Chapter 40 40
Lucien’s POV
I located the elderly healer in her private room just before dawn, before the rest of the pack had roused itself. She raised her head from the making up of drugs to regard me with a somewhat startled air at this unexpected appearance.
"Alpha," she acknowledged me with a respectful nod. "I wasn't expecting you. Is Luna having further complications?
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said, closing the door behind me for privacy. "Privately, and with complete honesty."
Something in my voice caused her to stop grinding with the mortar and pestle, and look at me. "Of course. What concerns you?"
"Lena's condition." I balanced on my toes and got in a little closer, speaking at a whisper. "Selena's wishes for her mind-body wellness are... extreme. Absolute isolation, no visitors, prolonged bed rest. Are these measures truly necessary?"
The healer’s weathered face became creased with thought. “Well, Lady Selena has had a lot more experience than I with complicated pregnancies and the supernatural. When she suggested those protocols, I assumed she was privy to something that I wasn’t.”
But from your own probing,” I persisted, “what did you determine?”
She looks hesitant, as if it's a bit awkward to ask this person she thinks of as an "expert" or "authority" for such a thing. "The bleeding was concerning, certainly. And the cramping was a sign of uterine distress. But..."
"But?"
“But when I checked her this morning, she was fine,” she confessed. "The baby has a strong, solid heartbeat. Placental issues or an abnormal presentation are not apparent. The uterus itself appears to be normal and is supporting the pregnancy appropriately."
The confirmation of what I’d known all along had my jaw clenching in barely constrained fury. “So Selena’s big warnings about mixed bloodline headaches—”
The healer concluded in a cautious tone with “May be too paranoid”. “I’m not saying Lady Selena is incorrect, mind you. Maybe she is seeing red flags that I am too new to understand. But as far as I can see and measure, Luna’s pregnancy does seem to be developing normally.”
"And the isolation? The restriction on visitors?"
“Stress can often be avoided in any pregnant woman that has had bleeding,” she said. "But complete isolation? That seems to me overkill unless there is information I do not know.”
I kept thinking about Lena in that room, all alone, convinced her baby was at risk and scared to death that if she moved the wrong way she’d lose the child she had grown to love. The cold brutality of preying on a mother’s protective instincts settled something hard and violent in my chest.
“Thank you for being so honest,” I said. "But from now on, I want you to make your own medical decisions about Lena. This next one, I thought he was saying to me because … If Selena’s bringing in recommendations that you have concerns about, she’d be comin’ to my desk first before you continue with those.”
“Alpha, I don’t mean to overstep — ”
"You're not overstepping. You're guarding your Luna and her unborn baby. I met her eyes steadily. “That is precisely what I want you to do.”
Once out of the healer's office I headed to the pack record room where we took down all messages and comings and goes from visitors. If Selena was seeing someone outside the ranch, there'd be a record of it in our logs.
What I saw made the picture even clearer. Several of my prior entries have read simply: "Lady Selena is attending to emergency health-care needs" —at odd hours and always alone, in the far corners of our territory. It was too consistent to be a mere coincidence.
She'd been meeting with someone. Planning something. And Lena had been right all along to worry about the danger she posed.
"You called me, Alpha?" Marcus stood in the door to my study, looking mildly curious but wary.
"Close the door," I instructed. Once he'd seated himself, I waved him to the chair on the other side of my desk. “I need you to order a surveillance campaign. Discreet, experienced trackers only. Men whose loyalty to this pack, and the Luna, cannot be doubted.”
"What are we watching for?"
"Selena," I said flatly. “I want to know who she is with and where she goes, I want to know anytime you or anyone else gets her out of the pack house.”
Marcus's eyes widened. "You think Lady Selena is—"
“I’m certain she’s been plotting against us ever since we found her,” I cut in. “And I need evidence before I can take action on it.”
He nodded slowly, thinking over the consequences. "It won't be easy. She’s been here long enough to have all our standard patrol routes and observation techniques down.”
"Then use unusual methods. Recruit fresh young pack members that she won't even notice, know or perceive as a threat. Establish observation posts in places she wouldn’t expect.” I leaned forward to let him stare into my cold, determined orbs. "I don't care what it takes. I need to know what she’s plotting and who she’s working with.”
"Understood, Alpha. How long do I have?"
"Not long. Whatever she is going to do, it’s about to happen soon. I can feel it."
Then, over the next three days, Marcus’s team checked in with more troubling news. Selena had visited the pack borders at least four times – always when she said she was out doing rounds or foraging medicinal herbs. Each time, she had tried to intercept people the trackers didn’t recognize—people who smelled wrong because of strong spells that hinted at professional sequester.
