Wolf's Ascension

by Lauren Dane

  Kari nodded.

  “It’s from the tube they had to insert when they pumped your stomach. It’ll feel better soon. Instead of water you can have chipped ice to keep the dryness down and soothe your throat. The doctor’s on his way. I’ll go and get that ice for you.” The nurse patted Andreas’s hand gently and smiled at Kari before leaving.

  “God, you’re awake. I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “Stomach pumped? Why?” she gasped out.

  “You were poisoned. We don’t know how or who yet.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought that one of the Pack would want to hurt her.

  Shaking his head, he kissed her tears away. “We’ll find them. Meanwhile, we have to deal with the police. Thank goodness Carey is a local cop. They’ve put him in charge of the investigation,” he said quietly. The Pack would mete out justice on their own. Bringing humans into the mix meant that they took a chance on discovery.

  “Good, you’re awake!” Elaine walked into the room with another doctor, who introduced himself and checked on Kari before handing Kari’s care over to Elaine and getting back to the ER.

  Two orderlies came and moved Kari’s bed into a private room on another floor. Andreas refused to leave her side so Elaine went down to let everyone else know what was going on.

  Within minutes Andreas was pacing the room and growling at all the people who kept coming by to check her vitals or drop things off. When Sean came in, Andreas nearly lunged at him. Sean met that aggression with a raise of one brown-black eyebrow and walked over to Kari’s bed.

  “Hey, peaches. How are you? No, don’t talk. Elaine told me your throat was sore because of the tube. We’ve got your back, okay? No one—nothing is going to hurt you,” he said solemnly and pressed a kiss to her forehead, rubbing his face along her cheek. “I love you, little sister.”

  Kari smiled weakly, reaching up to touch his hair.

  “Don’t tire her out,” Andreas growled but Sean just smiled at him and plopped down in a chair.

  Next came Phillip. “Kari, please forgive me. I failed you. I’m so sorry.”

  She reached up and caressed his face. “No apologies,” she whispered hoarsely. Kissing the tip of her finger, she put it to his nose. He fell to his knees then, jostling her bed, and she tried not to grimace in pain. Her stomach felt like she’d been run over by a herd of elephants. Elaine had said that the vomiting and the stomach pump caused the muscle soreness.

  Andreas came over and lifted Phillip away, moving him to the door. “Neither of us believes you failed. No apologies are necessary. Don’t make Kari say it again, oaf,” he grunted with affection in his eyes.

  Laurent, Ryan and Devon tried to come in but Andreas chased them off. “She’s still weak. Everyone has to go now. Phillip will be outside the door. I’ll stay here. Go back to the lodge and find who did this.”

  Sean just looked up at him, crossing one leg over the other. “I’m not leaving.”

  “You’re my Second, Sean. You need to go back to the lodge. The Pack needs direction right now.”

  The bickering and negotiating went back and forth for so long that Kari swallowed hard and croaked out, “Shut the fuck up already. Sean, go back to the lodge and take Andreas with you. He looks like hell. Make him rest.”

  They both turned and looked at her, surprised. “Our little wolf is coming back, I see,” Andreas said, appearing relieved.

  She rolled her eyes. “Go.”

  “No, that won’t be happening. Sean will be going because he won’t want to upset you and because the Pack needs him. But I’ll be staying here. No arguments. I won’t leave you.”

  She would have pointed out that the hospital was full of people and Phillip was still there but she knew he wasn’t going to budge.

  “Okay, but at least rest. I’ll agree to you staying here but you need to sleep.”

  Sean shrugged. “She’s right. When everyone leaves, take a nap. You’re no good to anyone if you’re too strung out. I’ll go back home, for now at least.”

  “Oh all right. On your way out, make sure that Phillip and Laurent make arrangements with each other so they can get some rest, as well,” Andreas said, stretching out in the chair his brother had vacated. A large enough chair for a big human but Andreas still spilled over the sides. He looked over to Kari. “You too,” he ordered. She was so exhausted that she obeyed, promptly falling asleep.

  * * *

  The moment Sean, Ryan and Devon walked back into the lodge, they were surrounded by people asking after Kari.

