CALLUM
“Paula. Paula let Matthew out,” I growled. “Ava trusts her.”
“I know,” dad replied, his voice pained as he winced under the weight of my aura. Realising that… I forced Ares to tone it back, but he was not calm, and he really wanted me to know that.
“We need to talk to Ava’s parents.” Noah sounded just as pissed as I felt.
I nodded. “You’re right. They’re close to Paula too.” I linked Jeremiah and then Ava’s parents, bringing them all to Jacob’s office as quickly as possible.
“My Kings, Alpha, Beta,” Jeremiah bowed as he came through the door. Ava’s parents gave a tense nod. They didn’t like the fact that they were here and Ava wasn’t.
“Jeremiah, I need you to find Paula. Take whoever you need, we just need her here in our custody. She likely heard about the doctor’s visit… so if she has even the smallest sense of self preservation, she’ll have left.”
He nodded, turning to leave the room. “Jeremiah!” Jacob called after him. “Talk to Gamma Jamie if needed, he’ll be able to lend you warriors.”
“Thank you, Alpha.”
Ava’s parents, Linda and Henry, sat opposite us, faces tense. “Callum, Noah, what’s going on?” Henry asked.
“Is Ava okay?” Linda’s voice was panicked, understandably so.
I sighed, rubbing my face. “No, she’s not.”
“She was betrayed, Linda,” Noah took over. “Someone has been poisoning her regularly, potentially for years.”
She gasped, her hand flying over her mouth as she wept. Henry pulled her in against him, her head against his chest. “And Paula?” Henry’s wolf hissed.
“She let Matthew out. It is possible she’s responsible for everything that’s happened, but we won’t know until we find her.”
“I can’t believe she’d do that,” Linda sobbed. “She’s been a close friend of mine for a long time.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as soft as possible.
“She moved here not long after Ava did, Callum,” Jacob replied. “She moved for work. Before she worked directly for us at the packhouse, she used to run a bakery in the city.”
“Ava has always loved her baking,” Linda sobbed harder.
“Her baking?” Noah hissed. “Is it possible…” his voice trailed off, but I knew what he was about to say.
I linked the doctor, asking him to join us, my face tense.
He’d still been with Ava, so he arrived within seconds.
He bowed when he came in, before greeting everyone by name.
“Doctor… the poison in Ava’s blood. Is it possible it was ingested in food? Cooked food?” I asked, Ares prominent in my voice.
“The chemicals we have identified so far are stable enough to withstand cooking temperatures, my King.”
Fuck! Ares was swearing, growling and pacing around my mind. He wanted to rip whoever hurt our mate to shreds.
“Cookies,” Linda’s voice was low, pained. “She’s always loved her cookies and the shortbread. Paula… Paula makes them fresh especially for Ava most days.” Her hand flew over her mouth again as her sobbing increased in severity.
“Paula is definitely close enough to the family to pull this off,” Noah hissed.
“But why?” Linda asked. “Why would Paula do this?” She buried her head further in her mate’s chest as he reassuringly stroked her hair. He was trying to keep his face straight so he could help us solve this… but I could see the pain in his eyes.
“That’s what we were hoping you might know,” Noah’s voice was low, careful.
Linda sat up, wiped her tears with the tissue dad offered her, and met mine and Noah’s eyes. “Paula has always been close to our family. As far as we knew…” she glanced at Henry, who nodded in agreement. “She wanted to support us, to support Ava after everything she’d been through.”
“We didn’t let her into our lives straight away, we were suspicious of everyone in those early days. It was not long before Ava started school that we started getting close to Paula,” Henry added.
“Just before school?” Noah hissed. “Could Paula be the one behind the bullying?”
“What do you mean?” Henry’s wolf growled.
“We think someone engineered the bullying,” dad’s voice was careful. “Someone instigated it in some way, encouraged it.”
Linda and Henry’s wolves were front and centre in their eyes, and I could feel the anger radiating off them. And I could not say I blamed them, not one bit.
“When you find her,” Henry growled. “I want in on the interrogation.”
I gave him a small smile, it made sense that he wanted to kick her around a bit, not just for his daughter, but his wife too. “I’ll keep you posted, Henry.”
AVA
I didn’t move for hours, I just lay in the middle of our bed with Theo behind me and Oscar in front, both of them touching whichever inch of skin they could find, trying to reassure me.
I wasn’t feeling reassured. Jacob and Alex had been flinging themselves against my mental walls, trying to talk to me, and I just ignored them. I didn’t want to talk to people. Eventually even my mum and dad started, and I just ignored them too.
“Ava…” Oscar’s voice was careful, controlled, his lips against my forehead. “Dad said they have information for us, about what is happening and who is behind it.”
“What?” I was in disbelief.
“Let’s go to the office, little one. We’ll find out what’s going on, okay?” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, his hand taking mine as we stood; Theo taking my other hand, both of them squeezing my fingers reassuringly.
Once we walked through the door, my mum flung herself at me, her arms around my neck as she sobbed. “I’m so sorry,” she wept. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Mum… What are you saying?”
She took my hand, leading me over to a chair and encouraging me to sit. I did not like this one bit. “Mum, you’re scaring me. What is going on?”
“Ava… we think we know who is to blame for everything,” Callum started, glancing over to meet Noah’s eyes.
“The CCTV footage has been enhanced of Matthew’s escape. It shows… It shows Paula letting him out,” Noah’s tone was collected, unfeeling. He was trying to soften the blow. It didn’t work.
“Paula?!” I growled. “She… no. Surely not?”
“I’m sorry, Ava,” mum replied.
“I need to see this footage,” I growled, Artemis pushing forwards.
Jacob turned the laptop to face me, pressing play.
There was no denying it. That was Paula opening the door to Matthew’s cell and escorting him out.
NOAH
“Why… why would she do this?” Ava’s hands landed on her lower stomach again as she wept, and I could feel Artemis’ pain through our matelink.
“We don’t know,” I replied. “Jeremiah is out looking for her, she’s disappeared. As soon as we find her, she’ll be interrogated.”
“I want to do it,” she replied, her voice low. “I need to do it, I need to know why.”
“Not on your own, little one,” Callum replied. “At least I am going with you.”
“I want in,” Ava’s dad growled.
“It’s settled then,” Ava replied, having put what she refers to as her ‘Queen face’ back on. “I’ll lead the interrogation. Callum backs me up again, and dad, you can have her once we know what we need to.”
She paused to wipe her tears, and my heart shattered a little bit more when I felt her pain. “The rest of you can watch through the one way glass.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“We wait for Jeremiah to find her,” Oscar replied.