After His Mistress Poisoned the Alpha, I Walked Away

The scent of burning sage and crushed petals hit me before I even opened the lab door. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

Silver stirred anxiously within me. *The sanctuary. Someone's there.*

I dropped the pipette I'd been holding, my hands trembling as I rushed from my laboratory toward the back of the pack lands. My sanctuary—the greenhouse garden where I'd spent ten years cultivating the rare Moon-Lilies that would save Carson's wolf—was hidden in a secluded clearing. No one should have been there at this hour.

The cold night air bit at my skin as I ran through the snow-covered forest. The full moon illuminated my path, but I barely noticed its beauty. All I could think about were my precious lilies—the ones that bloomed only under the winter moon, the ones I'd nurtured through countless nights of careful tending.

"Stop!" I screamed as I burst into the clearing.

The scene before me froze my blood. Bria stood in the center of my sanctuary, surrounded by a group of low-ranking wolves—the kind who hung around the edges of pack gatherings, always looking for trouble. They were laughing, drinking from bottles, their boots trampling the carefully tended soil.

And Bria—Carson's precious Bria—held a bottle of vodka, deliberately pouring it onto the base of my Moon-Lilies. The strong alcohol would poison the delicate roots.

"What are you doing?" I demanded, my voice shaking with fury.

Bria turned to face me, her golden hair gleaming in the moonlight. "Just having a pre-party before tomorrow's ceremony," she said with a cruel smile. "These plants looked like they could use a drink."

Behind her, one of the wolves—Delta Kris, I recognized him now—stomped deliberately on a patch of seedlings. Another wolf uprooted a fully grown lily, tossing it into the air like confetti.

"Stop this!" I cried, lunging forward. "These are medicinal plants! They're irreplaceable!"

"Medicinal?" Bria laughed, the sound like breaking glass. "Or just an excuse to keep Carson dependent on you?"

Silver roared within me, demanding release. I felt my bones begin to crack, my muscles stretching as I prepared to shift. If I couldn't reason with them, I would protect my life's work with my teeth and claws.

"Shift," I commanded myself, welcoming the pain of transformation.

But before my shift could take hold, a powerful voice cut through the night.

"What's going on here?"

Carson stood at the edge of the clearing, his tall figure silhouetted against the moonlight. Relief flooded through me—he would stop this. He had to.

"Carson!" I gasped, still mid-shift. "They're destroying the lilies! The cure—"

I never finished my sentence. Carson's eyes narrowed as he took in the scene—Bria surrounded by broken plants, me with my claws partially extended, my face elongated in the beginning stages of transformation.

"She's attacking me!" Bria shrieked, throwing herself against Carson's chest. "She tried to shift and hurt us!"

"What?" I stared at her in disbelief. "No, I was trying to protect—"

"Submit!" Carson's voice thundered across the clearing, the Alpha command hitting me like a physical blow.

My shift reversed instantly, my body slamming back into human form. But the command didn't stop there. It forced me to my knees, then flat on the frozen ground. My arms and legs wouldn't respond to my commands anymore.

"Carson, please," I begged, lying helpless in the mud and snow. "The lilies—they're all I have. Without them..."

Bria smirked down at me, visible only from my position on the ground. Carson couldn't see her expression as she deliberately poured more alcohol onto the last standing lily.

"You care more about these stupid plants than my happiness," Carson snarled, kicking a destroyed flower toward me. The petals landed on my cheek, sticking to my tear-streaked face.

"Let's get out of here," Bria purred, tugging at his arm. "This place stinks of dirt and failure."

The group began to leave, their laughter fading into the distance. Carson paused once to look back at me, still pinned to the ground by his command.

"Clean yourself up before tomorrow's ceremony," he said coldly. "And don't bother preparing any more of that useless medicine."

As they disappeared into the forest, the weight of his command gradually lifted from my limbs. I slowly pushed myself up from the mud, my hands trembling as I surveyed the destruction around me.

Ten years of work. Ten years of hope. Destroyed in minutes.

I touched the mate mark on my neck—the incomplete bond that had kept me tethered to this man, this pack, this endless cycle of rejection and false hope.

Something inside me snapped. Not the mystical bond—that would take a formal rejection—but something deeper. The last thread of devotion I'd clung to.

Silver's voice whispered in my mind: *We deserve better than this.*

For once, I didn't argue with her.

"We do," I whispered back, rising to my feet. "We deserve so much better than this."