Mated To My Bullies

Chapter 24: "Poison in the Well"

Maya's POV

It started with the children. I was scrubbing the floors in the main hall when I heard the first mother crying. Sarah Martinez, one of the pack's beta wives, was carrying her five-year-old son Tommy, the same boy who'd been putting silver in my food and he was burning with fever, his small body limp in her arms.

"Please," she begged Dr. Harrison as he examined the child in the medical wing. "He was fine yesterday morning, playing in the gardens. Now he won't eat, won't speak, can barely stay awake."

From my position mopping nearby, invisible as always, I watched the doctor frown over Tommy's pale, sweating form. The boy's lips had a strange bluish tint, and his breathing was shallow and labored.

"Has he eaten anything unusual?" Dr. Harrison asked. "Been anywhere he shouldn't have?"

"Nothing different from the other children," Sarah replied, tears streaming down her face. "They all drink from the same well, eat the same food in the pack dining hall..."

By evening, three more children had been brought to the medical wing with the same symptoms. By the next morning, it was six children and two elderly pack members. All of them showing the same signs, fever, weakness, difficulty breathing, that strange blue tint around their lips.

I recognized those symptoms. I'd been experiencing some of them myself for weeks, though not as severely. The metallic taste in my mouth, the increasing weakness, the way my body seemed to be failing bit by bit. But I'd assumed it was from the concentrated silver Seraphina had been putting directly in my food.

What if it wasn't just my food?

The thought crept into my mind as I watched Dr. Harrison struggle to treat patients whose illness made no sense to him. What if Seraphina wasn't just poisoning me? What if she was poisoning the entire pack?

But that was impossible. Why would she poison her own people? Her new family?

I pushed the thought away and focused on my work. I was probably just being paranoid, seeing conspiracies where there were none. After weeks of isolation and abuse, it would be natural for my mind to start making connections that didn't exist.Except the symptoms kept spreading.

Three days later, I was assigned to clean the pack's main meeting hall after a heated emergency session about the mysterious illness. As I wiped down tables and emptied trash bins, I found a crumpled piece of paper that had fallen behind one of the chairs.

The paper was covered in Seraphina's elegant handwriting. Most of it was illegible, torn and stained, but I could make out fragments:

"...weaker members showing symptoms first as expected..."

"...children and elderly most susceptible..."

"...stronger bloodlines will survive and reproduce..."

"...natural selection accelerated..."

My hands trembled as I smoothed out the paper, trying to read more. Most of it was too damaged, but one line near the bottom was clear:

"Phase two: increase dosage in main well system."

Main well system. The pack's primary water source.

I stared at the paper in horror, the pieces finally clicking together. The symptoms. The pattern of who was getting sick first. Seraphina's comment about "natural selection." This wasn't a random illness – it was deliberate. Systematic. Seraphina was poisoning the pack's water supply to eliminate the members she considered weak.

I had to warn someone. Had to tell the brothers what their precious Luna was really doing.

But who would believe me? The disgraced former mate who'd been reduced to scrubbing floors? The girl everyone thought was unstable and possibly dangerous? They'd more likely assume I was having some kind of psychotic break than believe I'd uncovered a mass poisoning plot.

Still, I had to try. Children were dying.I waited until late that night, then made my way to the family quarters. The brothers often met in Stephen's study after dinner to discuss pack business. If I could catch them together, maybe one of them would at least listen.

The study door was slightly open, and I could hear voices inside. Stephen, Nathan, Karl, and Elijah, along with Seraphina's lighter tones mixed in with their deeper voices. Perfect, they were all there.

I knocked softly on the doorframe, then stepped into the room.

"Excuse me," I said quietly. "I need to speak with you about something important."

The conversation stopped abruptly. All five of them turned to look at me, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop by ten degrees.

"What are you doing here?" Karl asked coldly. "Servants aren't allowed in the family quarters after dark."

"This is about the sick children," I said quickly, before they could dismiss me. "I know what's making them ill."

Stephen's expression didn't change. "You're a servant, Maya. Not a doctor. What could you possibly know about a medical crisis?"

"I know it's not a natural illness," I pressed on, pulling the crumpled paper from my pocket. "I found this in the meeting hall. It's in Seraphina's handwriting, and it talks about poisoning the well system."

I held out the paper, but none of them moved to take it. Instead, Seraphina stood gracefully from her chair, her face a picture of concerned confusion.

"Oh my," she said softly. "Maya, what exactly are you accusing me of?"

"I'm not accusing, I'm stating facts," I said, my voice gaining strength. "You've been poisoning the pack's water supply. That's why the weakest members are getting sick first – children, elderly, anyone with compromised immune systems. You're trying to eliminate them."

The silence that followed was deafening. Then Nathan started laughing, not humor, but the kind of bitter amusement reserved for something particularly ridiculous.

"Let me understand this," he said. "You think Seraphina, our Luna, is deliberately poisoning her own pack? The pack she's worked so hard to integrate into and improve?"