Page 51 of Knot All Is Ruined: Part 2

“Thank you for saying that,” I admitted. “I’m not a soldier. I’m a medic, and the way I respond to certain situations might not always be the best course of action. When under stress, my main focus is to deal with the problem and people right in front of me, not to chase down the bad guys.”

“Oh god…” Lucian groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Tell me I’m not dead. No, this is too much pain to be dead. How the fuck did we get dosed with nightshade? Goddamn, that is the worst feeling ever to wake up from.”

Shocked that it was his first guess, I didn’t know how to respond. “How did you guess it was, nightshade? Also, why does it sound like you’ve experienced this before?”

“Because I have,” Lucian muttered, slowly sitting up. “Dear old dad thought it would be smart to work on making me immune to poisons once I took Savo’s place. Nightshade is one of the few poisonous plants growing well enough here in the North.”

“Why did it affect you then if you’ve been building up a tolerance?” I demanded, my previous suspicions of him betraying us at some point throughout his journey rearing its head.

He turned to look at me as if I was an idiot. “Would you keep poisoning yourself if you were given the option not to? When I was given my own base to command far, far away from that bastard, I discontinued the practice. If you don’t keep it up then your body resets to react normally to things.”

That actually made perfect sense.

Realizing that, the guilt I was feeling washed over me, but a hand gripped my shoulder, and reassurance from Petru kept the guilt from downing me. “Give it time, Cris. You can’t change what you’ve been taught overnight, but you’re trying and that’s what counts.”

Taking a deep breath, I covered his hand with my own in thanks. Knowing he could see into my heart and understood I was working on it helped. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by a Humvee,” he muttered. “What happened?”

“Let’s wait for the other two to wake up before we go over that. It will be faster to catch everyone up at once. For now, drink as much water as you can to help flush out the poison. I used all the meds between the five of you,” I explained as I stood to grab all the water I could find for them.

As I passed Victor, I realized he was awake but hadn’t said a word or moved at all. He just laid there on his back, staring up at the sky. Kneeling next to him, I checked his pulse, and it was fine, but he didn’t react to my touch.

“Vic?” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”

“You should have let me die,” he rasped. “I failed her again after I vowed to never let anything else happen to her. How can I dare to call myself her Alpha?”

The shock of hearing those words and that mindset coming from him had me reeling. “Victor, what are you talking about? Each and every one of us made the same promise to her. We all failed in this.”

“That’s not it,” he mumbled, then looked at me. “I took the meds you gave me last night. If I’d been awake, then this never would have happened.”

Realization clicked as I understood what he was talking about. “Victor, you’ve been awake for five days surviving on short naps. You needed to sleep, truly sleep, or else you’d have burned out.”

“I was too weak. If I hadn’t given in and used the sleeping pills, I would have noticed something was wrong,” he argued.

“Stop being a fucking idiot and pull your shit together,” Lucian snapped. “If you want to be useful, then maybe you’d better help me figure out where the fuck those bastards ran off to. Otherwise, if you’re serious about giving up, then make sure you do it quickly and only use one bullet. We need to preserve our reserves.”

Horrified at what Lucian was saying, I gawked at him. “What the fuck?”

“No, you don’t get to look at me like I’m the monster, Cris,” Lucian growled, pointing a finger at me, then shifting it towards Victor. “If he wants to believe he’s the only one to blame, then let him. No one can change his mind once he’s decided. We all know that. Besides, Dani deserves an Alpha that will stop at nothing to get her back and the fearsome Victor is telling us that he’s not that man.”

Victor dove across the space and tackled Lucian, fists flying as they grappled and fought. Seeing them feeling well enough to pull this off made me feel better about the others. Toma was the one we needed to keep an eye on, as he’d yet to wake.

“Fucking Northern bastard,” Victor raged. “How dare you say those kinds of fucking lies. You think I won’t get her back? She is mine, and I’m not letting her end up some fucking breeder to the rebels or sold like a piece of meat on the black market. I’ll fucking kill you!”

The two men fought with everything they had, the thud of fist meeting flesh made me sick to my stomach, but no one dared to stop them. Besides Sorin, Victor was our best hand-to-hand combat specialist, and Lucian was going toe-to-toe with him. It all ended when Lucian landed an uppercut to Victor’s stomach forcing the man to puke up everything in his stomach. Dropping to his knees, he heaved over and over until nothing was left.

“Drink some fucking water, and you’ll start to feel better now that you’ve gotten that out of your system,” Lucian ordered as he snatched up a canteen and offered it to the man. “Sleeping pills mixed with nightshade can mess with your head. I had to provoke you so I could get you to fight me. Otherwise, the longer the two interacted with each other it would have made matters worse.”

“What?” I blurted. “You did all that on purpose?”

Lucian nodded, wiping away a trail of blood leaking from his nose. “Told you, I’ve had my fair share of experience with nightshade. If I wasn’t willing to take the poison, they’d knock me out then dose me.”

“Fuck, man,” Victor grumbled as he picked himself off the ground. “That is some twisted shit right there, but I suppose for my own sake, I’m glad you know what was going on.”

Lucian grinned at Victor then shrugged. “Can’t say it didn’t feel good to beat your ass for a change.”

Laughter erupted out of Victor as he spat water everywhere. “Fucker.”