Fated To The Alpha, Stolen By His Brother

Nova’s body woke up before her brain did.

Pain was the first thing that registered. Every joint ached like it had been borrowed.

The second thing was skin. Bare skin under her. Bare skin above her. Bare skin everywhere, in fact, including hers, which was a development her brain was going to need a few more seconds to process because the last thing she remembered was hot water and steam and a man’s heartbeat against her back.

She was on top of him. Her cheek was on his chest, her body draped across his like a blanket someone had thrown there and the blanket had opinions about leaving. His arms were locked around her, low across her back, holding her with the possessive weight of a man who had carried her to bed and refused to put her down even in his sleep.

Bed. They were in bed. His bed.

Nova blinked once, twice, and then the full scope of her situation assembled itself like a crime scene investigation she was the primary suspect in. Naked. On a man. In his bed. On a hover yacht. After a bath she had invited him into because her mouth had gone rogue and her dignity had clocked out for the evening.

The ache hit harder on the third blink. Her muscles were sore in places she didn’t know muscles lived. Her head was pounding. Her skin felt like it had been sunburned from the inside out, hot and tender and wrong in a way that went deeper than surface.

Derek’s arms tightened around her. The motion was automatic, a reflex from somewhere beneath sleep, his biceps contracting in response to her shifting.

”I’ve got you.”

His voice was rough. Half-conscious. The words were warm against the top of her head, followed by his lips pressing into her hair and staying there while he nuzzled against her like consciousness was optional and proximity was mandatory.

”We fell asleep in the bath,” he murmured into her scalp. ”I brought us here.”

That explained the bed and the blankets and the very naked situation. Her face went red against his chest, the blush so aggressive she was certain he could feel the temperature change on his skin.

Sleep swallowed her again in one gulp.

✦✦✦

Nova surfaced to voices.

Her eyes stayed shut. Half of her brain was awake, the other half was underwater.

Derek’s voice came from somewhere nearby. ”Poisoning from silver removal. Explain that to me like I’m five.”

Astra started answering his question, her tone clipped and clinical. All of it sounded like cotton in Nova’s ears.

Then a third voice cut through.

”Take mine too.”

She slipped back under. The dark was warm. The dark was easy.

✦✦✦

Light hit her eyelids like a slap.

Bright. Aggressive. The kind of light that has an opinion about your sleep schedule and intends to enforce it. Nova’s face scrunched and she blinked once, twice, three times, each blink slower than the last because her eyelids weighed approximately forty pounds each and the light was winning a war she hadn’t agreed to fight.

Someone was shining something directly into her eyes.

She blinked again, slower, and the blur above her resolved into a face.

Red hair. Puffy eyes. A grin so wide it could have been on a billboard.

”Maria?” Nova’s voice came out like a whispered rasp, the sound of vocal cords that had been offline for too long and resented being recalled to active duty.

”Nova!” Maria launched forward with the full-body commitment of a woman who had never heard the word boundaries. The hug landed before Nova had finished processing the name that had come out of her own mouth, and her arms were pinned at her sides by an Emberclaw princess who was squeezing her like she was trying to combine their rib cages into one.

The hug was awkward by any standard. Nova was horizontal. Maria was also horizontal. The geometry alone should have discouraged the attempt but Maria Emberclaw operated on enthusiasm, and enthusiasm didn’t do geometry.

Nova’s eyes drifted past Maria’s shoulder while her lungs negotiated for air.

This was wrong. The room was wrong. Smaller. Lower ceiling. Different lighting. The amber glow from Derek’s quarters was gone, replaced by something cooler, more clinical. The walls were lighter. The bed was narrower. There was none of the dark leather or floor-to-ceiling windows she remembered from the room where she had fallen asleep on a man’s chest and somehow woken up on her back.

Maria pulled back, still grinning, her hands gripping Nova’s shoulders like she was afraid Nova might sink back into the mattress and disappear.

”Where are we?” Nova managed, her voice still operating at whisper capacity.

Her cough came first, if coughing was even the right word for what her body was doing. The sound was dry and hollow and wrong, the kind of cough that doesn’t clear anything because there’s nothing to clear, just lungs remembering they exist and being furious about it.

She turned her head away from Maria and tried to bury it in the crook of her arm, but her arm disagreed with the plan on account of the I.V. needle taped to the inside of her elbow.

She stared at it. A tube running from her arm to a hover-suspended med pod above the bed.

There was a holo-display on the far wall, projecting her heart rate, blood oxygen, and something labeled ”toxicity index” that was blinking amber in a way that felt judgmental. She was hooked up to medical equipment that she never would have had access to in Starborne.

Maria was vertical and already crossing the room. Refrigeration cabinet open. Water bottle out. Delivered to Nova’s hands before the cough could finish its little death rattle.

Nova attempted to twist the cap but her grip had the structural integrity of wet paper. The cap won.

Maria plucked the bottle out of her hands, cracked the seal in one motion, and handed it back without a word.

Nova drank. The water hit her throat like rain on cracked earth, every swallow pulling something back online that had been dark for too long. She was parched. Beyond parched.

”Slow down, Nova,” Maria warned.

Nova pulled the bottle away from her mouth, breathing through the urge to drain it. Her head was pounding. Everything hurt. The kind of everything that doesn’t bother specifying which body part because the answer is yes.

That was when Nova noticed the bouquet of white roses sitting on her bedside table. At least forty of them. The kind of bouquet that belonged in a hotel lobby or a wedding.