  Privately, Skye told them that the chicken salad and the platter the strawberries had been on had been taken to the hospital so the toxicologist could test them for poison. Gregory had found that some of the slug and rat poison he’d had in the shed was missing a few days before and that the door was always unlocked unless children were visiting. He hadn’t found anything else missing.

  Jade looked awful and clung to Sean and Devon tightly. “Is she going to be okay?” she whispered.

  “She was awake when we left. They’ve moved her out of the ICU and into a regular room. She felt well enough to try to argue with Andreas. So well she actually told us to ‘shut the fuck up’ when he and I were bickering.” He grinned at that.

  Jade relaxed a little. “She’s such a little thing and Andreas loves her so much. I can’t imagine how he’d react if something happened to her.”

  Sean kissed his mother’s cheek. “Maman, she’s a fighter. She might be little but she’s strong. She’s already recovering. Because of that Andreas is looking better too. They’ll both be home soon.”

  He turned to Anna. “Has Carey been up and gone through their room yet? Let’s not touch it just yet. The police will want to see it,” Sean said urgently.

  “Police? Why are police involved?” Ellen asked as she waddled over.

  The Pack had gathered in the great room and stared intently at Sean. Most of them thought Kari had food poisoning. It was time to come clean and tell everyone the truth. Skye and Carey had already interviewed everyone and Alex and Johanna were at the top of the suspect list.

  “Kari was poisoned.”

  Outraged gasps and conversation rolled through the room.

  “Who would do that to her? Why would anyone want to hurt Kari?” Drew asked.

  “Kill Kari,” Skye amended.

  “We don’t know,” Sean said quietly.

  “It had to have been one of us,” Michael said.

  “Johanna hated her, that much was clear,” Alex said.

  Sean wondered if Alex was trying to divert attention from himself, and then he hated that he had cause to distrust his own Pack.

  “Yes she did and she’s dead,” Jade said, not sounding sorry in the least.

  “When did it happen? How did it happen?” Perri asked, coming to hug Devon tightly.

  “We don’t know really. Elaine’s going to call a toxicologist friend of hers, a shifter, to see if we can’t narrow down a timeline. Kari only ate a few things that others didn’t, and they’ve been taken to be tested. If everyone could rack their brains to think about whether they saw anyone near the shed where the poison was kept or if they saw Kari eating or drinking anything anyone else didn’t, that’d be really helpful.”

  “Could it have been accidental? Like maybe she got ahold of something when we were running last night?” Alex asked.

  “Good question. We’ll know more when we figure out how fast this particular poison acts on us. Human biology doesn’t count. But for now, Andreas wants everyone to get back to their homes, jobs and children. Those who want to stay are welcome, of course.”

  Sean looked at his Pack, understanding now why Andreas had made him come back to the lodge. They wouldn’t have gone so easily if Skye or Ryan had given the orders. They needed to care for Kari but not to lose sight of the rest of the Pack too. Sean realized for the thousandth time what an exceptional leader his brother was.

  His parents decided to stay on for sever
al more days, as did Devon and Perri. Others would return if needed.

  Life crawled its way back to normal as Anna made lunch boxes for everyone who was leaving and laid out a lunch buffet for those staying.

  Chapter Eight

  Kari woke up and couldn’t move. When she looked down to see why, she saw Andreas’s huge body sprawled protectively over her own and hanging off the sides of the rather small bed.

  “Andreas,” she said softly, stroking his hair.

  He jerked awake and jumped down in front of her bed, crouching.

  “Andreas, it’s okay.” She reached out to touch him and he relaxed, turning to her.

  “You look much better,” he said, running his hands all over her, checking to make sure she was all in one piece.

  “My throat doesn’t hurt anymore and my stomach doesn’t feel like it was trampled on by elephants. I feel much better. The headache is even gone.” Her eyes widened as she looked around the room.

  “Oh my god, what is all of this?”

  The room was filled with flowers. There were at least twenty baskets, bouquets and nosegays in the room, on every available surface and even on the floor.

