The next morning, Drew flipped through Deidre Soren’s chart with the Soren pack healer. “Hey, Trina, did you make these notes?”
Zeke had personally escorted him to the “lab” he’d set up on the pack lands. It was just a repurposed shed—spotlessly clean, yet a shed nonetheless—but the quality of the equipment Zeke managed to scrounge up was impressive. Of course, asking questions about where he’d found it all didn’t seem wise. The alpha was a steal first, ask later kind of wolf.
How the alpha had known which pieces to acquire was made clear when he introduced Drew to the pack healer. Trina Edgecomb—sister to Warren, the pack beta. She was whip smart and had cared for Zeke and Chloe’s comatose mother for years. Drew couldn’t think of a better person to assist him with the case.
Trina glanced over at the notes he held up and shook her head. “No, that healer died not long after Deidre fell ill.”
Drew perched on a stool and studied Deidre’s file. It read like a great-grandmother’s journal of folk remedies, alternating between homeopathic cures and modern medicine. Nothing like a little light reading over morning coffee.
As he caught up on Deidre’s case, Trina bustled around him, organizing things in a way that pleased her. That seemed only natural, since it was her pack, her lands, and her lab, but Drew couldn’t shake the sense her attention remained on him at all times. Zeke had probably ordered her to keep watch.
None of that mattered to Drew. He was just happy Trina was there to shine some light on the situation. She was young for a healer—mid-twenties at the most—and quite beautiful. She stood almost as tall as her brother, probably close to six-feet. Couple that with her long blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and Marilyn Monroe figure and she could have easily made it big in the movies. Even with her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, she had a natural beauty she carried easily. Males in her pack must have panted over her for her entire life, but she didn’t affect Drew in the slightest. He already had the most beautiful woman in the world—or at least he would very soon.
“There are a lot of random notes in here.” He shuffled through them to find the pivotal moment. “A little help?”
She leaned across their shared work table and thumbed through until she found a page with a sticky note attached. Her fingers froze, and she gave him a sharp look before turning away.
What was that about?
He’d figure it out later. Right then, his eyes fell onto a passage outlining how the crazy mess started—with good intentions gone bad. The stickied page was dated not long after the car accident. The treatments the healer prescribed seemed normal enough for the time, nothing unusual. It took quite a bit of reading, but he finally found what he sought.
“Was this guy for real?” He frowned at the page and then at Trina. “He administered Serenity X-15 by mixing it with tea? Why didn’t he just use Kool-Aid?”
Trina pressed her lips together. “I don’t think he was intentionally trying to poison Deidre. Tea made from Flowering Dogwood bark is commonly used to treat migraines, among other ailments. It contains cornic acid, which behaves a lot like aspirin. One of her symptoms was headaches.”
“I just don’t understand how he got his hands on X-15 in the first place. It was developed to break prisoners, not treat the sick.”
Trina shrugged and got back to her organizing. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but we’re kind of isolated. The latest and greatest medical miracles didn’t exactly catch on quickly at the time. He probably heard it was good at calming wolves and thought mixing it with Dogwood tea would kill two birds with one stone.”
She winced at her own words, but Drew ignored her and continued reading. “Looks as if her migraines were accompanied by big mood swings,” he muttered. “I guess it makes some kind of sense he’d mix them.”
Something didn’t feel right about the notes, but he couldn’t identify what niggled at him. He crossed the small space to the brand-new whiteboard screwed to the wall, picked up a dry erase pen, and just stood there, staring at the blank canvas.
“What’s up?” Trina edged a hair too close for his comfort.
He took a big step to the side and looked down at her, almost through her. “I’m not sure…it’s just…”
The whiteboard taunted him with its blankness. Just to get started, he drew a horizontal line halfway across the board and pointed at it.
“We know that X-15 affects the brain. That’s its purpose, right?”
“Right,” Trina answered, brow furrowed.
“We also know that cornic acid acts as an analgesic, yes?” Trina nodded as he drew another line parallel to the first. “The question I keep coming back to is what happens when the two are mixed? Do the tracks continue on straight and parallel, working together as they would on their own? Or does something else happen?” He veered the bottom line upward and the top line downward. “Does the train derail because the tracks got crossed?”
Trina stared at the board for a long time. Then without a word she crossed the room and dug around in a box. She pulled out four hefty tomes on organic compounds and carried them to the work table. “Sounds like we need to find out how cornic acid interacts with some of X-15’s principal compounds.”
Drew chuckled. “I guess we’ve got some reading to do.”
Lunchtime came and went without either of them noticing. They spent hours poring over the books and scouring the academic databases on the web. Other than her proclivity for standing just a little too close to him, Drew enjoyed working with the female wolf. He’d almost forgotten the rush of performing research with someone who knew what they were doing.
“I think I found another odd interaction.” She turned her laptop to show him a complicated graph.
Anyone else would have thought it looked like gibberish, but it triggered a germ of an idea in Drew’s brain. Not a fully formed one, just a thread. If he pulled too hard, it might break, losing the connection his brain tried to make. Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes and relaxed, allowing his mind to work its magic. It took less than a minute.
