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All Chapters of Poison: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

62 Chapters

Chapter Twenty-One

KillianMy father had been asking the same question for eleven minutes, and I had run out of different ways to avoid answering it somewhere around minute six.“Did anybody call the academy?”Jaxson shifted in the chair beside me.I kept looking at the report on the desk. It was the same healer’s report I’d read three weeks ago, except it didn’t look the same anymore, because somebody had gone through it with a pencil. Not written on it — Dad doesn’t write on original reports. Small slips of paper stuck out from between the pages instead, each one carrying a date or a name in his handwriting, and there were enough of them now that the folder wouldn’t shut properly.“We were going to.”“That wasn’t what I asked.”“I know what you asked.”“Then answer it.”I looked up.He was s

Last Updated : 2026-10-07

Chapter Twenty-Two

HadleyApparently freedom involves an unreasonable number of questions.I worked that out at two fourteen in the morning, standing in a hallway I still don’t know properly, with one hand flat against the wall and the other holding the cardigan Clara left over the end of my bed four days ago and has not mentioned since.Did I want the door open or shut. Did I want the hall light on. Did I want somebody to come downstairs with me. Did I want tea. Did I want food. Did I want Nessa called if the dizziness came back. Did I want the small sitting room instead of the kitchen, because those chairs have arms and are easier to get out of.Everybody in this house wants to know what I want, which would be lovely if I had retained any practical ability to answer the question.For seven weeks, wanting things was mostly an exercise in disappointment. Food. Information. Trousers. A blanket. Somebody to believe me. Somebody to tell me what

Last Updated : 2026-10-07

Chapter Twenty-Three

HadleyUncle Alaric had been pretending for eleven minutes that the call was about me.It had started that way, in fairness.“How are you feeling?”“Fine.”“Fine is not a medical term.”“Nessa says I’m annoying, which I think is promising.”Aunt Elara laughed from somewhere off-screen.Then he asked whether I was eating enough, and whether I was sleeping any better, and whether the twins were still measuring ahead, and whether Silas had received the updated security papers, and whether I’d decided what I wanted done about the protected identity folder.I answered all of it. Mostly.Then Maddox walked through the kitchen behind me carrying half a loaf of bread in one hand and eating directly out of it, and the entire conversation collapsed.Uncle Alaric’s eyes went past my shoulder. “Maddox.&rd

Last Updated : 2026-10-08

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hadley Nova told me there would be six people. There were nineteen. I counted twice, partly because I thought I might have missed something and partly because pregnancy has done enough strange things to my body that I am no longer prepared to rule out sudden numerical incompetence. There were still nineteen. I stood halfway down the stairs with one hand on the rail and looked at the collection of people in the Callums’ sitting room. Nova looked up and smiled. I did not. “You said six.” “I said small.” “You absolutely said six.” “I may have estimated.” “You were out by thirteen people.” “That sounds worse when you say it like that.” “There is no other way to say thirteen.” Cora, sitting cross-legged on the rug tying something silver round a glass jar, looked up. “There are technically only seventeen guests.” I stared at her. She poin

Last Updated : 2026-10-08

Chapter Twenty-Five

HadleyNessa had developed a face.It was not a dramatic face. There was no widening of the eyes, no sudden medical urgency, none of the things television has taught me should happen when somebody looking at your insides finds something concerning.It was worse than that.She was looking at the monitor and thinking.I have learned to distrust thinking.“What?”“Nothing.”“That is everybody’s favourite word lately.”She moved the probe slightly across my stomach, and one of the twins immediately objected by kicking hard enough that the movement showed under my skin.Her mouth twitched. “Temperamental.”“Genetic.”“Which side?”“I have no idea.”She looked at me. “Neither do you.”“I know enough.”&l

Last Updated : 2026-10-09

Chapter Twenty-Six

Maddox I gave her another five minutes, which I considered generous. She had been sitting in that rocking chair staring at two empty cribs long enough that I had started to suspect she intended to sleep in it, and given that she had spent the entire day insisting she wasn’t tired while nearly going under twice during dinner, I was finished negotiating. “Bed.” She looked down at me. I was still on the floor beside the chair, because getting up required effort and I had already built an unreasonable quantity of furniture. “Excuse me?” “Bed.” “You do not live here.” “I practically do.” “That is not an argument.” “It is after midnight.” “So?” “You’ve been awake since six, you spent all day ordering people about, you’ve had approximately nine hundred Braxton Hicks, and you are carrying two babies who have decided calendars are optional.” Her eyes narrowed. “Ni

Last Updated : 2026-10-09

Chapter Twenty-Seven

King AlaricFive years have done nothing to make the evidence kinder. They have only made it older.Older paper. Older blood. Older lies. Older mistakes that have had time to settle into the shape of fact, because enough people stopped asking questions in their vicinity.I have not stopped.That is apparently becoming a problem.The palace is quiet at this hour, which is one of the few things I still like about being awake when everybody else has had the sense not to be. No Council members outside my door. No reports being carried in. No guard asking whether I have five minutes when what he means is forty. Nobody reminding me that I have been sitting too long, or eaten too little, or that my wife will eventually come down and remove me from this room herself.Only the clock, and the fire, and six years of evidence laid across my desk in a pattern that makes considerably more sense than I would like it to.I

Last Updated : 2026-10-10

Chapter Twenty-Eight

KillianMy mother screamed.Not shouted. Not called for help.Screamed.The sound came up through the house hard enough that I was out of bed before I properly understood I was awake, and Ghost was already up inside me, growling at nothing I could see and everything at once.*Wrong.*That was all I got. That one word, and the growl underneath it, deep enough that I could feel it in my teeth.I hit the floor barefoot, dragged on the first trousers my hand found, and was halfway to the door before I registered that my hands were shaking.Another sound came from below.Not a scream this time. Worse.My mother crying.I have heard my mother cry. When Hadley died. When Raven died. When people she loved were hurt badly enough that all she could do was stand in a room and watch it happen.This was different. This sounded like something had been taken out of he

Last Updated : 2026-10-10

Chapter Twenty-Nine

HadleyThe problem with becoming a famous artist is that people apparently expect you to paint.Constantly.I have found this unreasonable for four years and have not yet managed to say so out loud to anybody who could do anything about it.I had been looking at the same patch of canvas for eleven minutes while a woman in New York waited for photographs of a piece I had promised would be finished by Friday. Rowan had reminded me twice that Friday was technically tomorrow in her time zone. And somewhere outside my studio, Maddox was teaching my five-year-old son to throw a knife.I knew this because Kingsley yelled, “That one counted,” and was immediately followed by Maddox saying, “It absolutely fucking counted.”I put the brush down.“No.”Nobody heard me. Nobody in this house has heard me in about four years.I pushed away from the easel and crosse

Last Updated : 2026-10-11

Chapter Thirty

MaddoxBy the time the jet touched down I had been Royal Gamma to two kings and had not slept since either of them was alive at the same time.There is probably a ceremony for that somewhere. There is a ceremony for everything. Death, succession, recognition, mourning, coronation, the transfer of whichever ancient piece of metal the Council has decided matters this century. Royal wolves are exceptional at inventing traditions for things everybody would understand perfectly well without them.Your king dies. His son becomes king. Everybody panics professionally.I left Callum territory as Hadley’s protector.By the time the wheels hit royal ground the Crown had remembered it has a claim on me too.Nyko lifted his head. *Home.**No.**Home.**Complicated.*He huffed. Apparently wolves have no interest in nuance before nine in the morning.The car was on the st

Last Updated : 2026-10-11

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