Shaun’s POV
Up and down I searched, but I found no trace of my brothers or my cousins. When I finally made my way to the main palace kitchen where food for the festival had been prepared, only then did it occur to. me that I should have come there from the very beginning.
The place had been cleaned up, but there were still trays of food arranged on a counter. Untouched. I went up to them and sniffed a tray.
I recoiled almost immediately when the scent reached my nostrils. It was faint, and not very obvious, which was why a werewolf could have accidentally ingested it, but what I could smell was no doubt Wolfsbane.
Wolfsbane in an event for werewolves? Who was actually wicked enough to do such a thing?
I bowed my head in disappointment. Once again, we had been outsmarted. First it was the poison attack on Lucy, and now this. We should have been more vigilant about something like that happening again, but could we have expected it to have been this widespread?
This changed the course of everything we had initially believed about whoever was after us. Before, we had thought that Lucy and we and were the main targets of whatever sinister plan was being fashioned, and would have been the only ones targeted, but this just showed us that this person didn’t care about this pack, and was only focused on what they were planning to achieve, no matter the cost.
I looked around the kitchen, watching the few cooks that were inside, huddled together in fear of what was happening. They must have seen what their food had caused, and like Rosa, were afraid of what it meant for them.
I approached one and pulled her up to her feet. She squealed, shaking like a leaf even though I barely used any force on her.
“Where is the head cook?” I asked her through gritted teeth.
“I-I don’t know. Please. I don’t know anything!”
I lifted a brow. “I never said you did. I only asked where your head cook is.”
The woman’s eyes widened, and her shaking intensified. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please!”
Her eyes were as large as grapefruits, swollen and glistening with tears. Her counterpart, which I had separated her from, jad returned to a squatting position, covering her head with both arms and trembling.
“Where. Is. She? If you don’t tell me, consider yourself banished from Moongrowl. And if you have any loved ones, they will also share the same fate.”
“No. Please.” She rubbed her palms together. “Please. I’m begging you. I didn’t do anything. I just did as I was told.”
“And what were you told?”
“The Wolfsbane. She said it wasn’t going to do anything to anyone, that it was only going to be served to the Bloodbath slaves. Please.”
So this was all because of prejudice. “Does someone being beneath you make them worthy of such a terrible fate?”
She shook her head. “I see my errors now. B-but I only did it because of the head chef.”
I growled with discontent. “Tell me where she is!”
“She hasn’t been here since morning. After we prepared the meals, she left, but never showed up again.”
Probably because she had known that this would have made her a suspect, and wanted to leave before then.
I cursed. Most of the guards had also been affected by the poison, so I was basically acting alone. Without my brothers, it wasn’t going to be easy to get things done. But I needed more information. Why was such a wide scale attack being done? And why were the slaves a target?
With a snarl, I dropped the maid. “If you are not found in this location the next time I return, those hands that you used to assist in poisoning innocents will be chopped off once you are found. Rally all those involved in this terrible act. All of them. And you will all wait in this kitchen for your judgement.”
“Please. I’m begging you.” She fell to her knees, crying. ” Just spare me.”
“There were children affected. Your act has not only endangered the people who you hold prejudice against for no reason, you have also threatened the lives of your own pack members.”
“No one from Moongrowl was supposed to get the poison . . .”
The cook was still trying to defend her wicked act. To her, it was better if only slaves had been affected, instead of the people of her own class and pack.
“I will listen to no more of your lies. Do as you have been told,” I said, before walking out of the kitchen.
There was no guarantee that the lead cook was even still in Moongrowl which meant that I had to change tactics to save time and resources. Trying to go after her wouldn’t have been the best course of action end we were running out of time.
I rushed out of the kitchen, and headed back to the hall. As I went through the hallway, I saw Rosa coming in through the other side, with two people following behind her. I recognised the doctor from the other time. Katrina, walking quickly in her pristine white coat with a stethoscope wrapped around her slender neck. Beside her was a man that I wasn’t very familiar with, but assumed was also a doctor because of the similar clothes he wore.
We allet at the door to the hall, where Rosa was already panting from the effort she had used to move around the pack in such little time.
“Where’s Tessa?” I asked her.
“The little girl is stable and receiving treatment. But now we have to help the others, said Dr. Katrina, already opening the door to the hall.
