Poison in My Blood

Elara

I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Roman, then Veena, then the stranger outside the grocery store. And under all of it, Naomi's message kept repeating in my head.

Come tomorrow. Please.

By morning, the worry had grown into something I couldn't ignore. I got dressed quietly and left before Mira woke up.

The hospital was already busy when I arrived. Doctors moved through the halls with tired faces, nurses pushed carts past me, and somewhere down the corridor, a baby started crying.

The sound stopped me in the middle of the hallway. My hand went to my stomach before I could even think about it.

My babies.

A fragile smile almost reached my mouth. Then I remembered why I was here. Naomi was waiting outside her father's office. The moment she saw me, she straightened up, and that alone made my stomach drop.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Come inside first." She took my hand and pulled me through the door before I could argue, then closed it firmly behind us.

"Is something wrong with my babies?"

Her face softened. "As far as we can tell, they're fine."

I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding. "But?"

Naomi picked up a file from the desk and opened it. She took a second too long to speak, and my stomach tightened all over again.

"Your results came back last night. Some of the levels didn't make sense, so I asked my father to look at them. He knows more about rare blood conditions than anyone I know." She lifted her eyes to mine.

"Elara, there are traces of poison in your blood."

For a moment, the words didn't mean anything at all. Then I laughed, a small, confused sound.

"Poison?"

When Naomi didn't laugh with me, my smile died.

"You're saying someone has been giving me something toxic."

"Yes."

My back hit the edge of the desk. "But that can’t be possible. The lab made a mistake."

"My father ran the test twice. Then we tested a second sample, and it came back the same."

My hands started to shake. "How long?"

She looked down at the report. "About ten to eleven months."

The room tilted. Ten months. Eleven. Someone had been poisoning me for almost a year, and I’d lived through every one of those days without noticing a single thing.

I gripped the edge of the desk. "How?"

"Small doses. Very small amounts, mixed into something you eat or drink." Naomi kept her voice gentle, which only made it worse. "Whoever did this had regular access to you."

Daily access. My breakfast. My dinner. The slightly bitter tea Roman sometimes carried upstairs when I worked late, which I always brushed off as just being over-steeped. The food prepared every single day in that mansion by people I said good morning to.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach. "Are my babies okay?"

"Right now, yes."

"Right now?"

She didn't answer fast enough, and her silence frightened me more than anything she had already said.

"Naomi."

"The poison has another effect." She looked like she’d rather say anything else. "It can weaken your womb. It makes pregnancy dangerous."

My eyes filled with hot tears. "No. I waited four years for this. I can't lose them."

"I know." She took both of my hands. "That's why you have to be careful now. No stress, if you can avoid it."

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. My husband cheated on me, my marriage was over, and someone had been feeding me poison for a year. No stress.

"Eat only food you trust," she said. "Be careful with drinks. Don't take anything from strangers, and don't eat anything you're not sure about until we know what this is."

The handsome stranger outside the grocery store moved through my mind. I quickly pushed the memory away. "What kind of poison is it?"

Naomi hesitated. "My father is still researching it. It isn't something I’ve ever seen. He said it appeared in medical records decades ago and was rarely used, because it had more than one purpose."

My heartbeat slowed down. "What purpose?"

She walked to the window and stood with her back to me. "Elara, please don't think I've lost my mind. My father has treated wolves in our community for years. He says this poison was sometimes used to suppress a bound wolf, to stop it from breaking free after a certain age."

I laughed again. There was nothing funny in it this time. "I'm wolfless, Naomi. Everyone knows that."

"I know."

The recurring dream came back before I could stop it. The wolf. The heavy chains. Her sad, desperate eyes and her warm tongue against my face.

I stopped breathing.

"What?" Naomi asked.

"Nothing," I shook my head, stepping back. "It doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't. That's why he's still working on it." She hesitated again, and something shifted behind her eyes. I caught it right away.

"Naomi. What else did he find?"

"He found something strange in your DNA. He wouldn't tell me everything. He said he needs more time. All I know is that there are strange markers in your blood."

