Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 203

Chapter 203

Chapter 203

FAKE BIANCA

FAKE BIANCA

Louis was getting weaker faster than I’d planned for.

I had reduced the dosage four days ago, which should have slowed the progression to a manageable rate. But his baseline was lower than Voss’s briefing had indicated.

I sat on the edge of his bed and kept my face in the right expression while I thought about this.

He was lying down, which was new. For the first three days he had been sitting up when I brought the afternoon drink, arranged against his pillow with his dinosaurs, functional and present. Today he had been lying down when I came in, the night watch formation on the pillow beside him rather than in his hands, and he had taken the drink with less of the deliberateness he usually brought to things.

He was pale in a way that was different from his usual pale.

I had adjusted quickly, because adjusting quickly was what this kind of work required. I had set the empty cup aside and sat beside him and done what the memory transfer indicated she would do – put my hand on his forehead, checked his temperature with the specific focused quality of someone using medical training rather than just parental instinct, and then settled into the particular position of someone who was going to stay for a while.

He had shifted toward me.

Not completely. Not the full lean that Roy had described from the safe house, the one where he apparently pressed himself against her side with the total comfort of someone who had found their place and intended to occupy it. Just a small movement, his shoulder angling toward my hand, and then he had closed his eyes. I kept my hand where it was.

The window in the room was showing the late afternoon light, the kind that came in at an angle and made everything look slightly softer than it was. Outside, I could hear the ordinary sounds of the street. Inside, Louis’s breathing was slow and even, heavier than usual.

Rivera’s footsteps on the stairs.

I had learned his footstep patterns in five days

the specific rhythm of how he moved through the house, which told me where he was going and roughly how purposeful the journey was. These footsteps were the purposeful kind. The kind that meant he had decided to do something rather than continuing to think about

1. it.

He came to the doorway and looked in.

looked up. I composed my face into the expression of someone who was concerned but managing it specific combination the memory transfer indicated she wore when Louis was unwell, which was medical- professional–overlaid with maternal rather than purely one or the other.

Rivera came into the room without speaking first, which told me he had already assessed the situation from

Chapter 201

the doorway and had moved past the question of whether something was wrong into the question of what to do about it.

He sat on the other side of Louis, on the edge of the bed, and put his hand on Louis’s head the way parents put hands on children’s heads not for temperature specifically, but for contact, for the confirmation of presence.

Louis opened his eyes.

“Hey,” Rivera said. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Louis said. His voice was smaller than usual. “I’m okay though. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Rivera looked at him with the expression I had catalogued as his full–attention face- the one where everything else in his field of awareness became secondary to what was directly in front of him. He was reading Louis the way people who knew someone very well read them, looking for the specific signs that belonged to this particular person rather than a general assessment.

“You don’t look like yourself,” Rivera said.

“I’ve been fighting something,” Louis said. “It’s getting better.”

Rivera looked at me.

This was the moment I had been managing toward and away from simultaneously – the direct question, the one where he asked me specifically about the healing work and I had to give him an answer that was plausible enough to hold.

“Has she been doing the healing?” he asked. Not asking me. Asking Louis, which was characteristic of him

when he wanted accurate information about Louis, he went to the source.

Louis shifted slightly. His eyes moved to me, then back to his father. “She said my body needed to rest from it,” he said. “Too much at once would make it harder.”

I had said this. On the second evening, when Rivera had asked why I hadn’t done the session. I had produced the explanation quickly and cleanly, using the medical language that was in the memory transfer- something about the counter–resonance work requiring a stable baseline to be effective, about doing it when his system was actively depleted potentially destabilizing rather than supporting it.

It had been plausible. Rivera had no reason to question it. The real woman was the medical expert in this house, and he had learned to trust her assessment of things that were in her domain.

Louis had absorbed the explanation the same way he absorbed most things challenging it.

seriously, filing it, not

Now he was repeating it back in his own words, which was both useful and something I watched carefully. Children simplified explanations when they repeated them, and simplification sometimes removed the specific elements that made the explanation hold together.

Too much at once would make it harder.

It held.

Rivera looked at me. “Should you try it now? Now that he’s had some tim

Chapter 203

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I reached forward, letting my hands move toward Louis with the deliberateness of someone preparing to do the specific kind of work the memory transfer described. Not because I had any intention of completing it the actual counter–resonance work required abilities I did not have, and attempting it would produce nothing, which would be a significant problem – but because the gesture of reaching was part of the performance.

Rivera’s hand caught mine.

Not roughly. Just

stopped it. His fingers closing around my wrist with the careful grip of someone making a point rather than a correction.

“Wait,” he said. He was looking at Louis, not at me. “If you think it might make things harder right now, then let’s not risk it.” He paused. “We let it pass. His body knows how to recover.‘

I withdrew my hands with the right amount of reluctance- not dramatic reluctance, just the slight resistance of someone who has been overruled on something they thought was appropriate and is accepting the overrule.

“If you’re sure,” I said.

“I’m sure,” Rivera said. He looked at Louis. “What do you think?”

D

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