Leave Me In Ruins

Belladonna

Stiles pushed off of the brick wall, part of him glad for a reason to escape Derek's temptation. He ignored the part of him that yearned for more of Derek. The part of him that he'd been pushing down for years. How Derek hadn't seen right through him yet, Stiles didn't know. As he was about to head up after Scott, Derek caught his arm.

"You okay?"

Stiles nodded. He knew Derek would hear the uptick in his heartbeat if he lied. But he also didn't feel like talking anymore. He stepped by Derek, leaving the alpha staring after him with a disbelieving frown.

"What'd they find?" Stiles asked, following Scott back to Derek's door.

"Poison," Scott answered. He pushed the door open to where the pack was all gathered around the computer.

"Like wolfsbane?" Stiles asked.

"Sort of." Isaac spun the computer chair and gestured to one of the tabs Stiles had left open. It was a list of Poisons. On the screen was a medium-sized shrub with dark green leaves and purple bell-shaped flowers.

"Belladonna," Stiles said, recognizing the plant.

"You know it?" Derek asked, walking in behind Stiles and Scott.

"Yeah, the potent psychoactive tropane alkaloids found in the plant are deadly, especially to animals."

"What else?"

Well, the species epithet comes from the Italian word, Belladonna for beautiful woman because The Venitian women of the court used to dilate their pupils with a tincture of belladonna eye-drops to enhance their beauty." Stiles shrugged.

"That doesn't sound so deadly." Malia pointed out.

"Yeah but that was just the atropine."

"Which affects the pupils of the eyes." Lydia nodded.

"The other psychoactive tropane alkaloids are; hyoscyamine and scopolamine. Which cause symptoms like—"

"Vomiting, hallucinations, and death." Lydia cut in, her eyes distant like she was putting together the pieces of a puzzle in her mind.

"There's a reason the genus name is a derivation of Atropos," Stiles said, rocking back on his heels, his hands now shoved into his pants pockets.

"Meaning, inexorable or inflexable." Lydia still had the distant look in her eye.

"The fate that severs the thread of life." Stiles nodded, glancing around the room at the horrified looks.

"I want to ask how you two know that, but I also don't care." Malia shook her head at the pair before throwing herself onto Derek's couch.

"So it was targeted." Isaac looked to Derek for confirmation.

"But who would do this? This isn't a hunter." Allison pursed her lips in thought.

"Druids don't even use Belladonna. It's too dangerous. One mistake and—" Stiles cut off, waving a hand through the air.

"How did, whoever did this, get a werewolf to consume enough of this poison to kill them?" Erica asked, her deep brown eyes squinted in confusion.

"It only takes 600 milligrams to be deadly," Lydia said, her eyes still trained on the floor of Derek's loft unblinking.

The pack looked at her with blank stares.

"It's a fraction of a fraction of an ounce," Stiles explained.

"And women used to put it in their eyes?" Allison grimaced.

"Heavily diluted." Stiles nodded.

"Still, how did they even get a werewolf to consume that much? They would have smelled it. And she had to have ingested it, that blood we found wasn't from a cut. She didn't have any." Erica pointed out.