Rejecting, Your Broken Promises
Chapter 97

Peyton’s POV

Dark Savage pack

I was getting nervous, clearly, she has gotten her poison blend out, and it is mixed with black tea. The tea is all that I can smell in it, and that explains why they drank it. I am sure with milk and sugar in it, you probably wouldn’t taste anything funny at all in it. I watch as she sets up one cup, and I never asked for tea, so I am assuming that it is for her. I do know that if she puts it in front of me, I will NOT be drinking it. But I feel sadness, and shame, rolling off of her. She feels like everything is hopeless now, she knows that after she told me her story, she is now exposed. Even without knowing that she is being recorded, I was still a little nervous about what was going to happen. Was she going to force the drink down my throat?

She never admitted to exactly how she murdered them, so she may still be thinking that I might be dumb enough to take a drink from her. I watched as she took the full steeper out of the cup and goes to the trash to empty it then went to wash the steeper ball. She had a pattern down. Because she also had a bucket in here at the end of the counter near the back door that she had told me earlier was her compost for the garden. It had eggshells and coffee grounds from this morning, and the peelings, and tops, from the carrots, and onion waste. She had told me that she would go out each night after dinner and spread the compost out next to the area where she had stopped with the compost on the previous day. She was careful to make sure that she threw away the poisoned tea leaves in the trash. She was not a completely crazed killer, she loved her pack, and didn’t want them to get hurt. She only had killed the people that she felt had wronged her, only realizing too late that it had been Jasper to cause her all of her pain, not Carrie and Jasmine. There was nothing that we can do about that now. She will have to deal with the ramifications of her actions and pray that the Council can see why she did what she did. I know that I could, and I hope that they will give sixty percent of the blame to the man who deserved it, Jasper.

He took an innocent young woman, who at the time was probably younger than I am now, took advantage of her, and after using her, tried to get rid of her. All because he wanted more; more power, more respect, and more women in his life. He had never been faithful to his Luna’s either. He had women on the side, including Cassidy, even after he had marked the other women. I think that was what had driven her over the edge. The daily betrayal was bad enough, but for him to mark another she-wolf, was disgusting on his part. It rarely happened in our community, as the betrayal that hits your mate pain hurt bad enough. Marking someone who is not your mate, why you still have a bond with another in effect, could kill them. So, Jasper doing that was the equivalent of him not being able to shake her away from him, so he tried to kill her to get rid of her. He should have known that her being strong enough to survive it once, let alone twice, makes her a truly strong woman. I am going to point this out to the Council, as I want to defend her actions. She must have been out of her mind when she poisoned them, as both deaths had happened just a few months after the Luna ceremony was held and the Luna’s marked by Jasper.

I heard the door open, and Gabi walked in, and she was less threatening than normal, as she was not wearing her gun. She usually had the holster on her at all times, until it was time for bed, or she was in for the night. She smiled at both of us with a big smile and then headed over to grab a bottle of water before coming to sit down next to me. Cassidy didn’t leave Dark Savage, but she may have still heard about her from the talk she heard. Especially from Jasper, or Stephanie, as they both hated her. This could go either way, and I don’t know what Gabi is about to do, but I am sure that after seeing her make up the tea, they all thought that Cassidy was going to give it to me.

“Cassidy, this is Gabi, she is going to be my mother-in-law,” I told Cassidy. She turns back to me with surprise at Percy making me not just his Luna, but his wife as well. Her eyes fly to my left hand, and she sees the ring sparkling in the light on it. She is both happy and moved to tears. I know that her tears are not all happy tears. I don’t want her to think that I am rubbing it in her face, but before I can speak Gabi said, “His father, Tanner, married me as well. The Wright men are very possessive about their mates, and they want even the men in the human world to know that we are taken.” Cassidy nods at us, but her eyes are still full of tears. I hate that she is feeling pain because of Percy being engaged to me. She really got the short end of it drawing Jasper as her mate. She deserved a lot better than she got. Cassidy turned back to the sink, most likely to cry without us seeing her.

“I spoke to Jasper today,” Gabi tells me like she was just in there to speak to me. I am surprised, but I will play along. I want to see where she is going with this. I had seen Cassidy’s back stiffen up at hearing Jasper’s name, so I know that she is listening to our conversation.

