Chapter Twenty
Seraphina
My heart dropped like a stone as Logan pushed open the door, his tall figure looming in the doorway, cutting off the warmth that had enveloped Tyler and me. Confusion flickered across his features, quickly morphing into something heavier—hurt—like a storm cloud darkening the sky.
Oh, goddess, what was I doing?
Panic coursed through me, and I jerked back from Tyler, suddenly painfully aware of how getting close to Tyler now was terribly timed. The warmth between us sputtered like a flame caught in a breeze, leaving a cold void in its wake. Yet my heart still raced, a wild drumbeat echoing in my ears as the intoxicating heat Tyler had ignited within me refused to fade completely.
Turning away, I focused on the shelves cluttered with evidence bags, needing to escape the weight of their stares. I picked up the plastic wallets, grasping at something to ground myself.
“All the evidence is bagged up,” I said, forcing resolve into my voice amid the storm of emotions roiling within me.
“Justin’s returned from seeing the elders. Here’s all three sets of keys,” Logan said, handing them to Tyler, his tone clipped.
I risked a glance at Logan. His brow was furrowed. His dark brown eyes sparked with a flintiness. We needed to get out of this closet. I was all too aware from the squeeze of the mate bond in my chest that the thrum of pain there might soon turn to anger. The last thing we needed right now was to start fighting between ourselves—not when the real enemy who had poisoned the herbs with dark magic and tainted the cure was still out there.
I broached the topic with them both now. “How are we going to prove that Linda’s the one behind all this?”
“We need to question the infirmary aides,” Tyler said decisively.
Thankfully, Logan turned out of the closet, following Tyler’s command.
I followed, relieved to be out of the confined space despite what lay ahead of us.
Kelly was still on duty monitoring the packmates alongside Healer Linda.
The night had long drawn in, and the infirmary was dimly lit, the lamplight casting long shadows across the white walls. The scent of chamomile and jedra intermixed, creating a calming atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the turmoil roiling within me.
I noticed Tyler’s tactical presence as he deftly instructed Healer Linda, his voice low but authoritative. “The patients are doing fine. The jedra is proving effective. You can go home for the night, Linda.”
“But shouldn’t I be—”
“Seraphina’s more than capable of overseeing the treatment here alongside Kelly,” Tyler insisted.
His words, full of faith and trust, sent the same flutter of warmth through my chest that his lips had coaxed.
His explanation about how he hadn’t regretted what had happened between us, only how it had come about—through Linda’s drugging him with a heat potion—had been a revelation. To think that Healer Linda, who was now freely walking out the door, had drugged Tyler was staggering. My stomach clenched. Was she really the one spreading this illness through our pack? Had Linda become so embittered by Tyler’s decision to call off their mate ceremony that she would stoop to harming the entire pack out of revenge? Nausea rose within me as I realized we were inching closer to uncovering the truth behind the roots of this illness.
Now that Linda was gone, Tyler was straight on the phone. I heard him telling the other infirmary aide, Laura, to come to his house. A spark of inspiration came to me. The infirmary had a patient log detailing when and who the patients had been seen by. Sitting down at the desk, I scanned the neat handwriting of visitors over the last week, looking for any correlations that could shed light on how the black powder had been added to the herbs.
Purpose bloomed, blanketing the whirlwind of emotions that had threatened to overwhelm me earlier. I felt a sense of familiarity as I scoured through the recordings in the log, feeling as if I could almost be in the library, combing texts for answers.
“Here,” I said, my finger hovering over a name. “Several of these patients who were newly infected—Jackie and Susan came into contact with both aides, Kelly and Lauren, right before the potions were brewed.”
Tyler leaned down, his breath warm against my cheek as he looked over my shoulder. “Elder Darius approved their placements in the infirmary. They’ve likely only been following Linda’s orders, but we need to be sure.”
Tyler, Logan, and I started toward Tyler’s house after setting up Justin to watch over the packmates and telling him to come to Tyler’s if Healer Linda or anyone else appeared,
But Logan stopped, “Alpha Tyler?”
He gestured for me to go on. I walked onwards with Kelly, my heart drumming nervously. Logan wasn’t about to get sidetracked about things with us, was he? Part of me understood him wanting to unravel the tangled mess we’d inadvertently woven, but frustration rang through me. We needed to focus on uncovering the traitor.
But I was utterly perplexed when Logan ran off a moment later in the opposite direction to Tyler’s house. I opened my mouth to ask Tyler, but he shook his head as he joined me and Kelly.