We followed in after her, and we could see the look on her face go from calm to determined as she made out the number of people on the ground.
“Dr. Kross,” she said to the man by her side, “you’ll take the victims on one side of the hall, and I’ll take the others.” She looked at me with a sideways glance, “We didn’t bring a lot of antidotes, only those that were already in stock. But I have people working on it currently, and once they have enough l, they’ll bring it here as well.”
“Understood,” I said, a little relieved that the unconscious people were finally going to get help. “Thank you. But how did you know how to make antidotes?”
“We’ve already had two cases of Wolfsbane poisoning in recent times. It would have been foolish to not have made plans for future occurrences,” she said, kneeling beside a woman and bringing out a vial full of dark purple liquid. She handed it over to the person holding on to their affected loved one. “Here, pour a little into their mouth. It should help them in a few minutes.”
The person nodded and gave her thanks before doing as told. The fearful look on the person’s face has turned into one of hope and relief.
I followed the doctor as she went to other victims and distributed the antidote to those we could. After she ran out of supplies, we had to wait until more were brought before we could continue.
But there was an increasing uneasiness inside of me. I needed to know where Lucy was and what she had found. I didn’t like it as I hadn’t seen her since.
Or could she have found my brothers? What if she had stumbled into something else like trouble.
“You’re troubled,” the doctor said, assessing a victim with a cut on his head. “Thinking about someone, perhaps?”
I stepped away from her, a little annoyed that my emotions were so obvious. “Yes. My . . .” What was she even to me? I couldn’t call her a friend, and she definitely wasn’t a foe. But our relationship hadn’t yet been defined. She was my mate, but I didn’t know if she would have liked me to say such a thing about our relationship yet.
“Lucy,” I ended up saying.
“Your father’s widow who took an arrow for you?” Katrina said, still not looking up from what she was doing.
“I would prefer it if you didn’t speak about her like that?”
She finished attending to the person’s injuries and got up, finally turning to look at me. A little trace of humour passed her lips. “Like how? Is she not your father’s widow? Did she not take an arrow for you? Only people who are guilty about something dislike the sound of the truth, Shaun.”
“I am guilty of nothing.”
She closed up her bag and threw it over her shoulder, searching with just her eyes for. more people to attend to. “Are you sure? Because the look in your eyes says otherwise. You forget that I saw how you attended to her the other day. Makes me think that there’s something more brewing than merely a stepmother-son relationship.”
I immediately felt the need to defend myself, but thought better of it. Getting defensive was inky going to solidify her suspicions-which were more than correct. I didn’t want to be referred to as Lucy’s stepson. I didn’t want the memory of my father hanging over our relationship. I wanted to be with her, that I was sure of, but I needed to know that she felt the same way.
I needed to know that she chose me out of her own will. For someone who had been forced into a marriage she didn’t want and subjected to years of torment, I knew that it was important that she got the right to make her own choice.
Katrina gave me a look when I didn’t reply, something unknown shifting underneath her intelligent eyes. She was waiting for me to say nothing, but silence was often the best response in cases like these.
“Thank you for helping out with the poisoned people. We can’t thank you enough,” I said, already stepping away. I had to find Lucy, and staying here with a doctor who seemed to be fishing for answers I wasn’t ready to give wasn’t the best way to spend my time. “If you will excuse me.”
“There’s a lower basement connected to this hall,” she said, pointing to the side of the hall. “You probably didn’t notice it.”
I turned in the direction of her pointed finger, and indeed, there was a clear path where the walls were separated.
“How did you . . .?”
“From the architecture of this place, it was obviously created as an afterthought. The door is very small, but I’m willing to bet that once you open it, it turns out to be more accommodating. Found it two years back when I was helping out with the decorations, but I figured that since you and your brothers haven’t even been back for up to three months, you wouldn’t know about it.”
“You mean this . . . the passageway has been there for years?”
She nodded. “Yes. Also, while we were coming in, I saw someone go inside. Didn’t think it meant anything, but something about them didn’t seem right.”
“Why didn’t you mention it-” I started to say, but she had already turned around and left to meet up with her colleague-“earlier.”
I turned back to the spot, wondering how I hadn’t noticed it in the first place.
Hopefully, I would find some leads there.