Page 50 of Knot All Is Ruined: Part 2

Chapter twenty-three

My head was pounding.

It felt like someone was taking a rock and smashing it against my skull, it throbbed so badly. Rolling over onto my back, I groaned when the sunlight smacked me right in the face.

Wait. Why was the sun up high enough to be this bright? Why hadn’t anyone woken me up? I was supposed to be on the last shift to take over watch. It shouldn’t be sunny at all.

Shifting back to my side so the sun wouldn’t spear into my eyes and worsen the pain. Tossing my arm over my head as well, just to be safe, before cracking an eye to look around. Sure enough, we were all lying in the circle we’d been sitting in as we talked last night. I spotted Victor across from me, Lucian, and Toma as well. Slowly, I sat up as a wave of nausea hit me.

Fuck, it’s as if I drank myself into a stupor, but I know that isn’t possible since we have nothing but water to drink.

Rubbing the back of my neck, trying to get my body to calm down and realize that we were going to be fine. I hissed as something pricked deeper into my skin. Grabbing it with two fingers, I yanked to find a small dart in my grasp.

“What the fuck?” I muttered as I took a look around again.

Everyone was asleep, not just resting or dozing off. They were passed the fuck out. Petru was closest to me, and he was the one who’d been supposed to wake me up. Yet it didn’t seem like he’d been on watch before whatever happened. Crawling over to get a better look at him sleeping on his side, I spotted a dart in his back near the shoulder blade. Removing it, I then felt around the puncture wound to make sure it wasn’t poison and it was killing us slowly. Thankfully, there was no heat at the site, and Petru’s breathing seemed normal. Checking his heart rate to be sure, I found it a steady fifty beats per minute, which was typical for someone in a deep sleep.

Still feeling too groggy and sick to my stomach, I didn’t try to stand. Instead, I just crawled over to Toma. He was half sprawled over Lucian and looked almost like he’d been reaching for his gun. His dart was on the side of his neck, but there was a second on his chest. Did whoever shot us miss the first time? Or maybe it was a case of Toma didn’t go down fast enough, and he was the only one awake. None of this was making any sense at all.

Checking on the others, I found nothing amiss other than they were still asleep. Then I looked around for Dani. There was no empty bedding to mark where she’d been sleeping, so had she gotten up and looked for help when she couldn't wake us? No, that wasn’t like her at all. She’d never wander off, leaving us vulnerable like this. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d be standing guard over us with a gun at the ready to fend off anyone who dared to mess with us. So where the fuck had our Omega gone?

Glancing over at Sorin again, I noticed the second blanket beside him and realized, to my horror, she’d been sleeping with her head in his lap. Rubbing my eyes with the palms of my hands, I tried to pull myself together. With the pain in my head, it was making my vision slightly blurry and my brain work way too fucking slow. Forcing myself to my feet, I looked around the space and spotted footprints in the dirt, a lot of them. We’d been attacked by who the hell knows and they mother fucking stole our Dani.

Stumbling over to my pack, I grabbed my med kit and a canteen. Flipping open the lid of my medicine stash, I popped three pain relievers into my mouth and chugged some water. I needed my head to stop hurting so I could get a grip. I had to find a way to wake everyone up and deal with the side effects of whatever drug they’d dosed us with. Going letter by letter in the alphabet order I tried to jog my brain to remember all the medication or herbal concoctions that could be used to create something like this.

Then I thought of it—sleeping nightshade. They might never wake up if even the slightest amount of it was given to a person. Digging through my pack, I found what I needed and crushed the pills up knowing I didn’t have enough to treat them all, but it might be enough to get them alert. Once awake, dealing with matters would be so much easier and would mean no one had died. Putting the crushed pills in the canteen, I shook it gently to get everything to dissolve.

I decided to start with Sorin since we needed a leader to keep our shit together once they realized Dani had been taken from us once again. Tilting the Alpha's head back, I opened his mouth and poured some of the medication into his mouth. Closing it, I pinched his nose forcing him to swallow before I released him. Doing this three more times, I moved on to Victor repeating the same steps. Once I had Petru and Toma dealt with as well, that just left Lucian. A battle raged inside me, the view of Northern men I’d been taught to have all my life only made worse by the discovery about my father or doing the right thing for a pack mate.

Over the past week of traveling together, seeing how loving he was with Dani, and then saving my life without even second-guessing the choice to jump off a cliff to get to me. If nothing else, I owed this man a life for a life, but I was also willing to admit there was a chance I could have been incredibly wrong about him. I wasn’t willing to say that about the North as a whole, but for Lucian as an individual… yeah, I might have been wrong about him.

“Come on, man, try not to spill. There isn’t a whole lot left,” I mumbled to myself as I worked.

Just as I got the last of the medicine into Lucian, Sorin let out a groan and rolled on his side. “Holy fuck, what did we drink?”

Making sure Lucian was good, I hurried over to our leader pressing a hand to his shoulder to keep him from getting up. “Easy, don’t get up. You were poisoned with sleeping nightshade, but I gave you an antidote, so it should help with some of the side effects.”

“What do you mean I was poisoned? How the hell could that happen, we didn’t drink anything but from our own canteens,” Sorin argued.

Shaking my head, I sat next to him. “I don’t have a clue what happened. Only when I woke up a little while ago feeling like death, I discovered a dart on my neck. Each of us had one knocking our asses out cold, but I don’t have a fucking idea who did it or why.”

Sorin groaned as he sat up and nearly fell back, but I caught him helping to get him upright. The stubborn Alpha wouldn’t settle until he didn’t feel quite so vulnerable. Giving him a moment to deal with the nausea, I noticed Victor stirring. The others should come around soon, although Toma might take a little longer since he was shot twice. I just begged the fates that I’d gotten enough of the antidote into him before it was too late. No, I couldn’t let myself think that way. We would all be fine. Then we’d rescue Dani and destroy those who dared to take her from us.

It was really unfortunate for whoever they were, because we were nowhere close to recovering from when Lucian ran off with her. I might not be the violent one in the group. However, the second Sorin, Victor, and Lucian figure out she’s missing… we might not have a country to save when they're done with it. All I needed was enough time for the others to recover before explaining that part. Right now, no one would be of much use to her if they couldn’t even stand.

“Where’s Dani?” Sorin questioned. “She was right here with me all night.”

“Sorin—”

The man lunged forward grabbing my t-shirt. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” I stated calmly, my training the only thing keeping me from losing my mind at this moment. “She wasn’t here when I woke up, and the second I realized we were attacked I needed to get you guys the antidote. There’s no way I would have been able to get her back on my own, so I did the next best thing.”

Sorin released me and sat back, dropping his head in his hands. “How the fuck did we let this happen, again? Why didn’t whoever was on watch alert us?” Sorin growled.

“They shot Toma twice with darts. My guess is he was the one on watch and they took him out first. We have no idea how many of them there were either. They could have gotten us all at the same time for all I know,” I reasoned. “Once we have everyone on their feet, we will find her. Between Victor and Petru, no one will be able to hide their tracks well enough from them.”

“Lucian’s a damn good tracker, too,” Sorin admitted. “You made the right call, Cris. It’s clear this was a calculated attack.”