To Lovea Cougar

Chapter Six

“What’s going on, and why is this person I don’t know standing in my bedroom?” Blaise’s dad asked as his gaze landed on his mate, Taylor, Blaise and Harley in turn.

“This is Harley.” His mom nodded in Harley’s direction. “She’s Blaise’s girlfriend. She also happens to be a medical lab technician. She’s going to draw some of your blood.”

“Why?”

Blaise knew what had to be going on in his dad’s head that he couldn’t voice out loud. He would want to know why Harley, a human, was going to take his blood. And he probably wasn’t too thrilled to hear she was Blaise’s girlfriend either.

“We,” his mother said, “have decided this is one thing Caleb should have done for you. Harley knows the results must be kept from those she works with, and at the risk of losing her job, has offered to run blood tests herself to keep them out of the lab’s system.”

His dad frowned. “If you think it’s so necessary, why don’t you discuss it with Caleb first?”

Taylor stepped into the conversation. “I’m going to be very blunt here. We’re not telling Caleb anything about it right now, and we want you to do the same. We have our suspicions he might be behind you not getting better. We feel he could be doing you harm rather than good.”

His father turned his gaze on Blaise. Even though his dad’s body was weak, his eyes were as sharp as ever. “You agree with what Taylor said.”

Blaise nodded. “Yes. Actually it was I who first brought Caleb’s actions into question. This new medicine he’s giving you causes you to become sicker shortly after the injection. Caleb doesn’t seem to care. Mom called him yesterday and told him about the seizure you had and asked him to switch back to the old medication. He refused, Dad. He basically told Mom she didn’t know anything, and he, as a doctor, was the only one qualified to make that decision.”

His father’s lips thinned as he glanced at his mate, who nodded. He turned his attention back on Blaise. “I had no idea. Your mother never told me. Caleb has no right to talk to her in that manner.” He paused, as if thinking over what he’d been told. “I can’t say these new symptoms haven’t bothered me. If you truly feel Caleb is behind it then I’ll agree to the blood tests so long as Harley is the only one who sees the results.

And if we’re going to accuse Caleb of wrongful doing, we need proof before we can confront him.”

“That’s what Taylor and I agreed on,” Blaise said. “Harley is the only one who might be able to do that with the results.”

“You obviously trust her.”

Blaise glanced at Harley and smiled. “I do.”

“All right then,” his dad said with a nod.

“Let’s do this before Caleb arrives.”

“One other thing,” Taylor replied. “I’ll be here when my cousin arrives. I’m not going to allow him to give you another injection. To avoid him becoming suspicious, you and I are going to have a pretend argument in front of him about it, Dad. But the outcome will be I’ll win. Harley should have the results at the end of the day.”

Taylor looked at her. “Correct?”

Harley stepped closer to the bed. “Yes. And they’ll be for my eyes only. I don’t know why you need the secrecy, but I will abide by it. As soon as I draw the blood, I’ll head for the lab and then get the tests going while I work on other ones. I’ll bring the findings here at the end of my shift.”

His dad gave another short nod and tugged up the sleeve of his pajama shirt. Harley knelt on the floor, then took out the supplies she needed to draw the blood from the small bag she carried.

Blaise watched her set to work, her movements efficient and fast. It was all done in less than a minute.

She stood, placed the glass vials of blood, along with the items she used, back into the bag and smiled. “All done. I’d better go.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Blaise said.

His mother stopped them before they could leave. “Harley, plan to stay for dinner.”

“I will,” she replied. “I look forward to it.

Thanks.”

Blaise and Harley left the others in the master bedroom and headed down to the main level. At the door, Harley picked up her backpack, which she’d brought down earlier, and slung it over her shoulder. She turned to face him and went on tiptoe to kiss him. He resisted yanking her close and kissing her breathless.

“I’m going to miss you while you’re at work,” he said once he released her mouth.

“And I you.” She smiled. “But I’ll be back. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be living here soon.”

“You’re more than welcome to share my room with me.”

“You’d better watch it. I might take you up on that offer, especially since this place comes with a personal chef.”

He pretended to look hurt. “You wound me.

That’s the only thing that would make you want to move in?”

“Okay, not the only thing. I’d have to say getting you comes in at a close second.”

Blaise turned Harley around and smacked her on the ass. “Get out of here before I take you back upstairs to show you why I should be number one.”

