An Alpha's Alpha

Trust

"Wolfsbane?" Doc's face scrunched at the mention of it. His weathered hands wringing. "Not here." Suddenly aware of their surroundings, he placed a gentle hand on Cassidy's shoulder and directed her along another corridor into a small, yet messy office.

Books and papers piled high on every surface, with some just on the point of falling. Doc turned and shuffled his way through the small gap between the desk and wall before he practically leapt into his chair in a well-practised manoeuvre. The room seemed to hold its breath as the air settled, each of the wolves holding their breath, as though waiting for the piles upon piles of paper to fall, yet they remained still.

Cassidy let out a small breath, amazed at the amount of tension in her bones. She slowly, carefully, pulled the spare chair from beneath the desk and sat opposite Doc. As she sat, a pile went to fall but she managed to catch it in time. As she righted it, she noted a folder hiding near the bottom of the pile, Liam's name written in a scrawling handwriting. Instinctively, Cassidy's hand reached to grab the file, before realising she had an audience.

Clearing her head and righting the pile, she sat back into the chair and focused on Doc, who, whilst she'd been considering illegally stealing a patients file, had dropped a large, old book onto the desk in front of him and he was now pouring over it, looking for something within its thin, fragile pages.

"Doc." She nudged, gently, after they sat in silence for a few minutes. Occasionally Doc would mutter something before his attention would return to the words in front of him. "Doc." She pushed again, eager to get back to Kelsey.

"Wolfsbane, you say." He finally muttered, as his finger slid down the page he had open in front of him until it paused and tapped twice.

Cassidy, suddenly nervous about his opinion, shifted in her chair and cleared her suddenly tight throat. "Yes, it's for my wolf, Kelsey."

Doc's attention snapped up, his aged eyes locking onto Cassidy's. "Do you normally give her wolfsbane? You know the dangers of it for wolves? It can kill us in large quantities, poison us in small ones."

"I know," she admitted, hanging her head with the shame and guilt that it caused her, "but we have no other option. He's too powerful and we've tried everything to stop him, Wolfsbane is the only thing that keeps him at bay. You see, Kelsey, she, she didn't use to be like this, all scattered and half missing. Ca-our-an alp-a wolf hurt her, badly, for a long time. It was so bad that her body couldn't fully heal the damage, but...."

"This was a wolf in your previous pack?" Doc asked, book abandoned, elbows resting on its words.

Cassidy nodded and shifted in her seat once more, leaning in, despite the closed door behind her. Fear laced her words and worked its way down her spine until her breathing felt laboured. "He was our alpha. He..." She paused, not sure if she could say the words.

"He maintains a pack link with her? I spoke to her earlier and realised she wasn't well, but I wasn't sure the cause. I'm assuming that whatever he did, means that she's not able to severe the old pack link, meaning she holds both your pack link and his, in her head at the same time?"

She nodded.

"So what does he do with it, to warrant wolfsbane as a way of diminishing it?"

"He, he uses Kelsey as a sort of broadcaster. He can control her movements and words. He speaks through her, as such. He used to do it as a party trick and then after we ran away, he'd use it as a way of tracking and scaring us. Now, he's using it as a way to torment me, to tell me that he's coming for me." Cassidy bit her tongue, aware she'd just given away more than she meant to, but Doc was so easy to talk to, and Jake trusted him with his life, which meant that Cassidy did too. She knew it was risky telling him all of this, but she also knew that she had an uphill battle to convince him that she needed the wolfsbane. It was a controlled substance within the wolf community, it was not something that you could get her hands on easily.

"Do you know the dosage you normally give her?"

Cassidy blinked in surprise, he was going to give her a poison just like that? Even though she was an invading Alpha in his pack? Tears pricked at her eyes with gratitude.

"I can't find the dosage in this book, I really thought it was in here." He referenced the book before him but paused when he noted the tears running down her face. "Cassidy?"

"Thank you, Doc." She whispered, realising that he was always going to help her, he always trusted her; whether he knew their past or not. "Thank you."

***

A/N

I'm so sorry it's been so long.

I've just moved house and it's been crazy busy!

I'm back, I promise.

Sorry <3