TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 136

One hundred and thirty six

Franklin POV

The shipment report was forty minutes late. The last file had arrived with corrupted cells and incomplete columns, so I left the window open on my monitor while I waited for the logistics team to send the corrected

version.

Cameron expected the final tally by the end of the day. If I missed the deadline, he would assume I was too distracted by the investigation into whoever poisoned Lisa.

My coffee had gone cold, forming a thin film on the surface. I drank it anyway, the bitter liquid coating my tongue, and took a bite of a sponge cake someone had left on the corner of my desk. The dry sugar hit the back of my throat the wrong way, triggering a cough. I spit the half-chewed mouthful into a paper napkin and threw it in the bin.

The updated file finally pinged in my inbo. While I finished typing the last row of numbers, my phone screen glowed with a hospital notification. I read the preview on the lock screen before completing the sentence I was writing. I saved the document, hit send, and then picked up the device to open the secure message.

The update stated that the baby was stable for the moment. The medical team intended to keep monitoring Lisa’s vitals around the clock. I let out a sharp scoff that echoed in the quiet office.

A stable baby should have been good news, but the words felt hollow.

To me, it only meant the substance hitting Lisa’s system had paused its attack. It did not mean the threat had vanished.

The doctors still had no answer for how the poison entered her body. That lack of information carried more weight than a temporary status update. If the hospital’s advanced screening systems could not identify the compound, they were not equipped to treat a second exposure.

She was still lying in the same ward, under the same care, eating the same hospital food. Whatever reached her the first time could strike again tonight.

Cameron was not a careless man. That fact made the situation even harder to swallow because nothing usually slipped past his gaze. He knew how to spot gaps in a perimeter and shut down internal problems before they grew.

This was different.

This was happening inside the walls of his own house, tied to a woman he was bound to by blood and pack law. Now he was holding back, paralyzing himself while he waited for a smoking gun that might never appear.

I leaned back in my chair and stared at the glowing monitor until my eyes burned. Evangeline could be genuinely sick, but the specific details of her decline did not sit right with the timeline.

She had never been at ease around Lisa. That resentment had transitioned from a quiet coldness to an obvious friction once Cameron stopped treating Lisa like a temporary financial contract.

After forwarding the final shipping documents to the board, I grabbed my keys and drove to the hospital. I needed to discuss the discharge paperwork set for the next day.

Lisa looked better when I walked into her room. Her skin had lost that gray, translucent quality, and she seemed alert. She sat up in bed with a tray of water, looking almost light, so I kept my dark mood behind a neutral face.

“Cameron and Evangeline will be back before the weekend,” I told her, standing at the foot of the bed. “The specialists paused the surgery because they want more time to run diagnostics. They plan to move her to the facility in the north in a month.”

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Lisa set her cup down and looked at me.

“They don’t know what poisoned me, and they don’t know what’s killing her,” she said. “It is the same outcome in two different places with no explanation. Does that not sound wrong to you?”

The thought stayed with me as I walked her out of the room later. It was the same pattern of inexplicable failure. Ignoring the coincidence was a form of stupidity I couldn’t afford. I caught up with Lisa’s lead doctor near the double doors of the operating theater and stepped into his path.

“Have you seen cases like hers before?” I asked.

The doctor stopped and adjusted his glasses. “Not quite. Pregnancies do not follow one single path because everybody reacts differently to stress.”

“That shouldn’t mean we can’t trace the source of a collapse this sudden,” I pressed.

“We reviewed every lab result,” he said. “There is no medical indication of contamination or external chemical factors in her blood work. We would need physical evidence, a sample of a foreign substance, to support a theory of foul play.”

I left the hospital and drove toward the edge of the city to see the oracle. It was a desperate move since I usually relied on logic and avoided spiritualists, but the lack of physical answers was making me restless.

Her shrine sat in a clearing behind a row of small, mud-walled huts. I stepped inside the dim space and found her seated on a low wooden stool. She was bare from the waist up except for heavy layers of glass beads that covered her chest. Her long skirt was a patchwork of pink and blue fabric adorned with small metal charms that clicked together when she shifted her weight.

“Your heart is heavy with questions you already know the answers to,” she said without looking up.

I stood by the entrance and explained the dilemma of two women collapsing within weeks of each other without a trace of organic illness. She watched the smoke rising from a small bowl between us and then laughed, a low sound that vibrated in the small room.

“Those machines in the city only see what they are built to see,” she said.

My heart skipped a beat. She picked at a blue charm on her skirt, her fingers moving with precision.

“I do not claim to know everything,” she continued. “But such things are usually a targeted strike from a hidden hand. If you want the life inside to grow, you need a clean house.”

I stayed for a few minutes in the silence before turning to leave. The answer did not provide a name or a vial of poison, but it matched the patterns I was already seeing in my head.

The drive to the alpha house was spent in deep thought. I needed evidence to turn suspicion into a case Cameron couldn’t ignore. The house was quieter than usual when I pulled into the drive. Since the masters were away at the clinic, the majority of the staff stayed in the rear quarters. Only a few workers saw me in the foyer, and they greeted me with quick, respectful nods before returning to their tasks.

I went straight to Evangeline’s private suite and shut the door behind me. I started with the bedside table. I pulled the top drawer out and sifted through the contents. It held only a silk sleep mask and a stack of old letters. The drawer beneath it contained various bottles of approved medication and folded lace handkerchiefs.

I moved to the large mahogany dresser and pulled open the lower compartments of the vanity and looked through the beauty kits one by one, unscrewing lids and looking for false bottoms.

The walk-in wardrobe took longer. I shifted dozens of hangers to one side, checking the pockets of every coat and

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blazer. I crouched on the floor to go through the shoeboxes and storage bins at the back of the closet. I found nothing out of place.

I moved into the bathroom. I checked the cabinet behind the mirror, inspecting every bottle label for signs of tampering. I unscrewed the caps of her expensive lotions and smelled them, searching for the metallic tang of a toxin, but found only the scent of roses. I set them back exactly as I found them.

I stepped out into the upper living area, my frustration mounting. I went to the console table against the wall and started pulling the drawers out to check the mail and stationary.

“Looking for a lost set of keys, Franklin?”

I turned and saw Nadia standing by the top of the stairs. She leaned against the railing, one hip angled to the side. The dress she wore was a thin slip of fabric that barely reached her mid-thigh. Large, dark sunshades covered half her face, looking entirely out of place in the dim light of the hallway.

“I’m looking,” I replied blandly, sliding a drawer shut and adjusting a flower vase to its original position. “If Lisa and Evangeline both went down and the doctors have no leads, that doesn’t bother you?”

She looked at me for a long beat. The cynical edge in her voice vanished when she spoke again. “It should. It does.”

“Good. Because everyone else is acting like this is just a string of bad luck.”

She stood before me, lost in her own thoughts. In the silence, I couldn’t help but notice how the light hit the curves of her body. I let my eyes roam for a moment longer than I should have.

“What if it’s Cameron?” she asked suddenly. “Maybe any woman he touches ends up like this.”

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