She laughed. “See you later. If I have time, I’ll try to text you.”

Blaise closed the door behind Harley after she walked outside. He then headed back upstairs to his room to wait for Caleb to arrive. He didn’t think he wanted to miss out on seeing his dad’s and Taylor’s acting skills. Though pretending to argue wouldn’t be very hard for them since they tended to do that frequently anyway.

It wasn’t very long before Blaise heard the sound of Caleb’s footsteps coming down the hallway toward the master bedroom. Blaise opened his door and poked his head out to see his cousin disappearing through the open double doors at the end of the hall. It was showtime.

Blaise left his bedroom and headed for his parents’. By the time he’d reached it, Taylor and their father were already starting the “argument”.

Blaise stood at the doorway and watched them put on a good show for Caleb’s benefit.

His dad appeared to take Caleb’s side when Caleb strongly urged Taylor to change his mind about the injection. His cousin tried to reassure Taylor by stating the new side effects from the medication weren’t going to do any harm, and that he’d expected them to happen. Blaise didn’t let it show on the outside, but on the inside he was seething. Plus, more warning bells were going off inside his head. What kind of doctor would use a medication knowing his patient would go through such extreme side effects? Not a good one, in Blaise’s opinion.

The “argument” was over shortly after it began, with Taylor ending up the winner as he’d planned. Caleb didn’t look at all pleased with the outcome. If anything, he looked angry, even though he appeared to be trying to hide it. After a cursory examination of his patient, he stormed past Blaise and headed downstairs. The front door slammed shut a few seconds after that.

Blaise walked over to the bed. “Was it me or did Caleb seem angry?”

“Oh he was pissed,” Taylor said. “Even though he tried to quickly get it under wraps, I was closer to him and smelled it in his scent for the split second it lasted.”

Their father sighed. “I think you were right.

Caleb is hiding something. Either it’s his inability to help me and he doesn’t want to admit defeat or he’s purposely doing me harm.”

Blaise breathed a silent sigh of relief that his dad was now on the same page with them. It would have been more difficult if he’d stuck up for Caleb. Taylor and Blaise could have had a real fight on their hands.

Harley didn’t waste any time getting the blood tests started once she arrived at the lab. The way its system was set up, it wasn’t hard for her to slip the vials in without anyone being the wiser.

Being higher up on the ladder, she had more leeway with doing things than others, which helped the process.

As those tests ran, Harley worked on the others she had to do for the day. She enjoyed working in the lab, but today she found her thoughts straying to Blaise from time to time, and watching the clock, counting how many hours there were until she could leave. She did manage to send him a text during her lunch break, which he replied to. She’d had to make sure no one could see her phone since he’d texted what he planned to do to her once he had her locked inside his bedroom after they’d eaten dinner with his family. Her whole body had heated with arousal when she’d read what he’d sent.

She now had an hour before it was quitting time and the first results of Blaise’s father’s blood tests were ready. Harley looked at the printouts, ready to spot anything that would suggest what the illness was or if something else was going on.

The first thing that brought her up short wasn’t what she’d been prepared to find. It was an irregularity in the blood itself. Harley switched to the second test she’d run and found the same finding. Not used to seeing that result, and not knowing what it stood for, she had to look it up.

What it turned out to be had her shaking her head. The irregularity was cougar hemoglobin, which was impossible. But the third test’s printout showed the same thing. If she hadn’t taken the blood herself, she would have thought someone had mixed big-cat blood with the human one.

As she scanned the rest of the page, she put the irregularity aside. What the results showed was definitely more concerning. Blaise had been right. His cousin had set out to harm Blaise’s father. There were not one but two strong poisons in his system. How he’d survived for so long was a miracle. A normal person would have died shortly after it was introduced. In the back of her mind, Harley had to wonder if it had to do with the cougar blood. She quickly pushed that thought away. She’d talk to Blaise about it after his dad was fixed up. Even though the poisons were deadly, there were medications that counteracted them, and quickly.

Harley couldn’t get her hands on the antidotes yet, but she knew a doctor who could give her what she needed. He wouldn’t ask questions. He was a research doctor whom Harley had worked for right out of school. He would trust she would need the medication without having to know the reason why. All it would take would be for her to talk to him and he’d call in the prescription to a drugstore for her to pick up.