"Is something wrong with me?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then what does it mean?"

"I don't know." Her voice rose with helpless frustration. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. He said he’d only seen it a few decades back."

I took a slow, rattling breath. Someone poisoned me for almost a year. The poison could hurt my babies. And now there was something in my own blood that nobody could explain to me.

I sat with that crushing reality for a second and realized I didn't know myself at all.

Naomi reached for my hand again. "My father is still looking into it."

"When will he know?"

"I don't know."

I pulled my hand back because I was terrified, and I didn't want her to feel the violent tremor in my fingers.

"Okay. Just find out." I picked up my handbag. "And send me everything."

"I will." She followed me to the door. "Elara? Don't tell too many people about this yet."

"Why?"

"Because until we know who did this, we don't know who we can trust."

Those chilling words followed me all the way out of the hospital.

By the time I got back to my mother's apartment, I was exhausted. Mira wasn't home yet. I sat heavily on the worn couch and tried to remember every meal I’d eaten in the last year. Every drink. Every person who had ever handed me a cup.

The house staff. The chef. The maids. Roman.

My stomach twisted violently. He cheated on me. But this? I didn't want to believe it. Maybe that was the worst part, that I had to think about it at all. I didn't know who my husband was anymore.

The front door opened hours later. Mira walked in with her handbag slung over her arm. "I'm home."

I didn't answer. She stopped in the doorway and looked at me properly, her brows furrowing. "Elara? What happened?"

"I went to the hospital."

"Are the babies okay?"

"Yes." I swallowed hard. "But someone poisoned me."

Mira went still. "What?"

"There are traces of poison in my blood."

Her handbag slipped down her arm, hitting the floor with a soft thud.

"What kind of poison?" she asked, her voice tight.

"Naomi doesn't know yet," I answered carefully. "She said it's old. Something people used decades ago."

My mother didn't say anything. The remaining color drained completely from her face.

"They think it was in my food or my drinks," I continued, watching her closely. "Small doses, over ten or eleven months."

Mira sat down slowly on the nearest chair, like her legs had decided it for her. "That's impossible."

"That's what I said."

"Who would do this?" Her eyes closed for a painful second, then opened again. "What did Roman say?"

"I didn't tell him."

"Why not?"

I looked away, unable to bear her gaze. "Because I don't know if I trust him anymore."

She went dead quiet.

I told her the rest. The effect on the pregnancy. The old poison that was used on bound wolves. The bizarre markers in my DNA that nobody could explain.

When I finished, my mother looked like she had seen a ghost. Then she reached over and took my trembling hand. "We're going to protect these babies. Whatever happens."

"Whatever happens," I repeated softly.

She squeezed my fingers and I squeezed back. But something was horribly wrong. I could feel it sitting like a weight in the room with us. My mother knew something.

Or maybe I was becoming paranoid. Someone had poisoned me for a year. Maybe now I would spend the rest of my life believing that everyone was hiding a knife behind their back.

That night, I lay in bed with one hand resting protectively over my stomach. The apartment was completely quiet. For the first time since I learned about Veena, I didn't think about Roman at all.

I thought about the person who had access to me every single day, who deliberately measured something toxic into my food, watched me eat it, and said nothing.

I closed my eyes and whispered into the dark.

"I don't know who you are." My fingers pressed gently against my stomach. "But you picked the wrong woman to mess with. You tried to take my life. You tried to take my children."

A single, hot tear slid down the side of my face into my hair.

"I will find you."

Suddenly, my body temperature spiked. A strange, searing heat flooded my veins, burning away the exhaustion.

My hearing sharpened instantly—I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen and the steady, distant thump-thump of my mother's heartbeat in the next room.

Something moved deep inside me. Something wild, warm, and awake, turning over slowly in my chest, the way a massive body turns after a very long sleep.

Then I heard it. A low, vibrating growl, echoing from inside my own head.

I sat up so fast the dark room spun. My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"Hello?"

Nothing answered.

But I lay back down knowing one thing for absolute certain. I had spent twenty-seven years believing I was wolfless.

But something inside me just violently disagreed.