Chapter 236

Zane POV

“Alpha Zane!”

Never, in all the years he had been working for me, had I heard such a sound of panic in Hans’s voice.

I looked up and out my window. Hans wasn’t in the house. I saw him frantically waving at me over by the poppy garden almost a mile away.

I ran down the stairs and out of the villa without any thought other than to get to Hans. I could see him talking on his phone and assumed it was emergency services. The path went up a slight rise, and I saw then two women lying on the path, both of them contorted with spasms.

One was Mavis, and the other, oh, goddess, was Sarah. I had almost reached them when I heard the sirens.

“Sarah!” I shouted as I skidded to a stop and knelt beside her. She was sweating profusely, and her hand clamped down on mine.

“Hurts,” she croaked.

Hans had gone to Mavis’s side and was holding her hand as well. I looked around and saw two chairs and a broken teacup. I could smell the tea, jasmine. I saw one of the shards was curved and some tea was cradled inside.

The onsite ambulance pulled up, and I waited until the two EMTs got to us to point to the sample of tea and tell Hans to get something to put it in.

“Don’t let the tea touch your skin,” I warned him. He got a sample bag and gloves from the back of the ambulance, and then I stopped paying any attention to him.

Meanwhile, I was holding Sarah and had difficulty letting go of her enough to let the EMT get to her. She was grunting and panting in pain, and I noticed she had soiled herself.

“Give her something for the pain,” I ordered.

“Alpha Zane, we can’t risk it until we know what’s wrong.”

“She’s been poisoned, obviously,” I growled. I looked over to Mavis, who was in the same shape. Then I looked for Hans, who held up the sample bag with a nod.

A security detail had shown up, and the tech got one of the van to take the bag from Hans. Sarah and Mavis were strapped into gurneys by that point and were loaded up into the ambulance.

My phone rang. I answered it with, “Travis, Sarah and Mavis have been poisoned. We need to know with what. We have a sample.”

“Bring the sample with you to the hospital. We’ll meet you there.”

With two gurneys in the ambulance, there was no room for me, so I got into the back of the security vehicle and just remembered to breathe. Later, looking back, I realized I went into a sort of general shock. When I came out of it, we were stopping in the emergency bay of Cavendish General, and a wave of irritation washed over me.

Why was everything named the same thing, including me? Why couldn’t I just be a patient with his mate who needed help? When I left the car, people would be looking to me to be the Pack Alpha, and the urge to scream at them all was almost overwhelming.

Almost.

I breathed through it. Sarah was in danger, and this was no time to be wrapped up in my own problems. Then I remembered the girls and was on the phone as I got out of the vehicle telling Travis—goddess, what would I do without Travis—to have his mate fetch the girls and keep them under guard on the way to the hospital. There was no question they needed to be with Sarah and me, though part of me screamed I should lock them in a tower with a 24/7 guard.

The hospital had obviously been warned we were coming, Sarah and Mavis, both whimpering faintly, were taken directly into the ER. I had to wait in the hall, but I followed them with my ears. Both women were bathed, and a specialist in human medicine was brought in.

Sarah passed out, and I listened to her heartbeat. Mavis’s heart was stuttering, and I could tell both of them had bodies that simply weren’t functioning properly.

I knew the sample of tea had been rushed to the lab. Alicia entered the waiting area—hadn’t I been in the hallway? I had a vague memory of being gently ushered to a bank of chairs. Chloe and Grace walked behind her, looking worried, and they both quickly ended up in my lap.

They were almost too big to fit, but they managed it.

“Daddy?” Grace asked.

“Sarah’s gotten sick,” I explained. “The doctors are looking after her.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Chloe asked. I noticed they had gotten used to taking turns in conversation. They were so in tune, so united as twins.

Twins. Olivia’s twin. Just where was Ella?

I had refused to think much of her after throwing her out of my bed. My life just didn’t have the space to accommodate whatever her agenda was.

But Scott was dead. Hayes was in prison.

I knew Ella was quite wealthy from her career, and she and Olivia had inherited a fortune as well. But Ella was family—misguided, but family.

Olivia had been poisoned, and now Sarah and, I believed as collateral damage, so had Mavis. Was it Ella? Yes, she was jealous and self-absorbed, but a murderer?

We sat there together, just holding on. Travis walked in.

“They’ve completed analysis of the tea,” he said. “There was nothing more than tea in it.”

“What now?” I wasn’t really asking Travis, but he responded anyway.

“They’re doing tests on the women’s hair and urine. It’s clearly a virulent poison.”

“Rat poison,” I said.

“What?”

“She used warfarin sodium on Olivia. It’s a rat poison.”

“She?”

“Ella.”

Travis looked stunned. “You think Ella is behind this?”

“Yes. Have her arrested, will you?”

“Ella? Seriously?”

“Scott told me almost a year ago. He told me all their lives Ella had been jealous of Olivia.” I looked up at him closely and saw his disbelief.

“She came to visit me the other night,” I told him, picking my words with care while the girls were in my arms. Travis’s eyes widened in understanding. “I had to make her leave.”

A doctor in green scrubs came in and made straight for me.

“We’ve managed to make the women more comfortable while we test for various poisons,” he said.

“What’s another rat poison besides warfarin sodium that would kill a human?”

“This fast-acting?” the doctor asked, a goddess bless him for not making me explain. “Thallium would do it, if they ate enough.”

“Ate? Not drank?”

“Thallium doesn’t dissolve in water.” He looked thoughtful. “We pumped their stomachs. Both had eaten a small amount of flour and sugar recently.”

“Cookies with the tea,” Chloe mumbled.

The doctor nodded at me. “The test is simple enough.” He turned and walked back through the doors beyond which I heard two faltering heartbeats.

I looked over to Travis, who was taking his phone away from his ear.

“Ella’s not at her apartment.”