THE ALPHA’S ANTIDOTE

Chapter 5: Locked Wing

Mira's POV

They did not put me in a dungeon, which was the only mercy I could find in the morning.

They put me in the east wing of the Blackthorn pack clinic instead, in a narrow white room with a cot, a washbasin, and a window too small for a cat. The door locked from the outside. I had stitched half the pack in this building when I was a girl, and now I sat on one of its beds with my bag confiscated and my wrists still sore from the ride.

I counted the hours since his last collapse. Sixteen. It meant the stabilizer was holding, and I clung to that. It did not explain why his hands had been so cold when the pack healer wheeled him away, or why the old clinic, with its pale blue curtains and its smell of lavender, felt less like a home I had lost and more like a grave I had been dug into.

The lock clicked.

I stood, my heart jumping. But it was not Tessa, or an elder, or a pack warrior come to drag me to the council.

It was a girl.

She slipped through the door and shut it behind her with her hip, balancing a tray in both hands. She could not have been more than fourteen. A narrow face, bright dark eyes, a long braid tied with a green ribbon. She wore an oversized gray sweater and a look of fierce, guilty determination.

"Don't scream," she whispered. "I'm not supposed to be here."

"I wasn't going to scream."

"Good." She exhaled, and the tray wobbled. "I brought you food. Edric thinks I'm delivering laundry."

I looked past her. Through the crack in the door, I could see the broad back of a young guard, his hands clasped behind him, staring at the far wall. He looked about twenty. A junior sentry, perhaps, still learning how to stand like a soldier.

"He's not going to check?" I asked.

"Edric?" She shrugged. "He's nice. He doesn't like to ask questions." She set the tray on the cot and looked at me with open fascination. "You're her. You're Mira."

I did not have the heart to lie. "I am."

"I'm Pia. Tessa's my sister." She said it quickly, in the tone of someone who had practiced. "She's the Gamma. She's really, really mad at you."

"I noticed."

"She came home at dawn and didn't say anything and made tea and then dropped the cup." Pia's brows pulled together. "She never drops things. Dara says it's because she was scared. But Tessa doesn't get scared. So I came to see for myself."

I lifted the cover from the tray. Bread, cheese, a bowl of soup still steaming, and, perched on top like an afterthought, a small red apple. My stomach clenched so painfully that I had to sit down.

"Eat," said Pia. "You look like you haven't in days."

"Thank you."

I ate slowly, because I knew better than to gorge, and because I did not trust my hands. Pia sat cross-legged on the floor and watched me with enormous eyes.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask."

"Did you really kill Alpha Gideon?"

The soup went tasteless in my mouth. I set the spoon down.

I considered the lie I might tell, the easy one, the version that would make a fourteen-year-old look at me with warmth. But she had risked her sister's wrath to bring me a sandwich, and I was tired of being the villain in everyone's story. "No," I said. "I didn't."

"Okay." She nodded, as if that settled it.

"Just like that?"

"You smell like cedar," she said. "Like the Alpha. Tessa says that's the bond. The Alpha wouldn't claim someone who was bad."

She considered. "Well. He might. He's very stubborn. But he's never been stupid."

I stared at her, and then, against all expectation, I laughed. It came out small and cracked, and it hurt my throat.

Pia grinned.

"Everyone's been weird since the Alpha got sick," she said. "Selene cries a lot. She sits with him every evening and brings his tea herself, even when the maids offer. She says she won't trust anyone else to do it right." Pia frowned. "She's very kind. But it makes the house sad."

A small, cold thought brushed the edge of my mind, too faint to catch. I let it go. Not yet.

"Pia," I said slowly. "Is anyone allowed to see the Alpha right now?"

"Only Brenna. She's the healer. And Tessa. And Selene, in the evenings." She tilted her head. "Why?" Before I could answer, a sharp knock rattled the door.

"Pia!" The voice outside was low and urgent. It was Edric. "Someone's coming."

Pia went white. She snatched the tray, then stopped and shoved the apple into my hand instead. "Eat the whole thing," she hissed.

"It's from the orchard, not the kitchen." Then she vanished through the door, and the lock turned.

I sat there holding a red apple and trying to understand why my heart was racing.

Fifteen minutes later, the lock turned again.

This time it was a woman in a healer's gray tunic, with graying hair pulled into a bun and the stiff posture of someone who had been told something she did not like. Brenna. I remembered her. She had trained half the pack's medics, and she had never once smiled at me.

She carried my bag in one hand, and in the other a rack of small glass vials and a pair of surgical gloves.

"The Alpha has asked for you," she said, tight-lipped.

I blinked. "To treat him?"

"To test him." She set the rack on the washbasin with a sharp click. "He wants a second opinion on the blood. He doesn't trust mine. He insists that yours be done in the next hour, under watch." Her eyes were hard. "I would not allow it. But he gave an order." "Of course he did."

"Do not mistake this for trust."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

She stepped back and folded her arms. Behind her, in the corridor, I could see Tessa's shadow leaning against the wall like a sentry.

I washed my hands. I pulled on the gloves. I took the first vial from the rack, a dark, thick sample drawn that morning, and my pulse began to quicken as I worked.

I knew every step by heart. A drop of reagent, then another. A gentle swirl. A pinch of crushed hawthorn and a single drop of my own indicator solution, the one I had spent a year perfecting. In the Hollow I had only smelled the poison. Now I would measure it.

The first sample turned a pale, sickly violet.

I frowned. That matched the level I had expected, after the charcoal, after the stabilizer. A little high, but within reason. "The second one is from last night," Brenna said, handing it over. "The third was taken twenty minutes ago." I tested the second. Violet, slightly darker.

I tested the third.

The liquid in the tube bloomed a deep, bruised purple.

My hands went still.

"That is not possible," I said.

"What?" Tessa's voice came from the doorway, sharp as glass. She had stepped inside without my noticing.

"The level is higher." I held the tube up to the light, and it trembled in my grip. "It's higher than when I found him. Higher than this morning. It should be falling. I gave him charcoal. I gave him the stabilizer. He's been in this clinic for sixteen hours." "Meaning?" said Brenna.

"Meaning he is being poisoned again." My throat was dry. "Today. Here. Right now."

Tessa went rigid. "That's a lie. No one has been near him. Only me, and Brenna..."

"Then one of you is wrong," I said quietly, "because this is not an old dose. This is fresh. And the pattern in the first sample, the slow climb over months, the sudden jumps..." I stopped.

The room was dead silent.

"This is a daily dose," I whispered. "Someone has been feeding him Nightveil every single day. And they did it again within the last hour."