Married To The Alpha By Mistake

By the time the man who would ruin my life rolled through the ambulance bay doors, I had already been vomited on once, cursed out twice, and shown a dick absolutely nobody in Mercy General had asked to see.So honestly, it was shaping up to be a normal Tuesday night.ER nurses didn’t get warnings. We got sirens.And at 2:17 in the morning, those sirens came screaming.I was at the nurses’ station trying to finish charting on a drunk college boy who swore he was dying because he had zipped himself into his jeans, when the trauma phone rang. The sound cut through the noise of monitors, voices, rolling carts, and somebody’s grandmother arguing with security about visiting hours.I picked it up before the second ring.“Mercy General ER, this is Deena.”The paramedic on the other end was breathing hard. “Trauma incoming. Male, unidentified. Mid-thirties maybe. Severe MVA. Found near Route 11, vehicle wrapped around a tree. No wallet, no phone. BP dropping. Possible internal bleeding, head

Three days after I signed my name under a stranger’s life, he was still alive.That should have been the good news.The bad news was that absolutely nothing about him made sense.By Thursday night, Mercy General had gone back to pretending it was a normal hospital. People came in with chest pain, broken wrists, fevers, bad reactions to gas station sushi, and one man who insisted he had “lost” a condom inside his girlfriend like it had grown legs and walked off.Normal.Messy.Human.But up on the surgical ICU floor, in room 412, our unidentified John Doe was healing like his body had missed the mandatory staff meeting on medical reality.I wasn’t assigned to him.Technically.In fact, I had been told twice by charge nurse Melissa that ICU patients were not my problem unless they came crashing back down to the ER.So naturally, I checked on him every chance I got.I told myself it was professional concern. I had signed the emergency authorization. I had been there when he crashed. It w

By seven that morning, Nicole had turned my apartment into a low-budget bunker.She checked my windows twice, shoved a chair under the front door handle, and slept on my couch with one eye open and a baseball bat balanced across her lap like she was auditioning for a vigilante reboot.The bat had a pink grip and the words BAD DECISIONS written on it in black marker.I didn’t ask.Some friendships came with emotional support and emergency weapons.I got three hours of sleep, if closing my eyes while my brain replayed a bloody signature, a missing hospital file, and a pair of blue eyes counted as sleep. When my alarm went off, Nicole sat up before I touched my phone.“No,” she said.I blinked at her from the hallway. “Good morning to you too.”“You’re not going back there.”“I have a shift.”“You have a stalker photo, a cursed wrist, and a mystery patient who speaks in threats.”“I also have rent.”Nicole pointed the bat at me. “Deena.”I lifted both hands. “I’m not saying this is healt

For one stupid second, my brain decided to focus on the wrong things.The chipped paint on my doorframe. The crooked chain lock still stretched between me and Mace Calder. Nicole’s pink-handled bat lifted beside my shoulder. The soft hum of my refrigerator behind me like this was any normal morning and not the beginning of some horror-movie bullshit.At the end of the hallway, the three men stepped away from the elevator.Slow.Calm.Like they had all the time in the world.Mace’s voice dropped. “Open the door.”I looked at him through the gap. “You just told me to run.”“And now I’m telling you to open the door before they do.”The man in front smiled wider.Nicole muttered, “I hate when the giant has a point.”She snapped the chain free before I could argue. Mace moved so fast the door barely opened before he was through it, broad body filling the entryway, one hand disappearing beneath his coat.A gun came out.Not from Mace.From the smiling man.My breath caught.The weapon was s

“My king.”The words hit the room harder than the gunshot in my hallway.My king.People used king in history books, chess games, and the emergency psych bay when a man in socks declared himself ruler of the vending machines. They did not use it in a warm living room that smelled faintly like garlic bread and expensive wood polish.Except everyone here clearly thought they did.Mace’s head was bowed.Silas Evers stood straighter, his expression smooth but tight around the edges.Even the anxious faces gathered in the hallway dropped their eyes.Everyone except Nicole and me.Nicole leaned close enough for only me to hear. “Tell me we did not just enter a wolf monarchy.”“I can’t tell you that with confidence.”Xavier Evers stood in the doorway, all six-feet-something of cold, injured authority. His long dark-blond hair hung loose around his shoulders, messy like he had either been dragged out of bed or had spent the last hour fighting death and losing patience with it. A bruise shadow