Marked By The Unmated Alpha

Breaking point

Chapter Eight

Killian

The metal stairs of the private jet felt slick under my boots as we boarded. The midnight air in Georgia was heavy and damp, but I barely registered it as I moved straight into the cabin. I didn't wait for Diego to settle in. The moment the heavy door sealed shut behind us, I walked past the leather seats directly toward the cockpit.

"Get us in the air," I told the pilot, not bothering to look at the flight gauges. "Skip the standard taxi delay. If the tower pushes back, tell them I’ll pay whatever fine they want to write down."

The pilot gave a terse nod, already flipping switches on the overhead panel. I walked back into the main cabin and dropped into a seat, my muscles so tense they felt like stone.

Diego boarded a few seconds later, tossing his jacket onto an empty chair. He glanced toward the open cockpit door where the co-pilot was finishing his check, they spoke a bit before he turned back to me, bracing his hand against the luggage bin as the engines whined to life.

"Pilots said the tower wasn't thrilled about the sudden departure," Diego said, stepping into the cabin aisle. "But they cleared our flight path anyway. We're heading straight out over the Atlantic."

I didn't answer. I pulled my tablet from my bag and opened a secure, encrypted link to the acting director I had left running things at the Paris office.

Send me the employee files for the front desk staff, I typed. Now.

The system lagged for a painful ten seconds before a link appeared. I tapped it, ignoring the corporate metrics and the financial summaries of the acquisition. I scrolled past names and employee numbers until the screen showed the only face I had thought about for two weeks.

Adele Lawrence.

Her passport photograph was small and poorly lit. She wasn't smiling for the camera. She looked exactly the way she had when I walked through those glass doors on Monday morning, quiet and guarded. I scrolled quickly down to the bottom of the page, looking for her residential address.

14 Rue de la Huchette, Apartment 4B.

"You're going to c***k that screen if you keep pressing it like that." Diego sat down in the seat across from me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Are you going to tell me what we're doing, Killian?"

"I am reviewing personnel files," I muttered, not looking up.

"You're lying," Diego said flatly. "We left the pack house in the middle of the night. You didn't even grab a bag. You haven't looked at a single border report, which is unlike you since we got in the car, and you're staring at a human receptionist's file like it's a matter of life and death."

I turned the screen off and set the tablet face down on the small table between us. "I don't remember asking for your council on this flight, Diego."

"I don't care if you asked for it," Diego snapped back, his voice losing every trace of its usual easygoing humor. "I'm your Beta. When you act like this, it's my job to find out why. You've been acting weird since the morning after we first arrived in Paris weeks ago. I knew something was wrong back then. You looked like you'd been hit by a truck when I came in the next morning, and you've been entirely on edge ever since.

Then I got a call from you at midnight saying we need to leave for Paris again. Talk to me."

The ache in my chest flared up again, a sharp, physical throbbing right behind my ribs. My wolf was clawing at the edges of my mind, furious, desperate, demanding that the plane move faster than human machinery allowed.

"She's sick," I said, the words cutting deep into my throat.

Diego frowned, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "Who is sick? The receptionist? Why do you care if a human employee in France has a fever?"

I looked him dead in the eye, letting the heavy, suffocating pressure of my Alpha aura fill the cabin. The air in the room grew instantly thick. Diego went rigid, his own wolf forcing him to recognize the dominant shift, but he didn't lower his gaze.

"Because she isn't just an employee," I said, my voice dropping to a low whisper that carried the full weight of my truth. "She was the girl from the club. She carries my mark, Diego. She's my mate."

Diego froze. The anger died out of his expression, replaced by a sudden, hollow realization as the pieces finally clicked together in his head. He stared at me in total shock, his mouth opening slightly before he forced his voice back. He didn't question the old laws, because he could see the raw desperation in my eyes. He just looked down at the face-down tablet, then backed up at me.

"I got a call tonight from Helen," I added, turning my eyes back toward the black window. "She found the old records. The separation is breaking Adele's body down.

If we don't get to Paris before her system completely rejects the bond, she won't survive the week."

Diego didn't ask another question. He stood up, walked straight to the internal phone near the cabin door, and called the cockpit. "Push the engines," he told the pilot. "Burn whatever fuel you need to burn. Just get us there. And fast."

Adele's POV

The small bedroom we shared was entirely dark, but the air felt thick enough to suffocate me.

We had lived in this apartment for years, our twin beds separated by a single narrow nightstand, but tonight the space felt completely distorted. The cold inside my chest had woken me up just after three in the morning. It wasn't the kind of chill you could fix with an extra blanket. It felt like ice water circulating through my veins, slowing my pulse until every single heartbeat felt like an immense effort.

I shifted against the pillows, trying to find a position that didn't make my lungs burn, but a sharp groan escaped my lips before I could stop it.

Across the room, the rustle of sheets broke the quiet.

"Adele?" Laura’s voice was thick with sleep, but she sat up immediately, turning toward my bed in the gloom. "Are you still awake?"

I tried to tell her to go back to sleep, but the motion of opening my mouth made the room spin violently. Another low gasp broke through my teeth.

I heard Laura swing her legs out of bed, her feet hitting the floor in a hurry. She crossed the small gap between our mattresses and dropped onto the edge of my frame. The moment her hand touched my bare shoulder, she flinched.

.

"Oh my God, you're burning up," Laura whispered, the sleep completely vanishing from her voice. She pressed her palm against my forehead, and I could feel her hand trembling. "Adele, your skin is on fire. That's it. We're going to the clinic. I don't care about the late shift or what you said about stress. This isn't a normal bug."

"Just... give me a second," I choked out. The crescent mark behind my right ear was throbbing so hard I could hear a rhythmic, heavy pounding inside my skull. It felt white-hot, like a piece of heated metal pressed against my neck. "Just some water, Laura. Please."

"Okay. Don't move. I'll be right back."

She scrambled out of the room, her bare feet hitting the hardwood floor of the hallway as she ran toward the small kitchen.

I thought that if I could just sit up, the terrible weight on my chest would lift. I slowly swung my legs over the side of the mattress, my feet touching the cold floorboards. But the moment I tried to put my weight down, the entire bedroom tilted at a terrifying angle. The darkness in the corners of my vision rushed inward, wiping out the light completely.

From the kitchen, I heard the sharp, loud shatter of a glass breaking against the tile.

"Adele!" Laura’s voice sounded incredibly distant, like she was shouting from the bottom of a well.

I reached blindly for the nightstand to steady myself, but my arm felt heavy, useless. My knees buckled beneath me, and the floor rushed up to meet me before the darkness took everything else away.

Through the blackness, I could faintly hear Laura crying. Her hands were frantic, pulling at my shoulder, trying to roll me over onto my back. There was the sharp, digital beep of her phone, then her voice, breaking and terrified, speaking into the receiver.

"Please, you have to send someone," she was sobbing, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "My roommate just collapsed. She's burning hot and she isn't waking up. 14 Rue de la Huchette, Apartment 4B. Please, hurry."

I wanted to open my eyes to tell her I was fine, but the heavy dark just pulled me deeper down, far away from the heat and the sound of her voice.