Page 125 of The Alpha King's Curse: Part One

“Leave him alone,” she said as she stumbled forward. Dylan let go of Jackson, and Diedre turned around to face her. She had no idea what the woman had been doing standing over him like that. “You’re making him worse. Leave him alone, please.”

“I’ve been trying to help him,” Diedre said, but from the expression on her face, she hadn’t been succeeding.

She brushed past Diedre and slipped back onto the bed. She didn’t care that they were still watching as she laid her head on his hot chest and put her arm over him. She didn’t dare to look down at the wound because she knew it would upset her. There was too much blood on the towels on the floor. They had been cutting him without the doctor present. They had been hurting him all this time while she had been downstairs.

His heart was beating erratically, unlike that morning when she had woken up on top of him and her fluffy cloud. Everything had been so calm then.

“Shh,” she said to him as her eyes started to close.

All she wanted to do was sleep.

Obviously, the voices in her head were full of shit because she wasn’t thinking of protecting Jackson now. She just wanted to close her eyes and take her mind off his pain. Maybe when she opened them again, her head would be clear, and she could decide what to do.

Jackson stopped groaning; he stopped making the pained noises. A shudder went through him, and his heart started calming down. It felt like music in her ears as it soothed her. The tight feeling in her chest loosened when his heartbeat evened out. His breathing became as calm as it had been before she had panicked and called Diedre.

And those stupid voices in her head disappeared.

When she woke up, she would tell Diedre to stay away from him, but for now, sleeping was all that mattered.

Chapter 66

Everything hurt.

Jax opened his heavy eyelids and winced against the brightness in the room. Even his eyeballs hurt. For the first time in his life, he felt disoriented and weak.

His head was swimming, and it felt like someone had hit him continuously with a sledgehammer. His limbs felt too heavy to move, and the bite on his side made his whole body feel like he was burning from the inside. Normally he healed faster than other werewolves because of his royal blood, but that witch must have done something to prevent that. He could feel the dark magic in his blood, trying to get a hold of him again. Whatever spell or poison she had used had to have been very strong because he hadn’t sensed it until seconds before he passed out.

Even Diedre, the strongest witch he knew, had not sensed it.

He pushed that worry away because he was in no shape to make sense of that. The only thing that soothed him was the weight on his chest and the scent of his mate. Since the day he’d met her, he’d tried not to get addicted to it, but he couldn’t stop it this time. The scent of amber laced with warm cinnamon filled his body with every breath. It gave him life in a way he couldn’t explain. He could feel it binding to him, mixing with his blood like a drug and soothing him from the inside as it doused the fire caused by the bite. He didn’t want to resist it.

When his life had been slipping away, that scent kept him from giving up. Layla had saved him.

He moved his head slightly to look down at the woman asleep on his chest.

He had not marked her, yet she was already bound to his soul. When he died, the repercussions would be more significant than he’d imagined.

“I fucked up, mate,” he whispered.

His voice scratched his throat, and his mouth was dry. Maybe this was what being human felt like.

Layla stirred and then tightened her grip on him. Her leg was hooked over both of his as if she was trying to fuse herself to him. To keep him from leaving her. His poor mate. He could only imagine what the bond had made her feel. What urges had pulled at her because of her wolf blood. She knew the truth about what he was, so her human side wouldn’t have wanted to be this close to him.

He focused on Layla while her closeness soothed him. Her red curls were everywhere, but they looked silkier than the day he met her. Smoother, too. Was that another side effect of their bond besides her better vision? The steady beating of her heart was like a balm as he continued to breathe her scent, and something tightened in his chest. He wasn’t getting rid of her now. It would be impossible.

But that realisation didn’t scare him. Not while she was on him like that. Maybe when he wasn’t so weak, he could process the consequences of what had happened.

The pain in his body lessened enough to allow him to move the arm she wasn’t sleeping on. He gently moved her hair so he could see her stunning face better. The smooth, blemish-free skin. The long eyelashes that cast a shadow on her cheeks. The high cheekbones and full, soft lips. Just stunning.

If he weren’t dying, he would already have marked her, half-blood or not. He’d already spent too much time with Layla that what happened to his father would not have stopped him. He would have marked her the first time she’d screamed his name.

It was funny, though. His father had gone insane because his mate had point-blank refused him. His cruelty had preceded him. Everyone knew women didn’t last very long in his bed. And then karma bit Alpha Richard hard in the ass. He’d found his mate in a territory he had been raiding—he’d already obliterated half the pack before he caught her scent.

And then the one woman who should have wanted him above all else had chosen to kill herself rather than be bonded for life to such a dick. He didn’t blame her.

But because Richard's wolf had already caught the scent, he had pined for his lost mate until the mighty king had eventually lost his mind. His father had already treated them all like crap before that, but it had gone so much worse after. Pining for a mate did that to wolves. It had taken his father years before he snapped completely.

He had only been around Layla for weeks, but the urge to bite her was already unbearable. It would take much less time for him to reach that point.

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