,” he says, quieter. “Just hold on to that.”

I don’t answer. But as he walks away, the tension won’t leave my shoulders.

Sleep doesn’t come to me that night. I lie on my back listening to a house that isn’t mine tick and cool around me, until midnight slides past. Giving up, I pad down the stairs in bare feet, past the girls’ door, into the front room that opens straight onto the kitchen, where a single lamp burns low.

The bottle of wine is where I left it. I pour a glass, more than a glass, and drop onto the couch with my phone.

The email’s still sitting there when I open it. A firm three states over wants me. The title’s better, the salary’s fatter, and they’ll put us up in a company apartment until I find my feet. It’s in a good school district too, a better one than we left behind in the city. Four days left to say yes.

So why am I stalling? I turn the glass in my hand and make myself count the reasons to go. Someone poisoned my daughter here, and I still don’t know who did it or why. It’s been one incident, only one, but I’ve spent every hour since braced for the next.

Part of me wants to tell him. I feel it most when he tucks Mia’s hair back without thinking or crouches to hear whatever she’s babbling about at eye level. Then common sense hauls me back by the collar. The tug is real, and that’s what makes it dangerous. I followed it once, and it’s the reason I’ve raised Mia alone.

I’ve watched enough of these stories play out to know the ending. The rich man is generous right up until he isn’t. He turns on you, or gets bored, or some lawyer whispers custody in his ear, and the woman with no money, no family, learns exactly where she stands.

What happens to me the day Marcus Steele changes his mind?

I trusted Derek once, let his easy kindness talk me into leaning on him, and he answered it by vanishing under a debt that nearly buried us both. And even knowing that, here I am thinking about staying.

I’m well into my second glass when the stairs creak, and Marcus appears in the lamplight barefoot, hair a mess from the pillow, a T-shirt pulled over low-slung sweats. “It’s past midnight. What are you doing down here?”

“Relaxing.” I lift the glass an inch off my knee. “Trying to.”

His eyes drop to the phone face-up beside my thigh, the screen still lit. I move to flip it over. He’s faster. The phone’s in his hand before mine lands on it, and I watch him scan the email.

When he looks up, his face has gone tight. “You’ve got another job.” I don’t give him an answer.

“Where?”

“I applied a while back.” My tone stays even. “I just got an answer.”

He sets the phone down slowly. “Where is it, Jessa?”

“Three states over,” I tell him. “The firm’s in Brenton.”

Marcus studies me for a long beat. Then he crosses to the cabinet, takes down a glass, and pours himself a generous amount of the wine. He drains it in one motion, his knuckles white around the glass, then sets it down slowly.

“What are you planning to do?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to leave? Take Mia and go?”

I look at him and don’t answer. The lamp throws half his face into shadow, and I can’t read the other half. When I do speak, it comes out smaller than intended. “Isn’t that the smart thing to do?”

He steps toward me. I lift the glass for something to do with my hands. He takes it out of them before it reaches my mouth and sets it on the side table, out of reach. Then he’s standing over me, close, his knees brushing mine where they part around him, his hand coming up to cradle the side of my face.

“Do you really believe that?” His thumb moves once across my cheekbone. “That leaving is the smart thing?”

“I don’t know.” It comes out on a breath, barely there.