"They're shifters," called out one of the younger trackers. "I'm certain of it. I was lucky enough to latch onto their naturally scent long enough to match up the signature wild magic."
Shifters. The very type of species that had attacked when Lena was being kidnapped. The very forces that had been testing our gates for months on end.
"Do you know anything about what they were talking?" I asked.
"Fragments. Something with timing, something about a window of opportunity.” He hesitated.
It was all becoming too clear, and the pieces were falling into place far too disgustingli It makes sense now. Selena had not just been sabotaging Lena’s confidence and seat—she’d been leading her into another kidnapping. One that would take advantage of the isolation and vulnerability she’d induced by deceitful medical advice.
"Two times the watch around where we've been doing our healing," I commanded. "But keep them hidden. I don’t want to Selena to see we’re watching.”
"You're making a decoy of the Luna," Marcus whispered.
“With her permission,” I responded. “She wants this as bad as I do—to smoke out whoever’s behind these attacks and put an end to this threat once and for all.”
That night, I went to Lena in the guise of a worried mate come to pay his pregnant woman some conjugal attention. But when we were alone, I divulged everything my surveillance had turned up.
“So I really was,” she said, her hand going protectively to her stomach. "She did poison me."
"We can't prove it yet.” I plopped down next to her on the bed and held her hand. “She’s been seeing shifters on our borders. You’ve planned something that gives you nowhere to hide, or otherwise offered yourself up as defenseless.”
"The kidnapping attempt," she said. "They're going to try again."
"Almost certainly. And soon — likely while I am supposedly on pack business and not here to protect you.”
“Then we’ll just have to give them what they’re looking for,” murmured Lena fiercely, the sort of flinty stubborn that made my proud heart swell. "You announce a trip. I stay, stranded and afraid like the good little victim they’d love me to be. And when they come for me..."
“We let them see firsthand what we do to those that threaten my mate as well as our child,”I growled out.
The pack meeting two nights later was a clever piece of theater meant to let Selena think that her plan had come off perfectly.
"Word has reached me of a territorial conflict in the east that needs to be addressed at once," I declared before those who were assembled. “I’m heading out early tomorrow, expect to be away for 3-4 days.”
I glanced at Selena's face when I finished talking and saw her shoulders sag just a little, the hint of real satisfaction in those eyes. This was precisely what she had been looking for.
"What about the Luna?" Elder Ruth was very concerned at that. "With her pregnancy complications—"
“She would still be under Lady Selena’s care,” I responded as though it was all that could keep me from doing so. "The healer's rooms are safe but Selena has kindly offered to keep an eye on the mender for me while I'm away.”
"Of course," Selena said smoothly. “My priority is Luna’s health and doing whatever I can to provide the perfect scenario of life for Luna.”
Oh, they will be, I mused sourly. Just, you know, maybe not how we all think.
Exiting the meeting, I paid a last visit to Lena with the concerned mate act polished up to theatrical perfection.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said loud enough for anyone still in the corridor to hear. “If there’s any changes on the baby —”
"I'll be okay," Lena reassured me, as her first convincing performance of the night. “Selena will look after me.”
But once we’d shut the door and were alone, I snuggled her close and whispered against her hair. “My most trusted guards will be observing from hidden vantage points. They will swoop in at the first sign of trouble. But Lena—"
"I know," she whispered back. "This is dangerous. But it's also necessary."
“If something happens to you or our child—”
"It won't." She lowered her head and gazed into my eyes, her brown gaze steady and sure. “We are going to stop this threat, Lucien. Together. And then together we’re going to build the life that we both deserve, with no shadows from your past poisoning our future.”
I kissed her then, put everything I had into that kiss — love, fear, resolve and hope. When we finally pulled apart, I saw tears in her eyes but also something fiercer. Resolution.
"I love you," I said simply. “I never said it as much as I should have, showed you every day how much you really meant to me.”
“You can spend the rest of our lives making up for it,” she countered with a small smile. “Beginning after we weather that whatever is coming at us.”
I got up at dawn the following day, with some of my warriors and went off so that everybody could see us leaving and being properly reported as doing so. But when I pulled up three miles from the pack house, I doubled back with my elite fighters and set up in the wood beside the healer’s quarters.
Now we waited. Watched. ready to spring out trap to whoever came for my mate.
If they ever did arrive, they would find that terrorizing Lena Blackthorn was a mistake they had made for the last time.