  “Oh, they started coming two hours ago. News travels fast.” Andreas couldn’t help but be touched by the fact that his Mate was already held in such high esteem. The Supreme Alpha of the United States Territory had even sent a huge plant and fruit basket.

  “Oh. Wow. That’s nice. I don’t know what to say, I’ve never had this many people concerned about me before. It’s nice but a bit nerve-racking. I hope I can live up to all of these expectations.”

  “I have no doubt you will.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Elaine, Carey, Sean and Laurent came in.

  “Did Phillip eat?” Kari asked. “He’s feeling so bad. I don’t want him to neglect taking care of himself.”

  Laurent looked at her, a huge smile on his face.

  “What?” she asked. “What is up with you guys and that damned smile?”

  “It’s just nice to have an Alpha-bitch—a queen to take care of such things.”

  She cringed. “About the use of the word bitch—it’s weird to me. When you call me a bitch, I can’t help but feel insulted.”

  “No offense is meant, Kari. For us, a bitch is a female. You’re a female Alpha werewolf in our Pack,” Sean explained.

  “I know, it’s one of the million and a half things I’ll have to work on and get used to, I’m sure. Anyway, no one’s answered my question.”

  Laurent stuck his head out into the hallway and called Phillip into the room. “Ask him yourself, Kari.” He moved a basket of Gerber daisies out of the way and tossed himself into the chair.

  “Phillip, you look terrible. Have you eaten?”

  “A bit a few hours ago. I haven’t wanted to wake you or Andreas. I’m fine.”

  She sat up. “You are not fine. I’m ordering you to go and get something to eat right now. A big giant heaping plate of something. Juice and milk too. Go on. You can’t be an effective bodyguard if you’re run-down and sick, can you?” She reached out and grabbed his hand and ran her face along it.

  Phillip blushed, his pale skin red all the way into the collar of his shirt. “As you wish.” He nodded at Andreas and turned to Laurent and Sean, who assured him they’d stay until he got back.

  “Oh, and Phillip?” Kari called after him. “Andreas’ll be coming with you. He hasn’t eaten either.” Andreas started to protest but she held up her hand. “Don’t even think about it. What kind of leader wants his men to do things he won’t do? You haven’t eaten in hours, Andreas. Go. I’m quite sure that everyone can wait until you return.” She glanced at the others in the room. “Can’t you? It doesn’t look like you’ve got the culprit under your shirt or anything.” When Carey grinned, nodding at her, she turned back to Andreas. “See? Bring me back a donut.” She grinned and Andreas sheepishly moved to follow Phillip out of the room.

  “I’ll be back in less than half an hour. In fact, I’ll bring it back here. I want to hear that report. Elaine, can Kari eat?”

  “Jell-O and broth. No donuts.”

  “We’ll be right back,” he said and left.

  “So who wants to kill me?” Kari demanded.

  “We don’t know. Let’s wait for the rest until Andreas comes back. He’ll be annoyed if he misses anything.” Sean grinned. “What’s with the garden?” He motioned to the flowers.

  “Dunno. Andreas said they started arriving a few hours ago. I haven’t seen the cards yet.”

  “Well, let’s look, shall we?” Elaine approached a giant basket with fruit and a beautiful plant in the center.

  The others all got into the spirit and opened and read cards out loud to her to pass the time. There were flowers from Pack leaders from across the country and even a basket of cookies from the Clearwater Clan’s Alpha, which were promptly gobbled down by Sean and Laurent.

  She smiled at them all, watching them bicker and laugh as they made cracks about the appropriateness of the notes or the baskets.

  Andreas came in, his tray loaded with three plates of food—sandwiches, cartons of milk and juice. Phillip followed in his wake, his own tray equally laden.

  “See, you were hungry,” she said to them.

  “Yes, well. I’m a growing boy.” Andreas set the tray down on Kari’s bed and tossed sandwiches to everyone. He put a plastic mug with chicken broth and a bowl of Jell-O on Kari’s food tray and moved it within her easy reach.

  She slowly drank the broth and saw that Andreas had also brought a mug each of beef and veggie broth. She was bummed by the lack of donuts, though.

  “Okay, so he’s back, what’s the scoop?”

