Chapter 9

Harper’s POV

Alpha Lucas shakes off my hands and bares his teeth as he tugs at his shirt. With one hand, he grabs the hem and yanks it upward.

While pale and sweaty, his body is sculpted. A trim yet masculine waist appears as he pulls his shirt up. I watch Lucas’s biceps flex, my breath catching in my throat at the sight of him. The muscles hidden beneath his shirt are more defined than I thought, and with those broad, strong shoulders, I can’t force myself to look away.

Honestly, it takes all my self-control not to reach out and run my fingers over his chiseled pecs and abs. Like a marble statue, he’s a perfect specimen, a body that any man would be envious of.

Then, he groans in pain, and my little bubble bursts. Right in the middle of his abdomen, off to the left side, is a wiggling purple tail. It sticks out from a hole as if it burrowed itself beneath his skin, but when I look closer, I realize it’s not just beneath his skin.

It may have already reached his nervous system.

“I need you to be completely still and bare down on this,” I tell him, pressing a cloth into his mouth while simultaneously grabbing a pair of medical tweezers. With how deep the worm is buried, I know this is going to be painful.

Alpha Lucas’s eyes flash with anger, but I don’t bother to figure out why. It could be directed at me or at the situation, but there’s no time to wait or argue.

Kneeling at his side again, I press a hand to his abdomen, just around the poisonous insect. I don’t touch it with my bare hands, but the moment he takes a shaky breath, I carefully clamp the tail of the wiggling creature with the tweezers.

I give it an experimental, soft tug, which results in Lucas’s muscles instantly tightening. A pained, low growl filters through the gag in his mouth, his eyes blazing. Gold flickers to life in his eyes as I begin to pull on the worm, another deep, rumbling growl spilling from his throat.

Human pupils contract into vertical lines; the eyes of a wolf.

“Don’t shift, Alpha,” I mutter softly. “It will only make things worse.”

My nerves rocket up when his hand clamps down on my thigh. He nods and groans again, and I take the chance to pull the invader from his body. The wound gapes, a black and purple venom slowly oozing from the wound.

“If I don’t get all this venom out, it will soon enter your bloodstream,” I say, trying to ignore the hot hand on my thigh. I set the poisonous worm into a tin bowl and look up at the Alpha. “I need to suck the remaining poison from you.”

Alpha Lucas freezes, those bright wolf eyes landing on me. His hand tightens on my thigh, and I hold in the whimper of pain that threatens to surface.

We both know what I mean when I say I need to suck the remaining poison, because Lucas doesn’t have the healer’s gift to automatically metabolize toxins like I did. As a doctor, I don’t hesitate to press my hands to his abdomen again and lean in.

As my lips brush over the wound, Lucas lets out a throaty moan. The rag falls from his mouth and to the ground as the sound of a mixture of pain and pleasure skitters through my body. However, when his fingers snake into my long hair and tug, I feel like he’s both encouraging and discouraging me from continuing. It does something to me, but I try to focus on my task at hand.

With another tug of my hair, Alpha Lucas pulls me impossibly closer. The bitter taste of venom explodes on my tongue, and I quickly pull back and spit it out into a side container.

Leaning down a second time, I press my mouth to the wound. His skin is warm beneath my touch, and as I suck the poison and grip his waist, Lucas’s body shudders slightly. This time, it’s not from pain, though, but something else.

“Enough,” he groans, suddenly grabbing my shoulders as I lean down for a third time. “You’ll get poisoned if you continue.”

The breathy rasp of his tone has me looking up, and I gasp. Paired with the wolf eyes, his canine teeth have elongated, a sign that the werewolf is losing control. He stares at me, and I stare at him, tension fizzling in the air and growing thicker and thicker.

For a moment, I can’t breathe. The space between us is slim, and the hands that rest on my thigh and lower back are hot. Like an iron, they burn, but in the best possible way. My body urges me to lean into him, a shameful response because he is a mated male, and I am not his mate.

“There is one last thing,” I say stubbornly while watching him carefully. “It’s my job as a doctor.”

He doesn’t respond; instead, the Alpha’s gaze falls on my lips- where I can feel and taste his blood.

That shameful heat spreads through my body again, but before anything else can be said, Alpha Lucas pushes me away. He rolls off the couch and stumbles toward the bathroom. I don’t give him much time alone since he’s still weak and injured.

When I reach the bathroom, I find him lifting his head from a tub of ice water. Lucas’s naked upper body has regained a bit of color, but he’s still covered in fine beads of sweat as he leans back against the side of the tub.

“I’ll sterilize and bandage it,” I say softly, crouching next to him again. I lay the bandages and medicine out on a stool, looking to him for permission to continue.

Lucas nods, and I carefully clean the wound. Something must have happened to the pack for him to get so seriously injured, which means the pack isn’t as stable as I thought. Nevertheless, while I apply medicine, I keep my curiosity locked down tight. I try not to pry into my patient’s personal affairs, and I know he wouldn’t tell me anything, even if I asked.

Instead, I continue to apply herbal packets and medicine before bandaging the wound. Lucas stays quiet, only grunting softly when I prod at his wound too much.

He doesn’t comment on the bandages or the injury when I finish.

“Keep the wound clean and call me if any infection sets in,” I say on autopilot. With poison, you never know how your body will respond.

Without another word, I rise and leave in silence. I’m sure Alpha Lucas doesn’t want me here any longer. No Alpha would want to be seen as weak, and I’ve already seen too much of his weakness today.

As I leave, a group of male doctors wait outside. Each of them glares at me, malice clear in their gazes as they watch me step into the hallway.

Spite, jealousy, resentment… each of them has such hatred shining in their eyes when I walk past them.

Instead of feeling afraid or regretful, I find myself feeling proud because I, a healer of unknown origin, outwitted them and won the Alpha’s trust.