AVA
The next morning, I made a point of distracting myself from as many problems as I could. I went for a run with Alex, swam in the lake with my Kings, and made cookies with Paula.
I needed to clear my mind of nonsense to give myself a chance to solve some of the pressing questions that were floating around my mind. What better way to solve a problem than to not think about the problem?
It was shortly after the cookies went in the oven that I realised something. Something… big.
Why wasn’t I pregnant?
I had been having a lot of sex, unprotected sex, with four men for months. I had my usual monthly cycles, and everything seemed normal. But surely… daily sex would often result in pregnancy quite quickly?
Of course I know that isn’t always the case and there are people who, unfortunately, struggle with their fertility. But… that’s a lot of sex. And a lot of baby gravy.
I hadn’t even been late once, still regular as clockwork.
“Something is wrong, Ava,” Artemis was growling in my head. “Something must be wrong. Something feels wrong.”
I needed to see my Kings. And a doctor.
“Can you all meet me in my office, please.” I tried to make my voice in our matelink sound normal… but it didn’t work.
“Ava… you sound strange. Are you okay?”
“Office.”
I’d already got the doctor with me in my office when my Kings all arrived, all of them looking confused.
“My Queen,” the doctor started, his voice careful. I didn’t want to say this twice so I dragged everyone together. “What can I help you with? What’s wrong?”
“Doc…” I paused, letting my eyes close. “Why aren’t I pregnant?”
The room was deathly silent.
“What… what do you mean, my Queen?” he replied.
“Doc, I have four mates. We don’t use protection. There’s been many opportunities for me to fall pregnant over the past few months.”
“How often would you say you have intercourse, my Queen?”
“Most days.”
He nodded, making some notes. “I’d like to do a blood test for you, please. Have you noticed any changes to the length of your cycle?”
I shook my head. “Regular as clockwork.”
“Any other changes?”
I paused, biting my lip. “I think the bleeds are shorter and lighter.”
He took my blood, then headed straight back to the hospital to do his thing.
“I didn’t even think of that,” Callum’s voice was low, rife with concern.
“It might be nothing, Ava,” Theo said, wrapping his arms around my waist, burying his face in my neck. “It can take couples a long time to have a baby.”
“Artemis isn’t convinced,” I whispered. “She thinks something is wrong. She hasn’t felt 100% for a while.”
“When since?” Theo replied, talking through his teeth.
“Since we completed the marks. When I fainted… Artemis… hasn’t been the same since.”
“Ava…” Oscar fell to his knees in front of me, taking my hands, tears in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“The last thing any of us needed was to worry about something else. Artemis and I… we agreed that the bonds just needed to settle. We needed to get used to it, and then we’d be okay,” I wiped away the tears threatening to spill down my face.
Before the conversation could get any harder… the doctor returned.
And then it got harder anyway.
“My Queen,” he bowed his head. “I have the results of your blood test here,” he looked down at his piece of paper, heartbreak visible in his eyes. “There’s a foreign substance in your blood, we are still attempting to identify it and it’s properties.”
“Foreign substance?” Callum growled.
“Yes… yes, my King. We believe it is responsible for hormone problems. You have an overproduction of some hormones, and an underproduction of others. The levels of hormones required to support a pregnancy… are much lower than they should be.”
“So I’m infertile?” my hands fell to my stomach, tears in my eyes.
“We believe the foreign substance is to blame, my Queen. We are working on a cure, but I don’t know how long it will take,” his head fell forward, his eyes wet.
“Has it caused anything else?” Noah asked, voice breaking.
“The substance in the Queen’s blood is a combination we have never seen before, my King. We are still looking into exactly what it is made of and how exactly it affects the body. As Her Highness is a unique individual, testing is difficult.”
I nodded, no longer fighting back the sobs that wrecked my body.
“My Queen… Do you have any other symptoms?”
“Artemis is weak,” Theo replied.
“Since when?” The doctor was scribbling notes as we all spoke.
“She fainted after we completed the marks,” Theo replied. “About… about an hour after I marked her.”
“It’s not your fault, Theo,” Noah pulled his brother into a hug. “It’s not your fault.”
“Doctor…” Callum had thrown his King-face on. I knew he was hurting, but he was solution-driven. “You say it’s a foreign substance, like a poison?”
“Yes, my King. A poison we haven’t seen before. We are still working to understand the chemical composition.”
“Can you tell when it was ingested?”
“My Kings, my Queen… we believe it is something the Queen is ingesting on a regular basis. There are traces of the poison that have started to break down, and others that are fresh. It is possible that if we can identify it, the Queen will recover on her own, however… we haven’t been able to identify the first time the poison would have been ingested. It could have been years.”
OSCAR
My heart was shattered in pieces on the floor.
All I wanted to do was tell Ava it would be okay, to make it okay. But it just wasn’t possible.
I felt beyond useless, and that was breaking my heart more and more with each passing minute. Glancing around the room… identical expressions were on the faces of Callum, Noah and Theo. Even the doctor had tears in his eyes.
“What can we do?” I asked the doctor. “Is there anything we can do to help? Can we give blood? Give her a transfusion to try to get rid of the poison?”
“Until we have the results back, my King, I… I don’t know.”
I wiped my eyes, turned and walked towards Ava, pulling her into my arms. “We’ll find out what’s going on, Ava. We’re all behind you, whatever happens.” She sobbed harder, her tears soaking through my t-shirt.
“Oscar,” Callum had forced his emotions back so he was all-business. “You and Theo stay with Ava. Noah and I will see what we can find out. If Ava is being poisoned regularly… there must be something, somewhere. Just anything at all.” His voice broke as he spoke.
Theo joined Ava and I, sandwiching her in between us, wrapping her in our arms as she cried into my chest.
NOAH
“We’ll meet my dad and your dad in their office,” I told Callum as we left the room. “We need more hands than just ours. If Ava is being poisoned regularly… it must be someone here, someone in the pack.”
“Not only that,” Callum hissed. “It must be someone close to her.”
He was definitely right there.
“If this has been going on for years, someone has been sowing the seeds of war for a long time. No one could ever expect to get away with this forever, regardless of who the target was.”
My dad and Alex were already in their office when we reached them, their faces stony. “Noah, Callum… is Ava okay? I’m trying to link her and she’s blocking me out,” dad asked, concern all over his face.
“Me too,” Alex added, his face pained from how hard he must have been trying to reach her.
“She isn’t okay,” Callum replied, forcing his voice to be level. “We just saw the doctor. She’s been poisoned, regularly, potentially for quite a long time.”
Their faces paled. “Poison?” Alex hissed.
I nodded. “It’s stopping her falling pregnant, and keeping Artemis weak.”
“Fuck,” dad growled, Lloyd starting to come through as he spoke.
“Do you know who?”
“Not yet, Lloyd,” Callum replied. “But we will find out.”
“We had the CCTV back,” Alex interjected. “That’s what we were linking Ava for. We know who broke Matthew out.”
“Maybe it’s the same person,” I mused.
“I hope not…” Lloyd growled. “Traitor.”
Alex spun the laptop in front of him towards Callum and I.
“Is that…” Callum growled, Ares’ eyes pushing forward.
Dad nodded once.
Ava was betrayed.