Chapter 22
Author's note: My Feral Lady is now available on amazon! I did the same as I did with Fur and Fangs! Just a change in character names. It has 39 chapters. You can go pick it up to read those chapters early, but in the meantime, I will be posting one or two chapters a week. The book is really just for those who have enjoyed and want to support what I have been doing here. I have put a lot of energy and love into this story, and getting a couple of extra bucks through publishing the book means a lot, and helps ensure that I can continue writing like this! Link is on my tumblr : hopefulbadgerjunara of course.
"Now get talking."
The three wolves surrounded the one vampire. Each of the room's inhabitants took up one of its quadrants now that Kara had left to go attempt and fail to comfort Emma. Alex sat across from her alpha, the two roughly to either side of the vampire tied down to her chair with inordinate amounts of silver. Her alpha had turned a chair around, sitting on it backward so she could lean over its backing. Lena sat over the corner of Alex's backroom pool table, crouched over, impatient to hear what the hell was going on and why her mate had not been allowed to stay; even if she had ultimately thought it for the best that Kara receive a breather with how aggravated she had been as of late.
"Now get talking." Sam's rough demanding voice ordered. "Why don't you start off with explaining why you didn't want Kara here for this."
"Like I told you, she'd kill me if she heard the truth." Gayle repeated herself.
"Which would be what exactly?" Alex questioned incredulously.
"I really think this might be better to circle back around to this as a final, to wrap it all up topic." Gayle visibly squirmed in her seat, obviously scared, but what of the pack leaders were left to wonder.
"No! I think it is time you spill what has you so fearful of my mate." Even Lena's overwhelming empathy was beginning to run thin for this vampire.
"Lena, you of all people don't want to hear it."
"I am getting real tired of you stalling! Maybe we should call Kara back in." Sam threatened.
"It's wolfsbane!"
"What?" All three of the wolves' attention was stolen suddenly as they realized how much sense that could possibly make.
"It's the wolfsbane. Eve and her cronies stumbled upon it about a year ago now. Tested it on some old wolves in the woods. I was with her when she discovered it by accident, and she has been growing the shit like its botanical gold ever since."
"No, No, No. That doesn't add up. Why now? If Eve has known about this for a year, then there is no reason not to have used it by now." Alex shook her head, feeling something was missing.
"Up until you lot killed her progeny; her child? She had no reason to hurt the wolves. You all had been of no threat to her until that. In Fact, keeping y'all as a pseudo peaceful enemy kept other vampires in line."
"You killed her progeny! Not me!" Alex spat out angrily.
"Yes, but does she know that?" Gayle countered.
"Great so it's all our fault?" Sam's arm flung up as her raging omega opened her mouth to retaliate with fury.
"No, it isn't. You were just protecting your mate! And Alex was only protecting herself! Same thing Kara would have done." Lena spoke up to defend the alpha from her own point.
"I am not here to point fingers, I am just telling you what I know, and what I know is that she has had this spiked wolfsbane stocked up, ready to release for recreational wolf consumption. Somewhat of a second round of testing?"
"The couple in the woods you were talking about? They lived southwest of here?"
"Yeah, roughly I guess?" Gayle answered the alpha with a rough shrug.
"Ok, so it was Carol and her husband. I hate to admit it, but it does add up. God love em, but Carol and Jim loved their wolfsbane. They grew it year-round in their garden. How'd you two stumble upon it?"
"Carol? Kara told me about her!" Lena interjected.
"Yeah, her mate went feral, and then she did too. They ended up killing each other."
"No, no, no. Eve killed them. She did a good job of making it look like they did each other in tho." Gayle corrected.
"Great." Alex rolled her eyes.
"So, get back to it, How'd you to stumble upon all this?" Sam pressed once more.
"Not us, not really. It was Leslie. She wanted to see what would happen if a wolf accidentally ingested silver. Idiot didn't realize wolfsbane wasn't a fucking seasoning."
"So Leslie did what to the wolfsbane exactly?" Alex questioned.
"She enriched the soil with small amounts of silver, tried different amounts in each plant's soil. Couple died, but most of them lived. When one of them went feral, she called us in. She didn't know what was going on, why he was acting like an animal. Eve was ecstatic when she learned what Leslie had done; what she had discovered. She force-fed the other one until she slipped from sanity too." Gayle explained away.
"Great, and she finished off with killing two of my pack members and making it look like they did each other in." Sam huffed.
"She left Kara to think it was her fault." Lena mumbled, her knuckles straining as she gripped at the pool table's edge, the wood creaking and threatening to crack.
"So it's just silver? If a wolf ingests silver, they go feral?"
"No, sorry, Eve tested that too. It is only when it is laced with wolfsbane." Gayle corrected. "But as it turns out, silver can do some weird things to wolves."
"Got it." Sam nodded.
"So? She come up with any form of cure?" Lena questioned, hoping for hope on Emma and Maxwell's behalf.
"Why would she?" Gayle laughed, immediately receiving piercing glares from each of the wolves. "Sorry, just. She is more in the business of making potential weapons, not potential cures. So, no, I don't have any solutions as far as cures go, sorry."
"Anything else we need to know?" Sam could feel that the well of information was beginning to run thin.
