Chapter 188. Mercer
I had the healer by her throat before she ever made it into the living room.
My claws dug into the soft flesh beneath her jaw as I lifted her clean off the ground.
I’d known her for a decade now, but it was the first time she expressed any kind of feeling other than the sick excitement she had towards tormenting Maisie. Her brown eyes grew wide with shock that quickly turned to raw panic. The five other doctors Jericho and Soren had summoned on such short notice for a fucking second opinion froze inside the room.
I wanted them to know what precisely was going to happen to them if my mother had lined their pockets with enough gold to make them toy around with the life of my mate by lying to us that she was fine, even if she clearly wasn’t.
"Mercer!" Maisie’s voice came behind me. "Stop it. Put her down!"
I didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. The rage was a living thing in my chest, burning hotter than any fire I’d ever felt. Because if my mother had gone this far... I was going to kill her myself.
I tightened my grip just enough for the healer’s fingers to scrabble uselessly at my wrist. Her face was turning purple.
"What did you put in the vial?" My voice came out low and guttural.
She choked, trying to speak. I eased my hold just a fraction so she could drag in a ragged breath.
"N-nothing... nothing that wasn’t... already discussed," she gasped.
I slammed her back against the wall hard enough that the painting beside us rattled. A low, dangerous growl rumbled from my chest, vibrating through the room.
"If you’ve harmed her," I snarled, "I will paint these walls with your blood."
"There will... be no need... for that," she wheezed. "As I’m..." Another wheeze. "...they’ve already told... you, the tonics are... safe." I released her throat and she fell to the ground, coughing as she sputtered more words, "It is dangerous for wolf and Lycans alike to shift while being pregnant. The Queen wanted to know that there would be no hindrances to the birth of an heir. She had me introduce blockers into the treatment to prevent complications."
"Blockers?" Maisie said. Her beautiful face was pale.
One of the other doctors, an older female who was an old friend of Jericho’s, nodded quickly. "With emotions running extremely high during pregnancy, shifting could occur at any point in time. Women are given the option of wanting them—"
"And apparently, my mate wasn’t," I snarled. "You didn’t think to mention this before? That your tonics would render her vulnerable? Mortal?"
She said nothing, and I knew the answer without her even speaking. The Queen wanted to keep it quiet, and we weren’t naive enough to believe that it was indeed for Maisie’s wellbeing.
There was another angle here but I just couldn’t find it,Mother never did anything without careful thought and planning. What did the blockers achieve? I knew the rest were thinking it too. Quinlan’s brows were furrowed as Memah added, "It is only temporary. If she stops the treatment—"
"If?" Soren echoed, cocking his head. I recognized the cruel energy surrounding him. Soren grabbed the casing of vials. There were less than a dozen left. Three out of which had been tested by the doctors and proven ’safe for consumption’.
Soren prowled over to where Memah knelt on the ground. Very gently, he set down the casing onto her thigh. "Drink them all."
Her breath caught. "I cannot—"
He caught her chin with that same gentleness a hunter often used when it had found its prized prey and was inching closer behind it, just so he could strike its jugular before it even knew to fight back. His voice lowered into a loving caress. "You are going to drink every last drop of it. And then, you will create a remedy for the shit you’ve done. After which you will report back to the Queen as per usual. And inform her that all is well. And you will continue to do so until I say otherwise."
His claws dug into her chin. "And goddess help you that it is indeed poisoned, healer. I know where you hide your little brother. So far south, you must think him safe enough to play god in the life of another."
The healer turned pale. Sweat broke across her skin and she began to tremble more than I’d ever seen her.
He leaned in, pressing his lips to her ear. Her breath hitched and her pupils dilated. With fear. With so much fear, it thickened the air. And there was something else in her eyes too. It was the general reactions humans had around us. They were scared to death. They were appalled by the nature of our beasts but drawn in by our beauty, even if we were killing them.
Soren could have been slitting her throat and all she wouldn’t be able to fight the lust in her.
"I will find him," he purred. "And I will bring you his head."
A sob escaped her. It was near hysterical.
Soren drew back and arched his brow at the vials. "Well?"
Skittishly, she began pulling at the stoppers, the vials trembling in her hands as she downed one dose after the other without hesitation. We knew it wouldn’t affect her if there was actually ash or silver in there, but the sight of her terror was intoxicating.
After dehumanizing and making Maisie feel like shit at every encounter, having her like this on her knees was a gift to Maisie. One I hoped she would enjoy, but one glance at her and she looked sick.
She shook her head, whispering, "I can’t watch this", and then she fled up the stairs.
"I’ll go check on her," I murmured, taking the stairs after her. I heard the sound of her retching from the doorway and I knelt behind her in the bathroom, pulling her hair back as she threw up into the toilet.
She leaned back against me tiredly, wiping the corner of her mouth, and her eyes fluttered shut.
"For someone who nearly beat Tessa to death and then tried to burn her alive, you have surprisingly weak stomach for torture," I mused, rubbing her belly.
I loved touching her. I always had to be touching her somehow. I didn’t get tired of it. I didn’t think it was possible to tire of it. It was troubling on some days, being so addicted to the feel of her that I couldn’t function properly. Sometimes I left the mansion just so I could think straight, but every time I left, I was itching to return. Knowing she was wearing my shorts. Or my shirt. Or my scent. Tucked in under my sheets.
It was the kind of torture that made a man die happy.
Her cheeks reddened, but she didn’t speak. I couldn’t tell how long we remained that way. Somehow we went from kneeling to sitting on the tiles, while I rocked her back and forth until the nausea presided.
Her eyes were closed, lashes brushing her high cheekbones, but I knew she wasn’t asleep. She was thinking. Could see it in the way her eyes moved under her eyelids.
I couldn’t feel much of her emotions through the bond—Maisie had always possessed an unnatural strong mental wall, stronger even than ours, which was strange, but there was really nothing normal about Maisie—but I sensed the stormy air flickering from behind those walls.
"I’m sorry," I found myself saying. "We should’ve noticed sooner. But the bond didn’t feel much different than it does on a regular day. And on the days it felt silent, you were weak. We assumed it was the tonic. We’ll be more watchful."
She exhaled shakily. "It’s okay. It’s not your fault."
But it was. How stupid and fucking careless we all were, getting so fucking distracted by everything else that it never occurred to us that something else was at play.
I hated Soren’s idea of winning this tedious battle with the Queen, but I was beginning to understand his sense of urgency if she was insane enough to do shit like this.
None of them believed me, but between Maisie and my mother, I’d already made the choice a long time ago and picked my mate. It was a choice no one should ever have to make, but even if I was given better situations and scenarios, I knew I wasn’t going to live without Maisie.
"That’s not why I’m mad," she added after a moment. "You all agreed to Margaret’s offer and didn’t think to inform me. Does what I want mean so little in the grand scheme of your big plans?"
Her voice was small and had a tremor to it. And that was all it took to make me feel like someone had reached into my heart with an ashen arrow head and stabbed me a thousand fucking times.