  Carey explained that they’d interviewed everyone but no one seemed to have caught anything suspicious. People had been near the shed where the poison was kept, but they all admitted it up-front. But the big bomb was that there’d been no poison in the chicken salad, the bowls, the strawberries or the chocolate. And the lab tech said that he didn’t think that it would have taken so long for a reaction anyway.

  Elaine agreed. “I spoke to my friend, who says it’s very difficult to poison a werewolf because our systems process things so quickly and efficiently. This particular poison, to have made her sick when it did, would have had to be ingested within an hour or less of the first symptoms. Whatever it was in, Kari ingested it this morning, not last night or yesterday.”

  Kari looked at them, puzzled.

  “When did you first start feeling sick?” Carey asked.

  Kari thought back over the hours. “Let’s see. I felt slightly dizzy just before I got in the shower but it passed quickly. I came downstairs and sat down to eat, felt dizzy again. That’s when Andreas brought me upstairs and laid me down. Right after that, I had to get up and run into the bathroom to throw up. I had sweats and cramps then, and then I guess I must have passed out.”

  “It’s a good thing you did throw up then. Got rid of the bulk of the poison. The stomach pump took care of the rest,” Elaine said and Kari grimaced, thinking of how much her throat had hurt from the tube.

  “Okay, so it had to have been something you ate or drank before you came downstairs. Around the time of your shower. Can you think of what that might have been?”

  “I woke up. Andreas was gone from bed and I rolled over onto his spot and stretched.” She smiled at him. “It was still warm so he couldn’t have been gone that long. I grabbed a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand and went into the bathroom. Nothing to eat or drink other than that. I brushed my teeth, but it was in the shower, after that first burst of dizziness.”

  “What pitcher on the nightstand?” Andreas asked.

  “There was a pitcher of water with a glass on the bedside table on your side of the bed. You don’t think...”

  “There wasn’t any pitcher in the room when I went through it. Sean, do you remember one?” Carey turned to him.

  “No. The champagne bucket was t
here. The empty bottles and the champagne flutes, the tray that held the strawberries. No pitcher of water. In fact, there wasn’t anything on Andreas’s bedside table at all other than the phone and the lamp.”

  “Did the water taste funny at all?” Andreas asked.

  Carey picked up the phone and called the house and had Anna run up to the bedroom to check for the pitcher just in case they’d missed it somehow.

  “Well, I drank the glass in two gulps. I was slightly hungover. There was a nasty taste but I thought it was my mouth.”

  Carey looked up from the phone in his hand. “Anna and Skye searched the room—nothing. What did the pitcher look like?”

  “It was clear glass, wide rounded bottom and fluted top. A lemonade pitcher. The cup was one of the regular glasses from the kitchen. The kind we use every day.”

  Carey relayed that to Anna and then paused as she spoke back to him. “No kidding? Okay, have Drew put it aside then. Try not to touch it with your hands. I’ll be by to look at it in a bit.” Sighing, he hung up the phone and turned to them.

  “She says that the pitcher showed up this morning in the dishwasher. She was mad because she normally hand-washes them. She figured someone had used it the night before and taken it back to their room or cabin. It’s been washed. She also said she’s got forty of those milk glasses and at least ten were in the dishwasher this morning.”

  “Why would she wash anything with Kari being poisoned!” Andreas exclaimed.

  “She ran the cycle after you’d left for the hospital. No one knew she’d been poisoned yet.”

  Andreas sighed. “So can you get anything from the pitcher now?”

  “I doubt it. The water in the dishwasher is pretty hot. I’ll go and see if we can get prints from it anyway. Don’t count on it, though.”

  “So you’re telling me we’re no closer to knowing who tried to kill Kari now than seven hours ago?” Andreas asked, voice dangerously low.

  “We know a lot more, Andreas. We know that the poison had to have been in that water pitcher and that someone went into your room and brought it down to cover their tracks. That’s a hell of a lot more than we knew before. We know it wasn’t Johanna or anyone that was here at the hospital, unless they were working with someone else at the house. It’s not everything but we have a lot of things ruled out, which is just as important as what we don’t know.”