Chapter 170

Julian’s POV

I waited until the supervisor returned with the camera. He set it up with the other get well soon gifts. Looking at it, I could admit that it was properly hidden. I could only see it because I knew where it was, but even then, it just looked like a black button than a camera lens.

If I didn’t know what it was and where, I was sure I wouldn’t have noticed at all.

The supervisor didn’t say anything to me, but we nodded at each other, showing that I understood. Then he walked out of the room.

I stayed for a while longer.

Then, after leaving Mom to rest, trading places with Penny and a few others who wanted to sit with Mom for a while, I returned to the waiting room. Alice sat in the seat beside me, with Aunt Kathy on the other side.

Some of my family was chatting, others on their phone. Aunt Kathy was crocheting.

I looked around the room, taking in the faces of everyone present, one to the next. Thousands of times, I had looked at them before, yet this time felt different. This time, I was searching for a potential murderer.

I hated suspecting my family, but Amber was right, they made the most likely culprits.

The motive was harder to understand. It was possible the culprit didn’t want to kill Mom, they just wanted her to be confused, to forget… something. But what?

That could be the motive, but it would be easier to understand if I knew what exactly it was that they were hoping to keep secret. If they were willing to put Mom through all this to keep the secret, whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad.

After a while, the girls came out of Mom’s room, and Uncle Peter went in.

“Daddy?” Alice asked from beside me.

I glanced over at her. “Yeah, honey?”

“Why is Uncle Peter so scary?” she asked.

Beside her, Aunt Kathy chuckled slightly.

“That’s not polite, Alice,” I said. “He’s an older man, and he’s been through a lot. He’s fought in many battles protecting the pack.”

“I don’t mean on the outside,” Alice said. “I mean, the inside. He’s got like a black cloud inside of him…”

I looked at her strangely, wondering if her closeness to her wolf gave her special abilities that most other children hadn’t yet developed.

I couldn’t speak to Uncle Peter’s soul, though. As far as I knew, the man had always been an old grouch.

Aunt Kathy remained quiet now too, any good humor vanished from her face. The only sound was the shift of the yarn as she continued to crochet.

Alice glanced between us, still looking for an answer.

“Saying things like that isn’t polite,” I said again.

“Okay,” Alice frowned. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, dear,” Aunt Kathy said. “Don’t fret over it.”

A few moments later, Uncle Peter remerged from Mom’s room.

Only a handful of seconds later, Amber and the supervisor came bursting out of the backrooms. Amber immediately went into Mom’s room, while the supervisor waved me into the back. I followed him into an office where a television was showing live feed of the hidden camera he had set up.

Right now, the camera showed Amber injecting something into Mom’s IV.

“We set up the IV to block the poison. Amber is testing it now,” the supervisor told me. He rewound the tape a bit, to when Uncle Peter was in there.

As he entered, Uncle Peter came to Mom’s side, apologized, and then when right to the IV. He had a syringe in his pocket that he produced and injected something.

“The poison?” I demanded.

“We are testing it,” the supervisor said. “But what else would he be doing?”

That was enough confirmation for me and my furious mind.

Rushing out of the office, I shoved through the doors that led me back to the waiting room. I stormed up to Uncle Peter, grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him up to his feet.

My nearby enforcers, who had been positioned at some of the exits since Olivia’s disappearance, immediately rushed forward.

“Why would you poison her?” I demanded from Uncle Peter. “What could she have ever done to you for you to try to kill her?!”

“I’m not trying to kill anyone!” Uncle Peter replied, his outrage outweighed by the clear fear in his eyes. “I’m innocent!”

“We have what you did on video,” I told him coldly. “Perhaps we should go watch it together. Or maybe we should bring the monitor out here so the entire family can see what you’ve been doing.”

Immediately, his blustered started to fail him. “T-That’s not necessary!”

“Then tell me what you were doing!”

By now, the rest of the family was standing, looking over in confusion and surprise, though whether it was because of what was being said or because of what I was doing, I wasn’t sure. I hoped it was the former but feared it was the latter.

Uncle Peter, looking around, realized the same. With a sigh, he said, “Fine. But release me first.”

I was annoyed but I wanted answers, so I did so. He stumbled back a few steps, then brushed off his shirt, but he stayed upright.

“Your mother has been tearing herself apart since you made your foolish decision to stay with Amber,” Uncle Peter said. “It was all I could do to help make her forget!”

“With wolfsbane?” I said. “That’s going to kill her. It is more important for her to forget than it is for her to live?”

Uncle Peter went red in the face and did not answer that question.

Then, Aunt Kathy stepped forward. “Peter, I want a divorce.”

“Not now, Kathy,” he was quick to be dismissive of her.

“Don’t talk to Mom like that!” Blake said, rushing forward.

At once, a family-wide argument started, so loud and so chaotic, my head was spinning.

As much as I wanted to take part in it, it was Alice I was most worried about. I moved to her, hugged her, then directed my enforcers, “Take Peter away.”

Amber’s POV

I used a syringe to remove the poison from the IV, where a blocker had stopped it from entering Julian’s Mom’s bloodstream.

Oddly, there was only a small amount there, barely more than a drop or two.

That didn’t make any sense. This amount couldn’t have been enough to have given the kind of results that had shown on the toxicology report. It would have needed to be so much more than this.

In fact, this little of an amount… I wasn’t sure it would have any real effect on a werewolf. Her innate healing ability should have allowed her to easily pass this without issue, with maybe just a headache.

Perhaps Uncle Peter had been making many injections throughout the day?

Yet, even so… even if he did ten times this amount, it still wouldn’t have been enough to properly explain those results.

That could only mean one of two things, and as loathe as I was to admit it, I had to accept the facts in front of me.

Either Uncle Peter had decided to change the dosage he was giving her this one time he was caught…

Or there was another poisoner yet to be caught.