Chapter 179 Brielle Logan
Chapter 179:
_Alaric’s POV_
The doctors tried their best but the treatment wasn’t working at all. I could feel it, which was the most frustrating thing ever.
It wasn’t even the pain itself, pain was manageable. It was something you breathed through, but the awareness of the silver working against me from the inside that I couldn’t reach or reason with or outmaneuver was the main thing that I despised.
The silver remained in the wound, they had extracted what they could see but silver always dispersed into tissue that made complete removal difficult, and what remained was what it usually did to wolves.
Phillip was suffering quietly, which was worse than if he had been loud about it.
My wolf was not a quiet creature by nature, when he goes totally silent it meant something was costing him more than he wanted to admit, and right now he was very very silent under everything. I couldn’t lose my wolf, not because of me but because of Rowena. She already lost hers. Losing mine wouldn’t sit well with her.
Also, Phillip was also needed to keep my head in check.
“I’m fine,” he said weakly when I checked on him. There wasn’t any much difference between my wolf and me. He was clearly not fine, but I let him have it because there was nothing else to offer him right now.
The doctors had tried two separate treatment protocols and both had slowed the progression without stopping it.
They were consulting with each other in the corridor outside my room. They were clearly struggling to fix me, I could hear the murmur of their voices through the door. I just lay on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I tried to remember the things I knew about silver poisoning.
This had happened before, not exactly like this, but silver and me had a history that went back further than people were aware of.
Being Alpha King meant there had been attempts on my life more times than I had ever told anyone the full count of, and silver was a preferred method for the kind of people who made those attempts because they understood what it did to a wolf. Without a wolf, I was useless to the pack.
The Alpha King position would be taken away, so I understood those attempts with silver.
I had survived every time, but surviving wasn’t the same as handling it easily. The truth was that the treatments the doctors were currently trying were not the treatments that had worked before.
The treatment that had worked before was a specific protocol developed by a specific person who was no longer in my life, and I had not thought about that person in a very long time. I also didn’t want to think about this person at all.
Gabriel came in about an hour after the others had filtered out, it was already late at night. Rowena left for a change of clothes and some food which she would bring for me too.
When Gabriel entered, he closed the door behind him and pulled the chair close to the bed.
“May I?” He asked and I nodded without looking at him.
He cleared his throat and sat down. “There’s a problem, Alpha.”
When has there never been a problem. “Say it,” I said calmly.
Gabriel clasped his hands together and looked at them briefly. “The men we have in holding still aren’t talking. We’ve tried everything within legal parameters and a few things slightly outside them but nobody has moved.”
“I understand,” I said. “I guess that’s not what you came to tell me.”
He looked up at me. “No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
I knew, so I waited for him to tell me.
“She saw the news,” he said calmly. “And she called the office this morning, she said she’s been texting your personal number with no response.”
Without being told who, I knew who he meant. It felt like my mind and Gabriel’s worked in sync.
It was her. Brielle Logan.
I had been ignoring her messages for over a year now, not because I had forgotten the messages, I was aware of each one, but I ignored because there was nothing useful to say back. She should’ve moved on by now.
“And.....she’s on her way back to the capital,” Gabriel said the last part fast as if scared. “She booked a flight when she saw the news about the courthouse and you being shot. She called the office for assistance with an airport pickup by morning.”
I looked at the ceiling and almost groaned. If I wasn’t the Alpha King, and if Gabriel wasn’t sitting beside me, I would’ve crashed out badly.
“You let her call the office?” I asked in frustration.
“I didn’t know it was her until she called,” Gabriel hurriedly added. “She used her professional title, Dr. Logan. By the time I put it together she had already been told someone would be there.”
I closed my eyes for a moment again.
Phillip stirred weakly. “Just let her come or I’d die.”
“A moment.” I told him in response.
“The doctors here are good but they don’t know what she knows.” He added unhelpfully.
I just ignored him, feeling a headache coming.
Phillip went quiet again, I think he was hurting more than he wanted to admit.
The thing about Brielle was that she was brilliant. That had always been true and it had nothing to do with anything else, she had studied at one of the best universities in the west, graduated at the top of her program, built a medical career that had taken her to places where the work she was doing was genuinely significant.
She was one of the best doctors I had ever encountered and the protocol she had developed specifically for silver toxicity in Alpha wolves was not something that existed anywhere else because she had created it herself.
What she and I had been was not love, she had cared about me back then, and I had been lonely. It had looked like something for a while, she would’ve become the Luna Queen, actually. Everyone around me knew her, Gabriel included.
She wasn’t always in the limelight.
But then she had chosen her career, which was the right choice for her even if I hadn’t thought so at the time, and she had gone.
I eventually realized what we had wasn’t love, I was fascinated by her. Her absence made me catch myself.
Then I met Rowena. I had understood slowly and then all at once, what the difference felt like.
Even Phillip had admitted it. My wolf who had been quiet and unmoved through everything with Brielle but had taken one look at Rowena Ashthorne and decided, without consulting me, that this was something else entirely.
It was pure love.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually did.
“Alpha.” Gabriel’s voice pulled me back to the present, he was watching me carefully. “The silver isn’t responding, the doctors themselves are running out of options they’re confident in.” He paused and continued. “But she knows what works.”
The pain moved through my arm and Phillip made a sound underneath as he tried to suppress it. I exhaled slowly, this was the worst times of my life.
“Go and get her,” I finally relented.
Gabriel stood up immediately and bowed.
“And Gabriel,” I said, before he reached the door.
He stopped and turned to look at me.
“Send Kasper in before you leave.”
He nodded and went out.
I lay still for a while and thought about Rowena the next second. I had just made a decision without consulting her, she was the woman I loved and needed to know everything happening.
I needed to talk to her before Brielle arrived, I needed to explain things clearly and without gaps because she deserved better.
I made a mental note of telling Rowena everything before Brielle walked through the door.