Page 120 of The Wolf King's Mate

The doctor stepped into the room, stopping in the doorway and taking in the scene. “Her wolf must recognize your scent.”

“Of course her wolf recognizes me,” I said quietly, trying not to disturb her.

“Male wolves don’t respond to a human female’s scent, even if they’ve been mated to them for decades,” he said. “You haven’t even sealed a bond yet.”

“There hasn’t been a full moon.” Mate bonds could only be sealed beneath a full moon. That was one of the few things my father had ever bothered to teach me. I didn’t see why it mattered, but he had insisted, and even humans only mated beneath the full moon because of it.

“Of course.” The doctor stepped closer, and my wolf rumbled menacingly.

Aspen moved, just a little. Just a crease between her brows and the flinch of her hand on my chest.

My growl cut off immediately.

“Her vitals are well on their way to normal,” the doctor said. “She has no internal or external injuries. At this point, it seems safe to assume she’ll recover. If we knew how the process worked, we’d have a better idea of how long it would take, but…”

I looked at Fletcher, my eyes narrowing.

The bastard looked exhausted.

Maybe Aspen was right about letting someone else trade him places at night.

Everyone else looked at him too.

He grunted. “It’s her story to tell.”

“She’s unconscious in a hospital, Etch,” James said, just as wiped out as her brother. “Her privacy isn’t worth a damn anymore.”

My wolf snapped internally.

He wanted her privacy to matter.

But James was right. The most important thing was getting her healthy. We could figure out where to go from there. She had already been weak and unconscious for too long. Almost a whole day.

Fletcher let out a slow, heavy breath. I knew he’d been keeping their family updated on her condition. Their parents, and Silas. None of them had tried to come visit, so I knew they were in on this secret. He must’ve told them to stay away, assuming I’d kill them for keeping it from me.

I wouldn’t.

I would’ve kept it quiet too, if I’d been in on the secret. Letting the city know what she could do was a risk to her life, and I wouldn’t have taken that risk no matter what it could mean for everyone else.

Why didn’t she know that?

Fletcher closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they were darker. “It’s an energy transfer. The process. We’ve theorized as much, at least. We were infants the only other time it happened. Our birth father was the only one who saw what happened. According to him, Aspen bit our birth mother, and the transformation started immediately. She was shifting, her body growing fur and contorting, but it was failing.Aspen turned blue, and she stopped breathing. Our birth mother made him take her life to save Aspen. He did, then took us to our adopted parents, and made our adopted father kill him because he couldn’t live with what he’d done.”

Fuck.

Just… fuck.

“So we think it’s an energy transfer,” Fletcher finished, his gaze dark as it lingered on my mate. His sister. “We never knew if it was one she could actually survive. Until now.”

The doctor looked intrigued.

“I’ll need to run tests on her blood and saliva. I doubt we can recreate that in a lab, but it’s worth a try. I?—“

“Not until she’s healed. And not unless she gives permission,” I growled.

He lowered his chin to his chest, agreeing. “Of course.”

“How much longer?” Fletcher asked.

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