My Alpha Rejected Me Before the Tribunal

The corridor is dark when I hear him.

Not his footsteps — those come later, uneven, too heavy on the left. First it's his breathing, ragged in a way it never used to be, and the smell of Colette's room still clinging to him like smoke that hasn't cleared.

I don't have time to reach my door.

His hand closes around my wrist and the wall is at my back before I've decided whether to fight it. The mate bond does that — pulls him toward me even now, even reeking of her, some old current he can't shut off no matter how hard he tries to drown it.

"Killian—"

"Quiet."

His nose drops to my throat. I feel the heat of him, the fever radiating off his skin like a held breath, and for one terrible second I think the salve has worn thin, that three years of playing dead woman walking are about to unravel in a hallway at midnight because I didn't reapply it after my bath.

Then his whole body recoils.

His lip curls back off his teeth. He makes a sound low in his throat, disgust dressed up as a snarl, and shoves off the wall like I've burned him.

"What is that." Not a question. An accusation.

"I don't know what you mean." My voice comes out flat, unbothered, exactly the register I've spent seven years perfecting.

"You smell—" He doesn't finish it. He doesn't need to. Wolfsbane salve worked into the skin under the jaw smells like rot to a werewolf nose, bitter and wrong, nothing like the floral thread that used to draw him to me before he decided my scent was something to be replaced. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand like he can scrub the smell off his own tongue.

"Get out of my sight," he mutters, and turns for the stairs.

I count his footsteps going up. Fourteen. Uneven the whole way.

---

The stable is unlocked because I unlocked it three hours earlier, and the mare knows my hand well enough not to startle when I lead her out under a moon thin as a fingernail paring.

The ride to the Silvercrest border takes three hours through territory that isn't quite Blackthorn's and isn't quite anyone's — the kind of ground rogues use because no one patrols it hard enough to matter. I keep to the tree line. I keep the vial wrapped in cloth against my chest, and I don't let myself think about what happens if I'm caught with it.

Marcus Doran is waiting at the waypoint exactly where the message said he'd be, leaning against a boundary stone with the patience of a man who has waited in worse places for worse reasons.

"Luna Gardner." He says the pack name like he's testing whether I'll correct him.

I don't.

I hand him the vial first. He holds it up to the moonlight, and even in that thin light the threads of black running through the blood are visible, unmistakable, the kind of rot no healer could call anything but what it is.

"Silverblight," he says.

"Advanced. Untreated as of nine days ago." I hand him the ledger next, leather-bound, the ink gone soft with age in places. "Wolfsbane trade routes. Ashfall rogues, three years of shipments, and the pack that bought them."

He doesn't open it there. He tucks it inside his coat with the same care he gave the vial. "What do you want for this?"

"An audience with King Cassian Vale. On my own terms." I hold his gaze so there's no mistaking it. "Not as a victim asking for rescue. As a source. And when the tribunal comes, as a party with a claim."

Marcus studies me a long moment, the kind of look that catalogs more than a face. "I'll carry the petition," he says finally.

It's enough. It has to be.

---

By the time I'm back, Killian's fever has a name everyone pretends not to say. His wolf's fur dulls at the flanks when he shifts now, patchy along the ribs, so he shifts less and drinks more and holds Colette tighter, mistaking his own unraveling for wanting her more than anything he's ever wanted.

She mistakes it too.

"I want the rite moved up," she announces at dinner, loud enough for the whole table, chin high the way she does everything. "And I want the Luna's quarters. All of it. Before the rite, not after."

Killian doesn't look up from his glass. He doesn't stop her.

I set my fork down beside my plate, precise, unhurried. "As you wish."

The table goes quiet, waiting for more. There isn't more. I fold my napkin, rise, and walk to the cellar that night with two bags of clothes and a candle, and I lay my things down on the cot beside the wall where the tally marks are already climbing, and I do not let myself cry, because crying is for women who still expect something different to happen.