Ten minutes later, back at Tyler’s, Laura was already waiting at the back door. Calmly but with gravity, Tyler interrogated the two aides. They both affirmed that Linda had processed the herbs herself before handing them over to them to deliver treatment.
The confirmation ignited a spark of anger in Tyler’s eyes. “Thank you both. I want you to go right home, Laura. Kelly, go back to the infirmary. Justin is standing guard all night. See that neither of you say anything about our conversation here,” he said.
As the back door clicked shut and the infirmary aides left, quiet fell around us. I was suddenly very aware that this was the first time Tyler and I had been in the kitchen since… since I’d been laid out like a feast on this very table between us. My heart drummed, wondering whether his thoughts had gone to a similar place.
Fighting to clear my thoughts, I got up to get a glass of water. “Where did Logan go?”
“He had an idea about how to get concrete evidence,” Tyler said.
As if his ears were burning, Logan returned. He wasn’t alone. Tara was with him. She brought a laptop, which she promptly opened and sat on the table.
“Is it planted?” Tyler asked.
“Yes,” both Logan and Tara answered in unison.
I frowned, glancing around at all three of them.
Tyler pulled out his mobile, typing a text. He nodded. “I’ve disbanded the Council.”
Tara opened up something on the laptop, pressed a few buttons, and then said, “All set. Now, we wait.”
“Wait for what?” I asked, getting more and more bemused.
“We planted a recording device in Darius’s house.”
I gasped.
“We need to know whether both Elder Darius and Healer Linda are orchestrating this,” Logan explained. “So, we bugged his house.”
Suddenly, the silence felt loaded and every moment our anticipation grew as we waited. Every creak of the old house caused one of us to start.
Luckily, it wasn’t long before a bang resounded over the laptop speakers. A door closed over the tinny recording.
Not five minutes later, a knock sounded. Footsteps. The creak of a chair or sofa. More footsteps—someone pacing?
“So, the packmates are all on the mend. How can that be?” Darius’s sharp voice flew out of the speakers.
All four of us sitting around the table seemed to hold our breath.
“Seraphina discovered our concealment spell,” Linda said quietly. We all leaned in. “She cleansed the potions.”
“Do we have more poison?” Darius asked.
“No, I used the last of it in this last batch,” Linda answered.
“So, we’re back at square one again?” Darius exclaimed, exasperation evident in his voice as it crackled, increasing in volume over the speakers. “I’ll have to contact the Black Moon Pack for more poisons again.”
“Damn,” Tara breathed beside me.
My heart drummed. It was confirmation that Darius and Linda had been working with the Black Moons and their dark witch to create this illness and weaken our pack. Shock ricocheted through our group. Both Tyler and Logan looked furious, their stony expressions mirroring the sense of shock and anger echoing through me.
“If you’d only managed to get Tyler wrapped around your finger, then we’d be having a much easier time of things,” Darius complained.
I swallowed the lump in my throat as I watched Tyler’s expression darken, his knuckles turning white on the tabletop as his hands curled into fists.
“I would have succeeded in handling him if it wasn’t for Seraphina,” Linda said exasperatedly.
“You’re right,” Darius said, a world-weary sigh trailing his words. “If it hadn’t been for her, you’d have been married to Tyler, and I’d already be alpha.”
Confusion surged through me as I tried to understand how Darius could have believed he would become alpha simply by having his daughter marry Tyler. There had to be more to the elder’s schemes, but the realization that Linda and Darius’s treachery extended all the way back to two years ago was staggering. Tyler had backed out of the mate ceremony to Linda because of his feelings for me. Anger blazed through my veins. Linda had only stood beside Tyler, the man I’d loved, because her father had wanted to seize power.
As they continued to speak, my heart raced, each word confirming their deception. My chest tightened as Darius exclaimed, “I knew that girl returning would be a problem. She’s as meddlesome as her parents. The day I rid this pack of her will be as great as the day I slew those two.”
“Slew?” I whispered, my gaze finding Tyler’s. His bright blue stare held me with tenderness as I realized, just as Tyler’s darkening face told me he was putting things together, that Darius had savagely murdered my parents. Just as he’d orchestrated their supposed treachery, he’d made their murder look like suicide.
My throat constricted with rage as the truth unfurled before me.
“The Black Moons are going to go back on our agreement if we keep being unable to deliver Tyler to them,” Linda said.
