After My Mate Poisoned Me for Another Woman

The garden behind the pack house was my refuge on days when I couldn't stand the walls closing in.

I was kneeling in the herb bed, pulling weeds from around the wolfsbane—ironic, I know—when I heard the footsteps. Light. Deliberate. The kind of steps that wanted to be noticed.

Kehlani appeared at the garden gate in another white dress, this one with lace at the sleeves. She looked like a ghost, all pale skin and dark hair, her hand pressed to her chest in that way she had, like her heart might give out at any moment.

"Luna Natasha," she said, her voice breathy. "I was hoping to find you. I wanted to thank you for the tea you sent last week. It helped with the pain."

I hadn't sent her any tea.

"I'm glad," I said, keeping my tone mild. I turned back to the herbs, my fingers working the soil.

She moved closer, and the wind carried her scent to me. Wild orchids and rain. My formula, breaking down at the edges, the synthetic musk starting to separate from the base notes. She must have applied it less than an hour ago.

"The garden is beautiful," she said. "You have such a gift with—"

She swayed.

It was perfectly executed, I had to give her that. The slight stumble, the hand reaching for support that wasn't there, the way her knees buckled just enough to look genuine.

She went down in a heap of white lace and dark hair.

"Trenton!" Her voice carried across the lawn, high and frightened. "Trenton, please—"

I was already moving toward her, because that's what the good Luna would do, but I wasn't fast enough.

Trenton came out of nowhere, his Alpha speed turning him into a blur. He dropped to his knees beside Kehlani, gathering her up like she was made of glass.

"What happened?" His voice was sharp, his eyes finding me with an accusation that made my stomach clench. "Why didn't you catch her?"

I opened my mouth, but Kehlani spoke first.

"It's not her fault," she whispered, her head lolling against Trenton's chest. "I just—I felt dizzy. The sun—"

"You shouldn't be out here alone," Trenton said, his voice dropping into that tender register he only used with her. "You're too weak."

I stood there with dirt under my fingernails, watching my husband cradle another woman, and felt nothing but cold calculation.

Kehlani's hand slipped from Trenton's shoulder, falling toward the ground. I moved forward, catching her wrist before it hit the dirt.

"Let me help," I said.

Her skin was clammy under my fingers. Damp. I held on for three seconds—long enough to feel the sweat transfer to my palm—before Trenton pulled her away.

"I've got her," he said. "Go inside, Natasha."

Dismissed. Again.

I watched him carry Kehlani toward the guest wing, her face buried in his neck, and I brought my hand to my face, pretending to brush hair from my eyes.

I inhaled.

The sweat sample was perfect. But there was something else, something I caught in the brief moment when she'd been close enough—a faint metallic tang on her breath, sharp and bitter.

Arsenic.

Micro-doses, probably dissolved in water or tea. Just enough to create the pallor, the weakness, the appearance of a body slowly failing.

I stood in the garden for a long moment, staring at my palm.

Then I went to my lab.

---

The spectrometer took twenty minutes to break down the sweat sample.

I paced the length of the lab while it worked, my wolf stirring restlessly in my chest. She was stronger now, after three days without Wolfsbane. Still weak, still disoriented, but present in a way she hadn't been in years.

The machine beeped.

I pulled up the readout and felt something cold and sharp settle in my chest.

Tears of Selene. Degraded, unstable, missing the key stabilizing compound that kept the formula from breaking down. Whoever had stolen it—and I knew now it was Kehlani—hadn't understood the chemistry. She was wearing a copy that was slowly falling apart, and she had to keep reapplying it to maintain the illusion.

But it was enough. Enough to trigger the mate bond response in Trenton's wolf. Enough to make him believe the Moon Goddess had chosen her for him.

The love he felt wasn't real. It was chemistry. My chemistry.

I sat down hard on the lab stool.

Three years. Three years of poison and dismissal and sleeping alone while my husband visited another woman's bed. Three years of being called wolfless and useless and a waste of space.

Because of a stolen formula and a woman willing to poison herself for status.

The ember in my chest flared hot.

I was halfway through documenting the analysis when I heard the footstep on the stairs.

I froze.

The lab was hidden, but not impossible to find if someone knew where to look. I'd been careful, but three days of coming and going had left traces. Mud. Disturbed leaves. A path through the forest that hadn't been there before.

The cellar door creaked open.

I grabbed the nearest weapon—a glass beaker—and turned.

Larson stood in the doorway, a towel draped over his arm.

We stared at each other.

"Your shoes," he said finally, his voice quiet. "You tracked mud through the servant's hall."

I looked down. My boots were caked with forest dirt, and I'd been too distracted to notice.

Larson stepped into the lab, closing the door behind him. He moved slowly, his eyes taking in the equipment, the vials, the spectrometer still displaying Kehlani's chemical profile.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

He handed me the towel. "About the lab? Two years. About the Wolfsbane?" His jaw tightened. "Long enough."

I wiped the mud from my boots, my mind racing through options. Larson was Omega, but he'd been with the pack for decades. His loyalty should have been to Trenton.

Should have been.

"Are you going to tell him?" I asked.

Larson looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked at the spectrometer, at the readout showing Kehlani's stolen formula and self-administered poison.

"No," he said. "I'm going to help you."

The ember in my chest pulsed once, hot and certain.

"Then we need to talk," I said. "Because I'm going to need someone on the inside."

Larson nodded slowly. "What do you need?"

I looked at the vials on my workbench, at the formulas I'd spent years perfecting, at the evidence of three years of systematic betrayal.

"Access to Kehlani's medicine cabinet," I said. "And a way to swap her tonics without anyone noticing."

Larson's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes. Something that looked like satisfaction.

"Consider it done," he said.