My Alpha Killed Our Pup for His Pregnant Mistress novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: The Clinic

Dessa had pulled three chairs together in the clinic's back office and put a mug of tea in front of mine.

I didn't touch it.

Kurt sat on my left with his shoulder pressed to mine, and he had not let go of my hand since the truck.

On the desk lay a single printed sheet, and beside it a black, scorched ledger with its cover curled.

"I took the ledger off the bench when Kurt grabbed me," Dessa said. "I don't remember doing it."

"Read me the sheet," I said.

She nodded.

She read it in the flat voice she used for bad scans.

"The tin tested positive for aconitine. That's wolfsbane. The oil is a plain carrier, almond, with lavender over the top to cover the smell. The concentration is low enough that it doesn't harm the hands that rub it in."

"But?"

"But it goes through the skin, a little every night. It numbs scent so no one can smell a pup on you. And in a carrying woman it works on the pup before it works on the mother."

I had known it in the shed.

It was different to hear it on paper.

"How long?" I asked.

"The ledger starts in September. At ten weeks I scanned you, and I said the pup looked small. I said some pups run small."

Her voice broke.

"I was wrong, Fern. It was already slowing the pup down."

"The pup was dying before the Gathering."

"She was poisoned for weeks," Dessa said. "She was alive on the night, and she was weak. I think she would have lasted a few more weeks, and then you would have lost her anyway."

I sat there.

I had spent a month laying one blame on one man.

I had gone to bed at night with Torin on the Stone in my head, and Torin saying call it a lie.

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