“They can’t go back on it,” Darius said. “Torin swore a Blood Oath that I would be Alpha of the Silver Moon Pack once the Silver Moons’ resources were in his hands. Alpha Marcus reaffirmed the Blood Oath when he took over the leadership of the pack. Besides, with the new mine Elder Tom discovered, Torin’s appetite for our territory has only intensified recently. Alpha Marcus knows our pack’s territory is worth the wait.”
So, this was the truth—a Blood Oath had been brokered between the Black Moon Pack and Elder Darius. The Black Moon Alpha was planning on granting Darius an alphahood over our pack in exchange for our precious resources.
Darius had the Black Moons invade our pack and massacre them with the goal of killing Tyler and seizing control of the pack. However, Tyler had led the pack and defeated the Black Moons. Subsequently, Darius had tried to use his daughter, through marriage, to gain influence and control.
Tyler said, “Darius is a fool if he thinks the Black Moon leader will ever share power.”
I nodded. “No doubt the Black Moon witch would find a way to bypass the Blood Oath,” I said.
Tyler’s blue gaze, once darkened with fury, was now cleared with decisiveness.
“Mute it, Tara,” he ordered.
In a moment, Tyler’s phone was pressed to his ear. “Linda,” he greeted, making us all hold our breath. “I need you to come to the infirmary. A few packmates’ conditions have worsened. Thanks. See you soon. Oh, if you could stop by your father’s, I’m convening the Council again, too.” He ended the call.
Tara let out a huff, “Talk about a brilliant poker face, damn, Alpha Tyler.”
Tyler gave her a smile that was more of a grimace. “Go gather the pack, Logan,” he ordered. “Tell them to head for the sparring ring.”
We were suddenly all heading in that direction, ready to ambush the traitors before they reached the infirmary. We’d reached the sparring ring, and seeing the wooden staked torches in the snow-dusted earth, I murmured, “ Kaumanik .”
The torches flared to life, throwing the already-gathering pack into sudden illumination. Almost the whole pack had gathered here—about forty members strong, standing around the circle, their faces taut with anticipation. Logan jogged back from the edges of the circle to join us in the center of the sparring ring.
“Tonight,” Tyler began, his voice steady, a deep timbre that commanded attention, “We’re here to address the horrors that have afflicted our pack. We have gathered evidence that reveals the truth behind the darkness that has poisoned our land and loved ones.”
Whispers rippled through the crowd like wildfire, the tension thickening as Tara stepped forward, clutching the recording device. My heart pounded in my chest, the weight of the moment crashing down on me as I stood alongside Tyler and Tara.
Tyler’s blue gaze held me, and he nodded, placing a reassuring hand on my back.
“Darius and Linda have conspired against us,” I declared, my voice rising as I felt the enormity of the moment settle on me. “They have been working in league with the Black Moon Pack, trading our lives for power and resources!”
Gasps echoed around the space outside the infirmary.
“Tara, show them,” Tyler said. “Show them.”
As Tara activated the recording on her phone, the pack fell silent, anticipation hanging in the air like a tightly drawn bowstring.
Shock waves rippled through the crowd, disbelief quickly morphing into fury. The tension intensified as the members surged with anger, their voices rising in disgust and horror.
Tyler remained resolute beside me, and I caught sight of Elder Tom’s face, anger etched deeply within it.
Tyler pressed on, harnessing the swell of outrage rippling around us. “They have poisoned our pack, abused our trust, and sought to take our resources for their own greed.”
His declaration was brilliantly timed as, at that very moment, Darius and Linda, their expressions twisted with surprise, strayed toward the outskirts of the sparring ring and our gathered assembly.
“Your alliance with the Black Moon Pack has been exposed,” Tyler shouted. “The pack sees you for what you truly are—shifters without loyalty who deserve to be executed for the lives you’ve taken!”
Shock rippled over Linda as she stood at the edge of the ring. But Darius was quick to express his contempt, “You’re fools to think you’re capable of standing against the Black Moon Pack. We will crush you all.”
My heart raced as I stood shoulder to shoulder with Tyler, Logan, and Tara, our resolve hardening as a collective force against the encroaching darkness. The anger of the pack around us erupted in shouts, some packmates even shifting and surging forward with outraged howls.
Elder Darius and Linda shifted, too, turned tail, and ran into the night. Their howls were answered by distant ones that curdled my blood. There were Black Moons in the distance. Linda and Darius had gone to gather their allies, who weren’t far away.
“Let them go,” Tyler called to Justin and Hudson, who were chasing after them.
“We’ll meet them in battle soon,” Tyler declared, his voice a fierce rallying cry that reverberated through the tense circle of the pack. “Warriors, prepare yourselves! We will not stand by while they take what is ours!”