After My Mate Poisoned My Wolf

The Healer was old. Older than Nora, older than anyone I'd ever met inside a pack. She had eyes the color of wet river stones, and when she took my wrist in her hand, her fingers were cold.

"Consent," she said quietly. "From you. From the King."

I looked across the ritual circle at Alaric Turner.

He was standing very still. He had not moved much since I'd walked into the hall, since the courtiers had gone silent, since his mouth had opened around a name he hadn't spoken. He was a king in the way of men who did not need to remind rooms of it. But his hands, at his sides, were closed into fists.

"Consent," I said.

"Consent," Alaric said, and his voice cracked slightly on the word.

The Healer drew a thin blade across her palm. She pressed her hand to Alaric's wrist first, then to mine, connecting us through her own blood. The silver at her throat—some old sigil—began to warm. I felt it before I saw it: something ancient turning over inside my ribs, and then a slow, terrible bloom of light beneath the skin of my forearms.

Blue-white. Faint at first. Then unmistakable.

The court made a sound I cannot describe. Some of them dropped. Some of them wept. Iris Vane, standing at Bryce's shoulder, did not move at all.

Alaric took a single step forward.

He did not embrace me. I saw him decide not to—saw the calculation move behind his eyes, saw him look at my shoulders and read exactly what I was and was not able to accept. He stopped. He steadied himself. He kept his hands at his sides.

"I have a wing prepared," he said. "Overlooking the mountain. You do not have to see anyone tonight. You do not have to see me."

I thought about that for a moment.

"Thank you," I said.

He closed his eyes briefly. That was all.

The Princess Wing was too large for one woman. I stood at the window for an hour before I let myself set my bag down.

---

Declan called at dusk the next day. I almost didn't answer. When I did, his voice was flat in a way I had learned to read over ten years of standing near him in hallways.

"He took her to the Vernon meeting," he said.

"Megan?"

"Wearing your sash. Altered." A pause. "Alpha Vernon asked where you were. Grayson explained the rejection. Vernon nodded, said he'd need to consult his mate, and left without signing."

I closed my eyes.

"In the car after," Declan went on, "Megan told him Vernon was intimidated by her aura."

"What did Grayson say?"

"Nothing." Declan paused. "He said nothing, Sophia. For the whole drive back."

I let the silence sit between us. Then: "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I'm going to tell you more," he said. "When it's time."

He hung up.

---

Bryce brought the tea himself the next morning.

He set the mug in front of me on the table by the window. He didn't sit. He stood at a careful distance and, without being asked, without preamble, said:

"Water at ninety-two degrees. Steep of four minutes. Chamomile from a farm in the Cascades that my mother used before me. Lemon balm. A single leaf of mint. Nothing else."

My hand had already moved toward the mug. Ten years of reflex. I stopped it in the air.

I looked up at him.

He looked back. He did not explain. He did not apologize for knowing. He did not perform anything.

I wrapped both hands around the mug.

The flash of nausea came, the way it always did—my body waiting for the poison it had learned to expect. I braced for it. Overrode it. That was the routine.

It was less this morning.

Not gone. Not healed. Just less.

I drank the tea. He watched me drink it without any of the small hungers I had grown up learning to spot in men who wanted to be thanked. When I set the mug down, he nodded once and turned toward the door.

"Bryce."

He stopped.

I didn't say anything else. I just wanted to know if he'd stop when I said his name.

He did. He waited. And when I didn't speak again, he left without asking.

---

Nora's testimony reached the Lycan Court that afternoon.

I was in the Princess Wing when the courier brought the sealed envelope. Trace wolfsbane. Consistent concentration. Ten years of samples. Her signature at the bottom, small and careful, the same handwriting she had used on every clean bill of health she'd ever given me while the poison sat in my blood.

She had requested tribunal protection.

She knew what he would do.

My hands were steady when I set the pages down. My wolf was not. She was pacing behind my ribs in slow, deliberate circles, the way she paced now when she was thinking about violence.

My phone buzzed.

Declan.

I answered.

"He knows about Nora," he said. His voice was low, fast. "He got the notice from the Council an hour ago. He's already made calls, Sophia. He's invoking pack law. Something old. Something about the rejection not being valid because your wolf wasn't awakened at the time. He's filing tonight. He's coming for you at the tribunal."

I stood at the window.

"Sophia," Declan said. "There's something else."

I waited.

"He sent men to Nora's cottage twenty minutes ago."