Page 115 of Mask and the Magnolia

I clear my throat. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll relax.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, honey.”

I wish it were that simple.

Normally Des is a pretty laid back person, especially when you factor in everything, but right now, I don’t think he could calm his body if his life depended on it. Which is exactly what I’m terrified to find out.

It’s also why I’m drawing his blood myself, and running the labs here in our med room. I trust all of my staff up here, they’ve protected me and my pack from the very beginning, but something strange is going on and I’m determined to figure it out.

A few hours later,I have my answer.

I blink down at Desmond’s results in horror, my heart pounding in my ears as I reread them for the fourth time.

Not only does he have his prescribed meds in him, there are small quantities of the medications that kept coming up short during inventory as well as enough opioids and benzodiazepines to kill a horse twice over.

It should have killed Des, easily to be honest, but he must have built some sort of tolerance for this fucked up cocktail thanks to decades of treatment.

I’ve never been more grateful for morons who push drugs on their patients just so they don’t have to deal with them than I am right now.

Setting his labs aside, I start looking through his records, scrolling them on my laptop to see how something like this could have happened.

Intravenously is the only way, adding pills to his box would be noticeable. The same can be said if someone had tried hiding them in his food or breaking a capsule in a drink. There’s no other way Des could have so many different things in his body without it raising suspicion.

The problem is, his shot is only once a month.

Every month, right at the beginning, he gets his injection of Haldol and according to his file, that hasn’t changed once but that doesn’t make sense in relation to how sick he is right now. He’s between injections. His next one isn’t scheduled for another few days, and a lot of what he tested for would be out of his system by now if he got them with the last one.

It doesn’t make sense.

Grabbing the nurses log, the handwritten one they have to fill out each time they take something from in here or pass an unscheduled medication, I start going through the last few months.

My heart starts beating faster as Jones’ name appears three times within this thirty day stretch, four last month, all of them for syringes without a medication listed, and before that, Nurse Hubbard had at least one extra injection logged each month she was here before her injury.

They’ve been poisoning him.

The goddamn nurses, the ones who took an oath the day they hired into Blackhurst, have been drugging Desmond for months, and I can only assume it was a sick attempt to kill him.

I don’t know what fucking purpose that was supposed to serve but it’s a good goddamn thing neither of those homicidal assholes with a RN behind their name are here right now. I’m not built like Korvin or Des, not even really like Calix, and I might not have ever been in any sort of physical altercation before but I’m damn well ready for one now.

I’m furious, so full of rage my hands are shaking. Not only did those two screw with my residents, the menI’mresponsible for and invested in, they fucked with my goddamn pack and someone, somewhere is going to pay for it.

TWENTY

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

MAGNOLIA

“Why are you so tense?” I watch Isaak do his fiftieth lap around mynew apartment, his hands clasped behind his back, his handsome face forming a frown as his shoulders bunch up to his ears. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“Which part?” He snaps. “How to get one of our alphas out of solitary? Or getting the other out of here before someone else tries to poison him? Maybe it’s?—“

”I’m going to pretend like you aren’t getting shitty with me right now.” I cross my arms against my chest and give my omega a dirty look.

One that makes him fold immediately.