My Alpha Poisoned Our Pups

The bond broke at 10:14 on a Tuesday morning, and I felt it happen from a hospital bed soaked in my own blood.

Not broken. Not yet. But cracking. Splintering. The mark on my neck—Jace's mark, the one I'd worn for six years like a wedding ring carved into skin—went cold first. Then numb. Like someone had pressed ice against the scar tissue until the nerve endings gave up.

I lay in the Shadowridge pack infirmary with my legs still in stirrups and my third miscarriage pooling beneath me in dark, clotted sheets. The healer had left ten minutes ago. She'd given me herbs that tasted like dirt and told me to rest. Her face had been carefully blank. That blankness was its own message.

I should have been crying. I should have been howling. My wolf should have been clawing at the inside of my ribs, keening for the pup we'd lost.

But my wolf was silent. She'd been silent for months. Maybe years. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt her stir.

The infirmary door was closed. The hallway outside was empty. I could hear voices in the adjacent war room—Jace's voice, low and steady, and Gareth's responding in clipped affirmatives. The war room shared a wall with the infirmary. Normally the rooms were soundproofed by pack wards.

Normally.

But the mind-link channel between Jace and his Beta was open. Carelessly open. I felt it like a door left ajar in my skull—a thin thread of connection I shouldn't have been able to access, because I wasn't part of their private link, but the bond was still there, fraying but functional, and Jace had forgotten to close it.

I heard every word.

"The dose worked again," Jace said. His voice was calm. Clinical. "Sable confirmed the hemorrhage an hour ago. No viable fetal tissue."

"Understood," Gareth replied. "Do you want me to adjust the concentration for next time?"

"No. This level is effective and undetectable. We'll maintain it."

I stopped breathing.

"Lorelai will announce her pregnancy at the autumn gathering," Jace continued. "The Thornvale delegation arrives next week to finalize the alliance terms. By winter, the heir clause will be satisfied and the territorial agreement will be locked."

"And Teagan?"

"She'll recover. She always does. Sable says her wolf is suppressed enough that she won't shift for at least another month. That gives us time."

"Understood, Alpha."

The mind-link channel snapped closed. The silence that followed was so complete I thought I'd gone deaf.

I lay perfectly still. My hands were at my sides. My thumbnail found my palm and pressed down until I felt the skin break. The pain was small and sharp and real.

Wolfsbane.

He'd been dosing me with wolfsbane.

Not once. Not an accident. Three times. Three pregnancies. Three dead pups.

My wolf stirred. For the first time in months—maybe years—I felt her move inside me. Not a gentle presence. Not the warm, steady companionship I remembered from before I'd bonded to Jace. This was something else. Something raw and furious and wrong.

She didn't whimper. She didn't curl up in grief.

She snarled.

The sound existed only inside my head, but it was so loud I thought the walls would crack. My ribs felt too small. My skin felt too tight. My wolf was awake and she was not sad. She was not broken.

She was enraged.

I forced her down. I didn't know how. I just pressed my will against hers until she retreated, still snarling, back into the hollow space where she'd been sleeping. The effort left me shaking. Sweat soaked through the thin infirmary gown. My heart was hammering so hard I thought the monitor would alarm.

But the machine stayed quiet. The hallway stayed empty. No one came.

I stared at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights buzzed. Somewhere in the pack house, Lorelai Flores was preparing to move into the Luna suite. Somewhere in the war room, Jace was finalizing an alliance built on my dead children.

I had been building something for two years. I hadn't admitted it to myself. I hadn't let the thought fully form. But my hands had been gathering evidence anyway—wolfsbane purchase records I'd photographed during inventory audits, healer's reports I'd requested under Luna privileges and never returned, border camera footage coordinates I'd memorized and written down in a notebook I kept hidden behind a loose stone in the library wall.

I had been preparing to leave. My conscious mind hadn't known. But some part of me—some part that was smarter or more afraid or less willing to die quietly—had been building an exit for two years.

Now I knew why.

The door opened. Sable, the pack healer, stepped inside. Her face was still carefully blank.

"How are you feeling, Luna?" she asked.

I looked at her. She had documented three years of wolfsbane concentrations in my bloodwork. She had labeled them "hormonal irregularities." She had done it under Jace's orders. I knew that now.

I pressed my thumbnail deeper into my palm.

"I'm fine," I said.

My voice was steady. That surprised me. I sounded like someone who was fine.

Sable nodded. She checked the monitor, adjusted the IV line, and left without another word.

I lay in the dark and made a list.

Evidence I had: partial. Evidence I needed: specific. Time I had: unknown. Allies I could trust: none.

My wolf stirred again. This time I let her. She didn't snarl. She didn't howl. She just sat in the hollow space behind my ribs and waited.

She was awake now. And she was done sleeping.