The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 475

Chapter 475: Clear Me. No. Why. Sit.

DRAKENFELL — MASTER HEALER’S OFFICE

"I feel fine," Gav insisted. "Just a bit strange."

Rook: Mate.

"Sit down," Alaric said without looking up from his desk, where he was writing something in a leather journal with the unhurried penmanship of a man who prioritized documentation over his patient’s comfort and whose prioritization was a lifestyle choice.

"I don’t need to sit down. I need you to clear me so I can leave."

"And I need you to sit down so I can determine whether clearing you will kill you or merely inconvenience me with paperwork when you collapse in a corridor. Sit."

Gavriel sat. The sitting was reluctant. The chair was cold. The healer’s quarters smelled like dried herbs and judgment, and the judgment was Alaric’s primary diagnostic tool.

Alaric Kestrel turned from his desk and looked at Gavriel the way a man looks at a puzzle he didn’t ask for and doesn’t intend to enjoy. His eyes were clinical. His expression was the expression of a healer whose bedside manner had been recalled by the manufacturer at birth and never reissued.

"You were in a coma for days. You woke up without supervision. You left your room without clearance. You attended a training session instead of reporting to me, which is protocol you are aware of and chose to ignore." He tilted his head. "How am I doing so far?"

"Thorough."

"I am always thorough. It is the only quality that makes this job tolerable." Alaric pulled a chair opposite Gavriel and sat. "Symptoms."

"I told you. I feel fine. Just a bit strange."

"Define ’strange’ with more than two words or I will define it for you and you will like my definition less."

Gavriel exhaled. "Sore. Full-body soreness. Came on suddenly about an hour ago. And some... nerves. In my chest. Like anxiety but off."

"Off how?"

"Like it’s coming from somewhere else."

Rook: Mate.

Alaric’s eyes narrowed by a fraction.

"Different is one word for it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Your energy signature is different."

"Different how?"

Alaric leaned back. Crossed one leg over the other. Steepled his fingers. He clearly was deciding how much of the interesting to share and how much to keep for his own intellectual entertainment.

"When you went into the coma, your energy signature was Gavriel Sterling. Standard Gamma. Unremarkable." He paused. "The signature I am reading now is Gavriel Sterling plus something else. The ’something else’ is the part I am going to need more than two sentences to explain, and you are going to need more than zero patience to hear."

"Just clear me and we can both go on our merry way," Gavriel sighed.

Alaric stared at him. The stare was the stare of a man who had been told to go on his merry way and whose way had never once in his entire career been merry and whose face was communicating that the suggestion was personally offensive.

"I don’t do merry, Sterling. Merry is village idiots, and I am neither, though some days this job makes a compelling case for the latter."

"Alaric."

"Gavriel."

"Clear me."

"No."

Hyran opened his satchel and produced a series of instruments that looked like they belonged in an alchemist’s fever dream. Crystal rods, a copper disc etched with runes, a vial of something that glowed faintly purple, and a tuning fork made of a metal Gavriel couldn’t identify.

"What the hell is that?"

"Hold still," Hyran snapped, not answering.

"I am holding still."

"You are holding still while talking. Hold still while quiet. The difference matters."

Gavriel held still while quiet. The holding and the quiet cost him equal effort.

Hyran passed the copper disc over Gavriel’s chest. The runes on the disc flickered, illuminating in sequence, each one producing a faint hum that varied in pitch. Hyran tilted his head. Passed the disc again. The runes flickered in a different pattern.

Behind him, Alaric was running his own scan. The pale gold glow of diagnostic magic emanating from his palm, tracing the contours of Gavriel’s body without touching him, reading the map of energy signatures that every wolf carried and every mage could interpret.

"Is this medically necessary? Or are you two making me your lab rat?"

"If you talk, we have to start over," Alaric said.

Two professionals. Two methodologies. Both of them circling the same subject with the focused, silent attention of men who had found something they were choosing to examine before they named.

Rook: We let them. They play with their toys and are less grumpy.

Hyran struck the tuning fork against the copper disc. The sound was strange. Low, resonant, carrying a vibration that Gavriel could feel in his teeth. Hyran held the vibrating fork near Gavriel’s left shoulder, then his chest, then his right shoulder.

The fork’s pitch changed over the left shoulder. Distinctly. The vibration climbed two full tones and held.

Hyran’s face did nothing. His face was trained to do nothing during examinations because diagnostic expressions influenced patients and influenced patients produced unreliable data. His face was a wall.