Page 65 of The Alpha's Forced Rejected Mate

She settled into the couch next to her daughter, carefully reaching out to adjust the pillows, get a blanket, and generally mother her sleeping child. “Her father, but he’s…away. On holiday. Somewhere.”

“Cliff?”

I looked at my sister.

“Are the medical records digitalized yet?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I can boot up the laptop and log into the cloud.”

“That’ll be great. Thank you.”

“You got it, Nurse Faye.”

She smiled warmly and touched my shoulder. “She’ll be okay. You’ll both be okay.”

If that was true, then why didn’t I believe her?

Chapter 20 - Robyn

Fever dreams never made sense to me. Why was it that when my brain felt cooked by a fever, it wanted to give me nightmares? It wasn’t like they served a purpose other than to scare me to bits. What made it worse was the way it felt like I was trapped inside a giant puzzle. Nobody could get in, and I couldn’t get out.

Ahead of me was a rustic red horizon with a round white sun and clay dust kicking up in random spots. Standing out from the void sky was a tall structure covered by an old cloth. As I reached for it, the ground beneath my feet began to quake. I took several steps and swatted the air. I should have been able to reach the object by now, but it seemed to stay in place while I moved backward.

But all I wanted to do was moveforward.

My legs ached. The void sky ripped in two, the edges seared like burnt paper. I saw a popcorn ceiling, an old chandelier from the seventies with mustard yellow and firetruck red stained glass, and a set of chain-links to turn on the lights behind the colorful glass.

I blinked. “Sydney?” A door creaked. Soft footfalls reached my ears. “Cliff…?”

“Princess…Oh, Darling…”

I felt his hands first, strong palms rough with callouses from physical labor and roughed up from fighting off Jillian. My eyelids snapped open wide, and I sat up. “Jillian!”

He caught my chest and forced me back. “Hey, easy.”

“I need to see Jillian. Where is she? Did she get hurt?” I grabbed his wrist and dug my nails into his flesh. “Tell me where she is!”

“Hey,easy,” he hissed while peeling my fingers off his wrist. Crescent moons puffed up like dented imprints in raw dough. “Princess, you’ve been poisoned. I need you to drink this.” He held up a small porcelain cup painted the color of a gorgeous beachy sky. “It’ll get rid of the rest, so don’t be surprised if you—”

Blagh.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, nodded, and then reached for something out of view. “Faye said you might throw up.”

“I’m sorry, Cliff.”

“Any other time, I wouldn’t allow you to act like this. But right now…” He wiped up the mess on my blouse—which thankfully wasn’t much—and set aside the soiled towel. “Right now, I know you’re coming out of a small coma.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shushed me. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about you.”

“But Sydney…”

“She’s in the kitchen. I didn’t want her to bother you.”

I sat up again. This time, he supported me by placing a hand on the small of my back. “I want to see her.”

He smiled and tapped his boot on the floor twice. Excited huffing raced toward me in the form of my daughter wearing her favorite rabbit pajamas with a pink tutu. Mr. Charles was tucked safely in her arms. And now, she was safely in mine.

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