She made her call, having the result she wanted. The only thing he asked was for her to keep him informed if all didn’t work out as she’d planned. Harley had quickly promised she would, then gave him the address to the drugstore not too far from the lab, not wanting to use the one right next door.

Harley left work and headed for the drugstore. There she was able to pick up the prescription, along with a small package of syringes, without having to wait. Her doctor friend had made sure the pharmacy filled it as a rush prescription.

During the drive to Blaise’s place, Harley found herself flicking her gaze to the blood test result printouts, which sat on the passenger seat with the white pharmacy bag. She now couldn’t get the thought of cougar hemoglobin being mixed with Blaise’s father’s blood out of her head. There was no way it could have been added later. She’d taken the sample herself, and no one had touched the vials but her. It didn’t make sense.

She turned onto the long lane that led to Blaise’s house. Once she arrived, Harley parked in front of the four-car garage. She gathered up the things from the passenger seat and got out. She knocked on the front door once she reached it.

Blaise answered. He smiled before he pulled her inside and into his arms. He kissed her hungrily, showing how much he’d missed her, before he released her. It took a second for Harley to gather her wits about her once again.

“You have the results?” Blaise asked as he glanced down at what she carried.

“Yes. I think you should get everyone up to your parents’ room so I can tell you all at the same time.”

He met her gaze with a short nod. “All right.

Wait right here. I’ll get them.”

Blaise walked to the living room. Once he disappeared from sight, Harley heard him tell his family she’d arrived and that she wanted to talk to them all upstairs with his father. They were a silent group as they stepped out into the foyer.

Taylor took the lead up the stairs with Aspen as his mother, then Harley and Blaise, followed.

Inside the master bedroom, they stood around the bed. Blaise’s dad pushed himself up higher on his pillows once his gaze landed on Harley.

“I take it you have the results,” he said to her.

Harley nodded. She held up the printouts.

“It’s not good.”

“You found out what illness he has?” Blaise’s mother quickly asked.

“It’s not that. And it’s not an illness.” Harley looked at Blaise. “You were right. Caleb is doing your father harm. He has to have known it.” She turned her gaze on her boyfriend’s dad. “I found two strong poisons in your blood. I don’t know how you’re still alive. The amounts would have killed anyone else.”

“Poison,” he replied. “It wasn’t medicine Caleb was injecting me with.”

“No. He was administering the poison that way. That’s the only thing I could come up with. I understand you’ve been sick for over half a year.

He probably managed to somehow get the first doses of poison into you through your food or something you drink. Then once you became sick enough that you needed more care, that’s when he started with the shots.”

Blaise’s father glanced at his wife with a grim expression. “It wasn’t through my food. It was through something I drank. Caleb gave me a bottle of ten-year-old scotch to show his appreciation for all I’d done to help him become a doctor. He hadn’t given me anything before. He knows I’m the only person in the house who likes scotch. It has to be that. Now that I think about it, I started to become ill shortly after I had a few drinks of it.”

Harley nodded. “The poison is the type that doesn’t leave a person’s system. It just built up with each drink you had until you thought you were really sick.”

“Is there something we can do to counteract the poison?” Blaise’s mom asked.

Harley held up the white pharmacy bag she carried. “I have it right here. I know a doctor who was able to write me a prescription for it. He’s a good friend of mine and didn’t ask any questions.

He knows I wouldn’t do anything stupid with it. I have to give you two shots. One dose of each should be enough, but if you don’t improve in a couple of days, he told me to give you another.”

Blaise’s father held out his arm. “Do it. I’m sure one dose will be enough.”

She dumped the medicine and syringes onto the bed and prepared the first injection with the amount her doctor friend prescribed. Once she administered it, she readied the second.

Harley had just stuck the needle into Blaise’s father’s shoulder when she heard, “What’s going on here? What’s she giving to my patient? I came back to check on him since I couldn’t give him his medication and this is what I find?”

She quickly pushed the plunger home, emptying the syringe. Harley barely managed to take out the needle before she was roughly pushed aside. This was obviously Caleb.

“She was undoing what you did,” Blaise said.

Anger clouded Caleb’s face. “What do you mean by that exactly?” he demanded.

“Harley is a medical lab technician. We allowed her to run some blood tests on my father’s blood. She found the poison you’ve been giving to him. We know what you’ve been doing.”