“Wait!” he cried, staring wild-eyed at Trina. “Where’s the antidote? You have some, right?”
“Of course. It’s in the fridge. We’ve been giving it to her monthly for years, but it’s never had any effect.”
“How do you administer it?”
“Orally. With a syringe.”
Though the shed only had one small window, the space grew ten degrees warmer. Or Drew did. Either way, he was excited and couldn’t wait to test his theory. “So, she can swallow?”
Trina nodded. “She eats too, but only if she’s spoon-fed.”
Hope. He’d had none when the day started. Now…
“What about the tea? Has anyone given her the tea since she… went off the tracks?”
“No, she gets most of her hydration through an IV. I want to minimize the risk of aspiration. Why?”
“We’d need to run some experiments to make sure it’s safe, but if we mixed the antidote with the same tea that delivered the X-15…”
Trina excitedly picked up the line of thought. “We’d be delivering the antidote the same way as the poison and it might counteract the effects. So simple, and the clue was in her file the whole time. Dr. Cooper, you’re a genius!” She ran around the table and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
Drew laughed and patted her back, expecting her to release him. When she didn’t, he tried pulling away, but she held on for dear life and sniffled. Poor thing must have been overcome with joy at their discovery. Except…she wasn’t sniffling, she was sniffing. Him. His shoulder, neck, arm, hair, anywhere her nose could reach. What the hell?
He grabbed her upper arms and forcefully pushed her back, an angry growl shuddering up from deep inside him. Either Trina was hot for him or she’d caught Chloe’s scent on him. Either way, his only concern was for his mate. He’d promised not to reveal their status as mates, and he wasn’t about to accidentally blow it because the pack healer got a little handsy.
Trina resembled the blank whiteboard when she finally met his eyes. Her face was expressionless, but her blue eyes sparkled.
“Sorry, I just got a little overexcited.” Her cool tone contradicted her words. “I should call Zeke and tell him the news. Excuse me.”
The moment the shed door closed behind her, Drew eased up close to it. It was thin, but not thin enough to hear everything she said into her phone, just snippets.
The first word he made out clearly was “cure.” That set his mind at ease. Maybe she hadn’t smelled Chloe after all. But then her tone changed, and he heard “scent” and “very strong.”
Shit! Trina had just tattled on him to Zeke. Heaving a resigned sigh, Drew turned back to the lab and worked on setting up the equipment he’d need to test his theory. He didn’t want to give Deidre anything that could harm her further—and not just because Zeke would probably execute him on the spot for hurting his mother.
Trina never came back inside, and Drew had already tested his solution three times when the door to the shed slammed open.
“You!”
Drew turned slowly, expecting to find Zeke seething in the doorway, and was surprised to find Warren instead. The beta snorted with rage, very much like a rampaging bull, and stepped inside, finger pointed at him.
“You!” he shouted again. “You think you can waltz onto our pack lands and take advantage of her like that?”
“Warren—” he started, but the big man interrupted him.
“No! Chloe is special. She’s vulnerable. You have no clue what’s she’s gone through. Well, let me tell you, she doesn’t deserve to be strung along by some fly-by-night player.”
Drew clenched his fists in an effort to not punch the guy. How dare he talk about Drew’s mate like that! He reminded himself—and his slavering wolf—that Warren had no idea of the truth. But now that Trina had caused a ruckus…
“Listen, Warren, I’m not—”
“Bullshit!” Warren spat, stepping so close spittle flew in Drew’s face. “It’s obvious you’re playing her. Chloe can’t have a mate, asshole. Everyone knows that, so don’t even pretend. She’s had enough disappointment in her life. She doesn’t need you putting ridiculous ideas into her head. She deserves better than that!”
Warren punctuated his point by jabbing Drew in the chest. That was the last straw. He’d always been easygoing, always going the extra mile to keep the peace, but he couldn’t hold his jealousy at bay.
Before Warren could even pull his hand back, Drew shoved him hard. The other wolf staggered backward into the whiteboard, knocking it off-kilter. He looked shocked that Drew had dared to touch him, and then his face clouded over with anger.
Drew had sparred with his alpha, Mason, enough to see Warren’s move long before he made it. So when his opponent launched himself at Drew, he sidestepped the assault. That sent the big man stumbling to the ground and landing head-first into the wall. Warren rolled onto his back, slightly dazed, which finally gave Drew enough time to say his piece.
“You’re damn right I don’t deserve her. She deserves only the best, which she obviously won’t get from anyone in her pack. Where do you get off talking about her like she’s broken? She’s not broken. She’s perfect! She’s also my mate, Warren, and nobody talks about my mate like that!”
Drew had never experienced such rage in his life. It took him off-guard and blinded him to everything except the Soren beta. If ever there was a time to lose his mind, it was in defense of his mate. Based on the way Warren’s eyes widened and alarm covered his features, the wolf saw it too. But when Drew lunged for Warren to teach him a lesson, a strong, stiff arm came out of nowhere to hold him in place.
Zeke.
He stood between the two angry men, glaring at each in turn. And he wasn’t alone.
Chloe stood in the doorway, tears in her eyes.