CAYDEN
The pressure weighing on my heart is nearly unbearable as I pace back and forth in the hallway of the pack hospital, waiting for Doctor Davies to finish running all the tests.
Finnegan has his head buried in his hands as he claws at his hair, causing my chest to squeeze even more.
“What the fuck is going on?” Logan asks lowly, his stare directed into the void.
I sigh in desperation, turning around to walk down the hallway once more. “I don’t know. Did she say she was feeling unwell at the palace? Did Rachel give her something? Goddess, I knew I shouldn’t have ever let her go with that bitch alone.”
“I was there as she came out of the doctor’s appointment. She was doing fine. She… They surely didn’t give her anything there…” Finnegan murmurs without raising his head.
Passing my hand over my face, I exhale, emptying my lungs fully, only to take a slow breath to refill them. “I don’t know what to do. Why do I always fail to protect her?!”
“You don’t fail. We are doing our best and it’s certainly not your fault.” Finnegan finally sits up straight, clenching his jaw.
I know that he is trying to cheer me up but I can sense the pain and hate streaming through him at the fear of losing his pups. “We will find out who is behind all of this soon. I swear that we will take care of this matter in the best of ways and she will be safe.”
“What if she doesn’t make it to this day?” I ask lowly, making Finnegan skyrocket out of his seat.
“Don’t even dare think about this! Of course, she will make it. What a dumb thing to say as the strongest leader in this fucking universe,” he growls into my face, making me chuckle dryly.
Shaking my head, I lower my head crestfallen. “I’m sorry. What a poor excuse of an Alpha I am, if I don’t even get it when she feels bad.”
“Well, let’s stop panicking and let’s go through every fact slowly and pragmatically.” Finnegan pushes out a short breath before he spreads his arms. “We were at court… What did she eat before the trial? And did she feel strange? She surely didn’t eat or drink anything afterwards, so it has to be what she did before, right?”
I’m following his argument and going through everything we did that day before and after the trial.
Did she have something as we got out of there?
But that couldn’t be.
She was in my arms the entire time and nobody approached us before we got to the cars.
Shaking myself, we turn towards Logan, who is sitting in his seat absentmindedly as he says. “Maybe we should let her go back home.”
“What?” Finnegan growls, getting Logan to look up at him with a glassy look.
“I don’t want her to go either, Fynn. But think about it, maybe if they get her back, they will stop trying to poison her.”
Finnegan laughs while Aiden already revolts in my mind. “Did you grow up playing with dolls, bro? If we hand her over, we will never see her again. And I doubt that they would allow the pups to ever see life.”
“I was just thinking aloud,” Logan snarls, diverting his gaze.
Finnegan scoffs, sitting back down. “Well, thank you for your input, but it’s a clear no from me. I’d rather give all my tasks over to Gregorius and stick to her until the pups are born and we find out who is messing with us.”
“Relax, Finnegan,” I murmur, sitting down next to him. “We are all stressed out. There is no need to fight among ourselves. Maybe it was the stress and the power she used in the courtroom. Maybe no one was trying to harm her.”
We jerk up in unison as we sense Doctor Davies approaching.
As soon as he walks through the door, we are already on our feet, waiting for him to talk.
“Gentlemen,” he greets us with a bow of his head. “Your mate is doing fine. We could give her an antidote to the poison in her body and save the pups. There is no need to worry anymore.”
The relieved exhale gets stuck in our lungs as we glare at him. “Poison?”
“Yes,” Doctor Davies nods with a saddened expression. “This one was a tad more aggressive from what her blood screening showed and in comparison to how the tests came out a few months ago. It looks like someone is losing patience.”
“What the fuck,” Logan whispers while my guts churn.
“She is asleep now. You can gladly go in to see her, but please don’t wake her. She needs the rest to get back to her forces,” he reprimands, making us nod.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I say in a mixture of relief and desperation.
Crossing the sterile halls, we get into her room as silently as possible.
I practically feel the tension lift from my shoulders as I finally see her and get to hold her hand as I settle into the chair next to her bed.
Finnegan takes the seat on the other side of her bed and lays his head on it while he puts his hand on her belly.
“This won’t happen ever again,” he whispers his promise as Logan slumps into a chair at the foot of the bed.
It doesn’t take us long before we crash, finally letting exhaustion and desperation take over.
***
I wake up, feeling a light tugging at my hair and I open my eyes slowly to look up at Artemisia.
“Sorry, I made you worry again,” she says and I scoot closer to her in my chair.
I click my tongue as I put my hand on her cheek, caressing her with my thumb. “Are you crazy to say something like that? I’m sorry that I didn’t notice.”
“I would have told you if I was feeling unwell.” She shakes her head. “It came out of nowhere.”
Nodding, I wet my lips with my tongue, lowering my voice as I don’t want to wake my brothers. “They said they found a higher dose of poison in your blood. Someone wanted you to lose our pups. Did you eat or drink something before going into the courtroom that tasted strange?”
She shakes her head again, making my heart drop to my stomach. “We all ate the same things… And my tea was prepared by Hendrick. I guess he is pernickety enough to not let it out of his eyes for even a split second.”
“Yeah,” I chuckle. “He is set on this poison thing like a Terrier on a fox hunt.”
Laughing feebly, she closes her eyes, lying back down on her pillow. “The water tasted strange, though.”
“What water?” I ask, looking at her shocked.
She moves her tongue as if she wants to remember the taste of it as she sighs. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit dizzy.”
Getting up, I clasp the head of her bed, feeling the cold of the metal radiating through my arm. “I don’t know what to do, Missy!”
She looks up at me with saddened eyes as I grimace with desperation.
“Please, Missy. You have to forgive me! I don’t know what I can do to protect you and I’m getting insane. I can’t risk losing you or the pups but I seem to fail at everything I do. Logan even thought about sending you home and I’m so desperate that I even took that into consideration for a second. Imagine that. I need you to help me out on this, please,” I take a deep breath, feeling how her heart twists in her chest as she feels my pain through the mate bond. “I’m so sorry for asking you something like that. I know it’s stupid, but I’m desperate.”
Lifting her hand, she cups my cheek as she smiles up at me. “Everything will be alright. You are protecting me just fine, and nothing bad happened. We are tougher than that idiot and we will get through this. You promised to cook for me, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I did,” I answer, making her smile brighter.
“See! We will take that step by step. Together. It seems to be huge, and my family is in it too, so it would be cruel to expect you to fight it alone. But you don’t have to. We will fight it as a family and happy cult,” she says encouragingly, making me laugh.
I push out a deep breath, relaxing my hold as she adds, “And please don’t send me home to my parents. That would be insane. But maybe there is some kind of other place you can lock me away until the pups are born.”
“What’s about the mansion at the sea?” Finnegan murmurs half asleep with his head still lying on the bed.
“Oh! You have a house at the sea?” Artemisia lights up as if we were discussing the holiday season and my heart jumps in my chest at the happy sensation it makes me feel.
“Yes, but isn’t it too far away?”
Finnegan shrugs, still not lifting his head. “We could take turns. Like I said, I can give all my tasks to Gregorius and Hendrick hasn’t got anything to do anyway.”
“Maybe that could work,” I say to myself in a murmur before I look up to Artemisia’s expectant gaze.
“And the faster you find out who is behind all of this, the faster I will be back home!” She giggles cutely and I lean in to kiss her.
My heart feels a lot lighter and it flips as hope suppresses the panic that expanded in my chest.