“Did he admit to anything yet?” I asked and I was very curious about it. I hadn’t been told what had happened as I had come in here to help make dinner and befriend Cassidy. Gabi and Teresa had come through while I was chopping vegetables and I barely caught a glimpse of them as they crossed the room. Cassidy was holding the edge of the sink and trying to not be obvious, but she was still listening to us.

“Not really, he was just angry that I knew as much as I did. He was very upset that he thought that I had gotten my information from his mate. But I had already guessed who his mate was, or at least where she was, by the time we got to the pack hospital” Gabi said, and then turned to look at Cassidy.

Cassidy slowly turned around to look at Gabi, who was looking intently at her, and her expression keeps changing. From anger at Jasper not admitting she was his mate, fear of being caught, wondering how Gabi figured it out, and wanting to know how Jasper was feeling right now, as she still loved him. She finally spoke to us, “His mate?”

“Yes, Cassidy, I already know that you are Jasper’s mate. I am so sorry for all that he has put you through. I want to ask you to speak to the council. I want to help you too. They are here for a reason. It was known that both Jasper’s Luna’s had been murdered. Their bodies were exhumed, we know how, and why. I know that there were special circumstances, and believe me I know the pain of it, It has been over twenty years, and I can still remember that familiar pain taking my very breath away, making me want to not continue on anymore. Knowing that the one who was made for you instead decided to choose another because you were too weak to be his Luna. But my mate was wrong, and your mate was wrong too. Only someone who had been in the same position that you are in knows how bad it is. How it can make you desperate and do something drastic because of it. I can’t tell you that I know all of what you feel. I was able to accept my first mate’s rejection later on, as I passed out from the pain of it when he did actually reject me. I thank the Goddess he never got around to marking his chosen mate while we were still bound. I have heard that is even worse than the pain of the betrayal” Gabi said to her gently. I can feel the pain in Gabi’s voice letting us both know the extent of Cassidy’s pain, and that she understands the why behind Cassidy’s actions.

A few moments passed by with total silence in the room before we both heard Cassidy whisper, “How did you know?”

Gabi glances at the steaming cup of tea and said, “We exhumed the bodies and ran tests. Their families wanted, no they needed, closure in this. They both thought that Jasper had gotten away with murder. He has shown that he doesn’t value other’s lives, in his own actions, over and over again. So, he was the obvious suspect. But we couldn’t get him on it, and it had come as a surprise to him that they had been murdered. He should have figured it out, as their symptoms were the same, as the ones he and Stephanie are dealing with now. I would like you to tell us, on record, what happened here, and what you know about his plans for Peyton. You were here when it happened, you know what he did to try to get an innocent 13-year-old girl to come here and become his Luna. He was greedy and wrong for it, and there are rules, and laws, in place to try to protect innocents from this type of thing. Jasper KNEW who Peyton was, and that k********g the Alpha King’s daughter was a death sentence. He tried it anyway. He hunted her down and he was the very reason that she ended up at B***d Claw. His men came onto their packlands and fought with her security officer, Nina, and Luna Victoria, and this was the exact reason that she was abused for over six years. Please help us to get him punished for that” Gabi said and looked earnestly at Cassidy.

We both watched her put sugar into the tea and stir it slowly, and then milk into the tea. She wasn’t showing any emotions now. She seemed to be watching as the milk swirled around in the cup as they blended together in the cup. She finally looked up and said, “How did you know it was me?” You can tell that Cassidy thought she had covered her tracks. She thought that she would never be found out or be attached to their deaths, and yet here was a woman sitting before her that knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had not only done it, but she also knew how.

“I told you we did an autopsy on both Carrie and Jasmine. It came back with poisoning from Belladonna, and Wolfsbane. I saved images and was actively looking for both plants after we arrived. We all noticed them sitting right there, in a beautiful flower garden. So much beauty there, and death. I can tell that you wanted them where you could see them, to protect others from handling them. I am sure if I asked, the other Omegas would tell me that you are very protective of your flower garden but are fine with them in the vegetable garden or around the fruit trees” Gabi told her.

Cassidy has the grace to blush at Gabi’s assumption. Gabi already knew based on watching Cassidy for just this short time. Cassidy really cared about her fellow pack members and didn’t want anyone to get hurt from the dangerous flowers mixed in with the regular flowers. It was a well-known fact throughout the pack that you were welcome to look at the beautiful flower bed but wouldn’t let them not cut or touch the flowers. None of them knew why, but Cassidy was a respected member of the pack, and they were all happy to look at, but not touch anything in her flower bed. She had another area, a rose garden nearby, and they all knew that those could be cut, but the one outside of the kitchen windows had always been off-limits.

