I held out my hand, palm up, in a sort of agreement, but Jillian chuckled at that, and reached out to squeeze it. “We’re all glad you’re with us. I’m sorry for the Igarashi that they missed out on you, but you’re our family too now.” Then she looked back down at Jax and swallowed hard. “I mean, I suppose if... you could go to Japan.”
“No.” I squeezed back, as hard as I could without cracking bones. “I couldn’t. First off, Jax is going to be fine. Second, you’re my family now. All of you, not just him. I would no sooner abandon you in your time of need than if you were my actual blood sister.”
I stood and walked to the edge of the bed where she’d seated herself, and wrapped my arms around her.
A sigh behind Jillian grabbed my attention, and I was prepared to jump down Kosuke’s throat for his nonsense speciesism again, but when I looked up, he wasn’t glaring. He didn’t look annoyed.
I wasn’t sure what the emotion on his face was.
Then, he started talking.
“I had a kitsune friend, once. Her cousin wanted to wrest control of their clan from her branch of the family, so she thought if she arranged for them to be unavailable when they were needed, everyone would turn to her.” That was... interesting. He didn’t look up at me as he spoke, but stared at Jax, so still and silent. “I don’t know if it’s available in America, but she used something called dreamroot. It’s cut with a ceremonial dagger and dried for fifty nights under moonlight. Then, its power lasts fifty nights. You feed it to the target, and they sleep for fifty days and fifty nights. Most can’t survive that long without food and water. I suppose there’smodern medicine that can counteract starvation, but back then we had no such thing. We called it the coward’s poison. Used by people who didn’t want to murder directly, but it was murder nonetheless.”
I blinked, staring at first him, then Jax.
The coward’s poison.
And what had Jax done? He’d fallen asleep, and not woken up. He wasn’t sick, wasn’t dying, except that as Kosuke had said, he wasn’t able to eat or drink, and at some point, we would have to resort to attaching him to medical equipment to make sure he didn’t die of dehydration or starvation.
And, in just under a month, he would officially be a no-show to continue the fight with Grant.
I pulled back from Jillian and looked at her. “What happens if Jax is still asleep at the next full moon? Does the fight just get postponed to the one after?”
Somehow, I wasn’t at all surprised at her dubious look. “For one of the combatants sleeping? No. This isn’t a pack emergency. Werewolves don’t just go into comas. If Jax can’t fight, then someone has to fight for him.”
“Me, you mean. And I’m not supposed to use my magic.”
Her lips twitched at the implication that I would do it anyway, but she nodded. “You. You’re the only one who could, unless we want to completely change the structure of the pack. If Seth won it, then he’d be the alpha, and let’s be honest, he wouldn’t be willing to take over.”
For a moment, I considered suggesting Jillian do it, since I didn’t imagine there was a single universe where that would offend anyone in the pack. Even Jax, when he woke, would be more than happy to follow his sister’s lead. Maybe even happier than he was as alpha.
But no.
That was giving in. Letting Grant have what he wanted, which was clearly, not to be beaten by Jax.
Fuck that.
I glanced up at Kosuke. “Is there a cure for dreamroot?”
Jillian followed my line of sight to the empty chair, then looked back at me. “What’s dreamroot?”
“There is,” he agreed. “And this company your wolves have made, they have potion supplies, do they not?”
“We do,” I agreed, leaning forward. “I can have literally anything delivered from the warehouse, in under an hour.”
He cocked his head, interested. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
Waving at the door, he said, “Get some paper, then. It’s not a short list.”
Instead, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened the notes app. “Hit me.” When he narrowed his eyes in confusion, I waved my phone. “Tiny pocket-sized computer. Which is... just trust me. I can write a list on here.”
He shrugged and started listing things, from the mundane like tea, ginger, and ginseng, to things I had to have him spell out in kanji, then translate into English via my phone.
When he hit foxglove, I paused.
“Isn’t that specifically poisonous to kitsune?”