"I can give you a list of places that you might be able to find Eve. But don't go unless you are ready for a fight. Anything else you need from me?"
"What about your ankle?" Alex eyed.
"Oh, yeah, that. It's still broke. Thanks for that."
"Wait, when did you break her ankle?" Sam's mind attempted to replay the entirety of the day's events to figure out when Alex had broken Gayle's ankle.
"It wasn't on purpose babe!" Alex's guilty face explained that it was her powers.
"So, magic still on the fritz?"
"Kinda." Alex admitted.
"How about we not go sharing trade secrets with the vampire who threatened to kill our family?"
"Come on Sam. This is important."
"You promised no training till you were healed."
"I know, but this wasn't intentional, and it certainly wasn't training. I tripped, and she tripped."
"I didn't just trip. You snapped my ankle damn near in half, and horse blood isn't quite enough to keep me in good healing condition."
Sam gave a look that wasn't quite angry, but it was certainly less than pleased.
"It was an accident, just like with Jess at Lena's the morning after the last moon."
"So, I again ask, anything else you three need?"
"Yes, I have something." Sam could tell from the look in Alex's eye that she probably wouldn't like what was about to come out of her omega's mouth next.
"Shoot, not like I have many options."
"Let me practice my magic on you."
"I'm sorry, but I like my bones where they are in relation to the rest of my body. Thank you."
"I'll wait until I am healed to try." Alex offered to her alpha. "And I won't push myself, ok?"
"I prefer it to you testing on me, and as long as you are safe, it's none of my business. But I still wanna stay close while you do it." Sam blew a kiss to her alpha.
"Hey! Do I not get a say?" Gayle barked.
"I didn't have a say when you forced me to literally bleed for you, that isn't even to mention the sexual harassment."
"Umm, excuse me! Wait she what?" Sam stood, throwing her chair aside.
"It's fine, I'm fine, calm down." Alex stood, intercepting her alpha on her way over to the vampire.
"Fucking cunt! We should have killed her back at the zoo!" Sam broke out in an alpha rage.
"Calm down. It is ok, and it hasn't happened in a month. Plus I am fine. Some dumb vampire just likes playing grab-ass." Alex played down what the vampire had done, more than aware that the woman was more valuable undead than unalive.
Sam's face twitched as she snarled. "Test your magic all you want on her."
"Well, at least it isn't happening to you too." Gayle sighed relieved.
"Wait! What was that!?" Lena hopped from her post from up on the pool table.
"What, the sound of your friends fighting over how ok they are with Ms. Magic's on the fritz torturing me with shoddy necromancy?"
"No, what did you say?" Lena pushed past the mated pair, her attention zeroed in on Gayle.
"What?" Gayle was good at lying, but Lena was better at spotting it.
"'At least it isn't happening to you too.' What does that mean? What is happening to Kara!" Lena's heart thudded anxiously.
Gayle shied away, incapable of looking the new wolf in the eyes.
"Answer me Gayle!"
"Lena." Alex attempted to quietly reprimand.
"Answer me damnit!" Lena's hands landed firmly on Gayle's shoulders, her palms searing at the silver that held the vampire down.
"She's not been acting right huh?"
"What is happening to her!" Lena's eyes threatened to shift.
"Been real angry?"
The omega's hands shifted to paws as her claws cut into the woman tied down under her.
"Maybe even a little violent?" The vampire was slightly disgusted with herself, she wasn't even enjoying this like she normally would; it was heinous, the humanity that not constantly being gorged on fresh blood brings.
"Answer me!"
"Irrational?"
Alex and Sam may have still been trying to piece it together, but Lena knew; she knew what Gayle would say next.
"She is going feral."
"No!" Lena raged at the words, releasing Gayle's shoulders to claw at Gayle's face with her right paw.
"Fair, yup I pretty much expected that." Gayle looked down and to the side, trying to swallow down and process the pain as she let loose an excruciating scream. "Fuck, that really hurts!"
"No! No! No! She isn't! She can't be!" Lena demanded.
"I'm sorry, but it is true." Gayle spat blood down onto the floor."
"Come on, that is never gonna come out of the carpet." Sam huffed.
Alex swatted her mate's arm with the back of her hand reprimanding the alpha.
"Wait! You can't possibly believe this!?" The alpha scoffed.
"I do believe it." Alex's voice trembled. "I believe it because I believe that today if Kara had heard that… she really would have killed Gayle. But a month ago? She wouldn't even lay a finger on her. My sweet sister isn't herself! She… She is…"
"Lena! You know this is madness! It is just a vampire stalling for time!"
"She's right." Lena trembled.
"Thank you!" Sam threw up her hands.
"Kara is going feral."
"God fucking damnit!"
"I'm sorry. I was stalling because I didn't know how to tell you." Gayle truly despised the lack of delightful bloodlust that came with drinking inordinate amounts of human blood, and the blissful apathy for others that accompanied it.
"Well, you certainly found a way didn't you!?"
"How do we stop it!?" Alex's determined face gave Gayle no room to fuck around.
"Stop it? I don't think you can!"
"Stop it, slow it, anything, whatever! I can't! I won't lose my mate!"
"I'm sorry Lena. I'm so sorry."
End of Chapter 22