“I am Jasper’s mate, you are correct Gabi. He never wanted me and refused to mark me. It was only Bain, his wolf, that wanted me, that loved me. We were happy for a little while, but Jasper decided that Bain was too attached to me and refused to sleep with me anymore. I would have loved to have gotten pregnant with a pup, but Jasper kept giving me the morning-after pill because he said I wasn’t worthy to carry any part of his line. I wouldn’t have told anyone that it was his, and I would have raised the baby well, even if Jasper didn’t want me to have his pup” Cassidy said to us, and how he has treated her since finding her is making me want to kill him myself.

He is a monster, an arrogant, hateful monster. I wish that Cassidy had just accepted his rejection and left here, to try to find her second chance mate. Instead of staying here and having to endure so much heartbreak from Jasper. His disloyalty to her was a slap in the face each day for her, and yet she kept trying. Trying to be the mate that she thought he wanted her to be for him. She has had to put up with his unfaithful actions, for way too long. She is completely scarred on the inside, but she is still beautiful on the outside. For her to still have love and compassion for others is almost unbelievable to me. She should have just withdrawn into herself until her wolf finally went mad, and then deteriorated away. I think that her wolf fought for her this whole time. Wanting to give her time to come to the decision of leaving Jasper and finding a better place. Maybe a chance at getting a second chance mate, or at least a chance at love where she is valued and treated with love and care for once.

The kitchen door opens again, and I saw my father standing there, with the Council members standing right behind him. I see Cassidy’s head bow in submission and respect for him. Then seeing the Council members right behind him she stiffens up as she knows that with all three of them here, there is a high chance that she is about to be put to death. She has admitted to both me and Gabi what she has done, she doesn’t know us well enough to know if she can trust us or not. I see it on her face before she even moves, but I am over 6 feet away from her across the island and can’t stop her before she downs the whole cup of tea. I screamed out, “No” as she was doing it, but it is already done. She had put a lot of it in the steeper ball, and I already know that she just gave herself a massive dose. This was probably her whole plan anyway. She no longer wanted to live with the guilt and shame of killing two innocents. She also didn’t want to continue with all the adulterous and unloyal actions that Jasper had put her through. She was done here with this life and was probably only hoping for another chance somewhere down the line if the Goddess chose to give her that blessing.

It is a matter of time now, but I can’t let her die. I care about her, and I want her to live. I run to her side, and she gave me a hug, and a smile, and said, “Peyton, I am sorry. I don’t want to live with this pain anymore. I need to fix this with the Goddess, and this was my only option. I need to make amends to Carrie and Jasmine’s families. It is only fair that I die the same way that they did.”

Large tears are running down my face for the woman in front of me that thought that the only course of action that she had was to poison her own self. She didn’t even wait to see what the Council members, or my father, were going to say to her. Or if Jasper was more culpable in what happened because he drove her to it with his heinous actions. She took so much of it, that it is now working very quickly through her system. She drops to her knees onto the floor, and she is already having a great deal of difficulty breathing. She tried to smile at me as she struggles to breathe as if to tell me that she is OK, and accepts this as her punishment. She is concerned about me being so upset for her, she is not a bad person, and I dropped to my knees as well. I needed to save her. I feel compelled to save her. I know that she needs me to help her, even though she never asked. I know that she thought that this was her punishment, so I looked to my father, then to Council Leader Miller, and finally to Council Member Phillips. I can see that she is crying and overcome with emotion for Cassidy.

“Before I heal her, tell me what your plans are for her. I don’t feel like she needs too much more punishment because of what that a*s had done to her for a decade. I don’t want to bring her back if all she has to look forward to is sitting in a cell for the rest of her life” I tell them, and I don’t think I have even had this type of hard tone before in speaking with people. I am furious at his disregard for her, and I need to know that she will be allowed to try to live a happy life if I can save her.

“Save her Peyton, we were coming in to tell her that we just wanted to talk to her. I should have had Tanner link Gabi to be able to grab the cup, but I never thought that she would just drink it without provocation to do so” my father tells me, and Leader Miller nods in agreement. I feel a hand on my back and turn to see Percy with me. Good, because I am going to need all the strength in me, to fix this.