Marked By The Unmated Alpha

What are you?

Chapter Ten

Laura's POV

My hands were slammed against the front of Killian Maximus’s heavy jacket, and it felt like trying to push over a solid stone wall. He didn't even flinch. His entire frame was rigid, his chest heaving under my palms as he stared down at Adele with a terrifying, absolute focus that made the hairs on my arms stand up. The air in the tiny hospital room suddenly felt entirely too thick to breathe.

"I said get away from her!" I shouted, my voice echoing sharply off the sterile tile walls. Panic was making my heart hammer violently against my ribs, but I didn't step back. I couldn't. She only had me.

Killian didn't even blink. He didn't look at me, and he didn't acknowledge the small room. He just kept his intense, amber eyes locked on Adele's pale face, his massive hand still suspended in the air, inches away from her skin like a predator profiling its prey.

"Laura, stop," a low, gravelly voice murmured from behind him.

I didn't need to turn around to know it was Diego. I had already dealt with the split second of sheer, head-spinning disbelief when he first walked through the door a minute ago. I wasn't brooding over him. I was a grown woman; I knew what a casual fling was, and seeing him stand there in a tailored dark suit alongside Killian Maximus didn't change that.

But seeing the two of them together made my brain completely short-circuit.

The pieces absolutely refused to fit together. Killian Maximus is our absolute boss now. He was the cold, untouchable tycoon who had swept into the Paris branch for that brutal corporate takeover a few weeks ago. When he had walked through the office doors back then, surrounded by lawyers and the executives, he had looked right past Adele as if she were a piece of office furniture. He had acted like she didn't even exist before he boarded his private jet and left the country.

So why was he back? Why was Diego standing guard for him like a high-level security shadow? And why was our terrifying boss standing in a private hospital wing at three in the afternoon, looking like his entire world was tearing apart at the seams?

"What do you want from her? What did you do to her?" I demanded, turning my fury completely back on Killian. I shoved against his chest again, using every ounce of my body weight, desperate to c***k his terrifying composure. "Tell me what you did to her, you bastard!"

Killian’s jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped. A low, dangerous vibration rattled deep in his chest, a sound so dark and intense it made me freeze for a fraction of a second. But he still didn't touch me. He just stood there, absorbing my frantic shoving as if I were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

"She has been sick ever since she came back from your hotel the next morning!" I screamed, the tears finally spilling over my eyelashes and burning hot tracks down my face. "Adele has never been sick a day in her life. She was in perfect health until that night. She came back looking completely hollow, like a ghost, and now she's dying in a hospital bed! What did you do to her?"

Killian’s intense eyes finally shifted, dropping to look at me. The sheer, icy ruthlessness in his gaze made me want to trip backward and run out into the hallway, but the raw, frantic desperation behind his eyes stopped me cold. He looked pushed to the absolute brink.

"Step away from the bed, Laura," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a heavy, commanding weight that physically pressed down on the room, making my ears ring.

"No!" I yelled, digging my sneakers into the ground. I grabbed the cold metal guardrail of Adele’s bed, anchoring myself as a shield between them. "You don't get to touch her. You don't get to act like you care now. She’s sick, and she’s pregnant, so get the hell out of her room!"

The words hit the room like a physical explosion.

The steady, frantic beeping of the heart monitor was the only sound left. Behind us, I heard Diego let out a sharp, audible breath, his entire posture instantly locking down into a rigid stance.

But it was Killian’s reaction that truly terrified me. The cold, corporate boss completely vanished. His entire demeanor shifted into something terrifyingly dominant, a wave of pure, possessive energy rolling off him so strongly that my knees actually trembled. The math clicked behind his eyes in a fraction of a second, his gaze dropping instantly to Adele's covered stomach before rising back to her face with a look of fierce, unadulterated shock.

"Diego," Killian murmured, his voice dropping into a register so low it caused the water glass on the bedside table to vibrate. "Watch the door."

Diego didn't hesitate. He stepped back into the corridor and pulled the heavy wooden door shut, cutting us off from the rest of the hospital staff and leaving me completely isolated with a man who looked entirely feral.

"Get out!" I cried, reaching out to grab Killian's wrist as his hand moved toward Adele again.

He didn't hurt me. He didn't snap at me. With a terrifyingly smooth, immovable strength, Killian simply caught both of my wrists in one of his massive hands, lifting them away from his chest as if I weighed nothing at all. With his free hand, he reached down and placed his broad, warm palm directly against Adele’s pale, freezing cheek.

I opened my mouth to scream for help, to yell for security, but the sound died completely in my throat.

The second his skin made contact with hers, the frantic, high-pitched sound of the heart monitor suddenly skipped a single beat.

Then, it slowed down.

I stared at the monitor screen, my breath catching in my throat. The erratic, chaotic lines began to smooth out right before my eyes, dropping into a steady, perfectly rhythmic pace.

Thump. Thump. Thump

.

The suffocating, oppressive heat that had been radiating off Adele’s feverish body for ten agonizing hours seemed to break in an instant. A visible wave of relief washed over her features, the deep, pained lines of tension around her eyes melting away. The terrifying gray tint to her skin began to flush with a faint, healthy pink, life returning to her face in real time.

It was impossible. It defied every single piece of medical logic the doctor had just explained to me. It was like his touch was literally pouring vitality back into her empty, failing veins.

Adele’s chest rose in a deep, clean intake of air, her lungs expanding fully for the first time all day. Her head rolled instinctively into the palm of his hand, seeking out his warmth like a flower turning toward the sun.

Killian let out a ragged, trembling breath, his shoulders dropping as he leaned over her. The ruthless, terrifying expression on his face softened into something so deeply possessive and protective it made my chest ache.

I stood there, completely paralyzed by the sheer impossibility of what I was witnessing.

"What..." I whispered, my voice trembling as I looked from the stable monitor back to our boss. "What are you?"