After My Alpha Rejected Me for the Warrior Girl

Judith's fever broke the wrong way — not down, but sideways, into a shaking so violent the teacup rattled off the table and shattered on her cottage floor. I knelt to gather the pieces and found her palm streaked silver-gray, the veins beneath her skin standing out like something drawn in charcoal.

"Wolfsbane," she said, before I could ask. Her healer's mind never stopped working, even as her body betrayed her. "A slow strain. I've read about it — I never thought I'd carry it."

"How."

"Doesn't matter now." She caught my wrist, her grip already weaker than it should have been. "Ironvale keeps a refined antidote. In the vault. I need it within two days, Coraline, or this strain finishes what it started."

Two days. I did the math without wanting to — the walk to the pack house, the begging that would have to happen, the waiting after. I told her I'd get it and left before my face could show her how frightened I was.

The bond was almost nothing now, a hairline crack where a door used to be, but I used what was left of it anyway. I stood outside the pack house gates and pushed a thought down that thread like it still belonged to me. *Kannon. I need to speak with you. It's about my mother.*

He came out ten minutes later, arms crossed, jaw tight, like I'd interrupted something.

"Judith's poisoned," I said. No preamble. Pride was a luxury I'd already spent. "A slow wolfsbane strain. She needs the refined antidote from the vault. Please, Kannon. Two days."

He didn't look at me. He looked at a spot somewhere over my shoulder, the same place his eyes had gone the night he rejected me, and something in my chest recognized the angle of his face before he even spoke.

"I'll send it," he said. "Today."

"Today," I repeated, because I needed to hear him say it twice.

"Today, Coraline." A flicker of impatience. "I said I would."

I walked back to Judith's cottage with something almost like relief loosening the knot in my ribs. I told her help was coming, that Kannon had promised, and she nodded and let me tuck the blanket higher around her shoulders, though her eyes stayed on the window the whole time, not on me.

I sat with her through the night. Her hand in mine grew colder by degrees I tracked without wanting to — a healer's daughter counting her mother's pulse the way other daughters might count sheep. Every hour that passed without a knock at the door, without a runner from the pack house, I told myself it was still early. Kannon had said today. Today wasn't over yet.

By dawn, no one had come.

---

The vault sat beneath the pack house's east wing, behind a door that took two keys and a Beta's signature to open. I'd never had reason to go inside it before, but I knew what refined wolfsbane antidote smelled like — bitter, mineral, faintly like burnt clove — and that smell hit me before I even reached the doorway, thin and stale, like the ghost of something that used to be there.

The vault was empty. Not low on stock. Empty — bare shelves, a few loose leaves of packing straw on the floor, the door hanging open like no one had bothered to lock it back up.

Roland was in the hallway when I turned around, arms folded, watching my face like he'd been waiting for this exact moment to enjoy.

"Where is it," I said.

"Silverfang Pack." He said it easily, almost cheerfully. "Alpha traded the whole stockpile yesterday. Courting gift, for Presley's family alliance. Smart move, honestly — Silverfang's been sitting on three territories we've wanted for years."

The floor tilted under me. "Yesterday. He told me this morning he'd send it *today.*"

Roland shrugged, already walking away. "Guess he forgot to mention the timeline."

I found Kannon in his study twenty minutes later, and I didn't knock.

"You traded it," I said. "You promised me this morning and it was already gone."

He stood at his desk, not sitting, not moving toward me. "I'll find another source. There are other packs, other healers—"

"She needs it in two days. Where else is there in two days?"

"You're being dramatic, Coraline." His voice had that flat Alpha cadence he used when he wanted a conversation over. "Judith's condition can't be as dire as you're making it sound."

"She's shaking so hard she can't hold a cup. Her veins are turning gray."

He still hadn't looked at me. Not once, the whole conversation, his eyes fixed somewhere past my ear, the same careful, cowardly angle from the ceremony platform.

"I'll handle it," he said, and turned back to the papers on his desk, as if the matter were already closed, as if my mother's life were a line item he could revisit later.

I stood there a moment longer, waiting for him to look at me. He never did.

I walked out without another word, because I already understood — the antidote wasn't coming, and neither was he.