It all happened so suddenly Harley had no chance of getting away. Caleb grabbed her around the throat and spun her so her back was against his front. He growled like a big cat, his fingers tightening until she could barely breathe. She reached up and tried to tear his hand away, but he was stronger than she.

“If not for this meddling bitch none of you would have known,” Caleb said in a voice laced with another growl. “I never would have thought you’d have allowed a human to do any kind of test on him. Who would have known our glorious leader of our family group would have taken the risk of letting one learn the secret of what we are.

You’ve surprised me.”

“Let her go,” Blaise said, his upper lip lifting in a snarl. “You’ve been found out. It’s time to face up to what you’ve done.”

Caleb laughed with no humor. “I think not.

Your human girlfriend is my ticket out of here.

None of you will try anything as long as I have her.” He slowly backed away from the bed and the others.

“Why, Caleb?” Blaise’s father asked, stopping Caleb. “After all I’ve done for you.”

“All you did for me? Like taking my parents away so I could grow up with an aunt who hated me and mistreated me whenever she got the chance? I used you, took whatever I could get out of you. And don’t try to deny what you did. Tell them. Tell your precious family what you did to my father. My aunt knew because my mother told her before she took her own life.”

“I didn’t do anything. Your father, my brother, made the decision to abandon you and your mother himself.”

“That’s a lie. He never would have left my mom on his own. You knew he wanted to take your place as leader of our family group. You gave him the choice of losing his life for trying to force you out or banishment. He chose the latter.”

“Is that what your mother told your aunt? If it is, then it’s a lie. Your mother had…problems… when it came to perceiving the world around her.”

“Shut up,” Caleb said with a snarl as he tightened his grip even more on Harley’s throat, causing her to whimper with fear.

Blaise’s father held out his hand. “Stop, Caleb.

I’ll tell you the truth. Your mother was never my brother’s mate.”

“Bullshit. She wore his pendant. I remember her wearing it.”

“It wasn’t his. She had a human jeweler make a copy of one. There was no mating bond between your parents. When your mother became pregnant with you, my brother tried to make it work, even though she wasn’t his mate. But he strayed as a lot of males do when they stay in a relationship with a female who isn’t meant to be theirs. He found his mate. Your mother didn’t take it well. She plotted to kill your father’s new mate, and almost succeeded.

“My brother deemed she would always be at risk as long as he stayed in Anchorage. Not wanting your mother to learn where he ran to, he left one night and never came back. It was years later when he finally contacted me. Your mother was already dead, but my brother had made another life for himself and his mate. He thought you were better off being raised by your aunt.”

Caleb growled. “It’s still because of you I lost my family. As our leader you could have kept him from running. You could have ordered him back.”

“I wouldn’t have done that. It was my brother’s choice to make, not mine.”

Caleb took a step back, then another and another, dragging Harley along with him. She didn’t understand half of what had been said.

Family groups, mates and mating bonds weren’t a part of her world.

Fear rode her as Caleb continued to inch closer to the bedroom door. Her gaze latched on to Blaise, she pleaded desperately with her eyes for him to do something to save her. He followed, keeping enough distance between them so as not to have his cousin feel threatened. Taylor followed, as did their mother. Aspen stayed in the room with their father.

They made it down the stairs and to the foyer. Caleb kept his hand locked around her throat and an arm around her waist. He removed that one only long enough to open the door before he held her against him once more. He took a step outside, dragging her right along with him.

“Time to show you, little human, what a cougar shifter can do to your kind,” he growled into her ear.

Caleb shoved her away. The rest happened in a matter of seconds. His body blurred then shimmered and a cougar took his place. The big cat went to pounce on her, but Blaise stepped between them, shifting to a cougar as well and blocking the other. Caleb spun in midair before taking off at a run toward the back of the property.

Harley let out a whimper and crab-walked away from the remaining cougar. Her fear took over, her vision swam as she tried to scramble out of reach, but her legs refused to work, leaving her unable to get to her feet and run away.

The cougar that was Blaise would have chased after Caleb, but Taylor stepped in front of him. “I’ll go after Caleb. You have Harley to worry about.” Then Blaise’s brother turned into a cougar as well and took off at a run in the direction his cousin had gone.

Blaise turned to face her and took a few steps in her direction. Harley grabbed a handful of stones from the drive and threw them at him, hitting him in the side and head. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Just stay away.”