Chapter 15
948 Words
Chloe’s pov
"She did it on purpose."
Megan's voice rang out across the healer's hall before I'd even finished crossing the threshold, pointing at me with a hand that wasn't quite steady.
The room still smelled faintly of the herbs Doctor Luther had burned to calm Nash's breathing, sharp and medicinal under the low lamplight. He knelt beside Nash's bed a few feet away, packing away the last of his instruments, Nash's chest rising and falling in the slow, drugged rhythm of whatever sedative had finally pulled him under.
"That scent on her dress." Megan's voice climbed, playing to the small crowd of pack members gathered in the doorway behind her. "She knew what it would do to him and yet she wore it to hurt our Alpha."
"I didn't know anything about your taboos." I kept my voice level, refusing to let her rattle me the way she'd clearly hoped to. "I've been in this pack for a matter of weeks. Nobody told me a scent existed that could do this to him, let alone what it was called or where to find it."
"Convenient timing, then." Megan crossed her arms. "The stranger wears the one scent that could take down the Alpha, at the one event where every high-ranking wolf in this territory would see it happen."
"The dress was switched." Alma's voice cut through the room from the doorway, cold and certain. She stepped inside with Jill a pace behind her, both of them still in their ball gowns, Jill's hem torn at the seam from the earlier stampede. "The one I commissioned for Chloe never left the seamstress's hands smelling of anything but rosewater. Someone swapped it before she put it on."
"That's a convenient story too." Megan's confidence wavered, just slightly, but she held her ground.
Nash stirred on the bed, and every head in the room turned toward him at once. His eyes opened, glassy from the sedative but sharpening fast, and he pushed himself upright despite Doctor Luther's hand on his shoulder trying to keep him still.
"Who." His voice came out rough, stripped down to a low fury with no patience left in it. "Who switched the dress?"
Nobody answered. Megan's eyes darted toward the doorway like she was calculating the distance to it.
"Bring me the maid who dressed her." Nash swung his legs off the bed, ignoring Doctor Luther's protest altogether. "Now."
Two guards returned minutes later with Jessica between them, her face white, her hands twisting the fabric of her apron hard enough to wrinkle it beyond repair. Nash crossed the room to stand in front of her, and even sedated and unsteady on his feet, the sheer weight of his attention made her flinch like he'd already struck her.
"Tell me what happened to that dress." His voice stayed low, but the low, controlled fury under it made the whole room go still. "Every detail. Now."
Jessica's composure broke apart in seconds. "Megan gave me a vial. Daffodil dew. She told me to spray it on the blue dress before I helped Chloe get ready, and she said if I didn't do it, she'd make sure everyone in this pack knew things about me that would get me thrown out for good."
Every eye in the room swung to Megan.
"She's lying." Megan's voice cracked on the word. "I never gave her anything. She's trying to save herself by pointing fingers at me."
"I have the vial." Jessica pulled a small glass bottle from her apron pocket, her hand shaking so badly it nearly slipped from her fingers before Wylie caught it and passed it to Nash. "I kept it. I didn't know what else to do with it."
Nash turned the vial over once in his hand, and whatever calm he'd been holding onto cracked visibly across his face. "Megan."
"I can explain." Megan's voice had lost every trace of its earlier confidence. "It was supposed to be small. Embarrassing, not dangerous. I didn't think it would go this far."
"You've known what daffodil dew does to me since you were a child." Nash's voice dropped lower, and the room seemed to shrink around it.
Megan's eyes cut toward Jessica, sharp and desperate. "She's the one who put it on the dress with her own hands. She's the one who could have refused and didn't."
"She refused until you threatened her." I stepped forward, planting myself between Megan's pointing finger and Jessica's shaking shoulders. "She's a maid with no standing in this pack and no way to say no to someone with your name behind her threats. If you want someone punished for tonight, punish the woman who bought the poison and blackmailed a servant into using it. Not the servant who had no real choice at all."
Nash's eyes moved from Megan to me, a sharp, assessing focus settling behind them, one that made my pulse climb despite everything else happening in the room.
"She's right." He said it simply, without room for argument. "Jessica isn't the one who'll answer for tonight."
Jessica's knees buckled, and she caught herself against the wall, tears streaking down her face as she looked at me like I'd handed her a mercy she hadn't dared hope for. "Thank you. Thank you, my lady, I didn't know what else to do, I was so scared, I—"
"You're safe now." I squeezed her hand once, steady despite the tremor still running through my own fingers. "That's what matters."
Nash watched the exchange in silence, and when I finally met his eyes again, the look on his face came close to respect. He turned back to deal with Megan.
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