My Mate Drugged Me to Mark Another Woman

The dining room looked beautiful that night. Long table, white candles, the good china my mother had picked out before she died. Fourteen senior warriors and four elders seated in a row, and Fiona Bell at the far end in a dove-gray dress I had never seen before, smiling at something Dante said like she belonged there.

She had been invited as a charity representative. That was the official reason. I had written the invitation myself, three weeks ago, before I knew what I knew. The irony of that sat in my chest like a swallowed stone.

I kept my face pleasant. I had been keeping my face pleasant for fourteen days straight, and I was very good at it by now.

The conversation moved through the usual channels — border security, the upcoming harvest rotation, the Alliance Ceremony logistics. I listened and nodded and refilled my water glass and waited. Across the table, Fiona's eyes kept drifting to Dante. Small glances, quick and warm, the kind you make when you're trying not to make them. I had been watching her do it all evening.

The budget discussion came up naturally. It always did at these dinners. Elder Marsh asked about the Foster Foundation's allocation for the next quarter, and I answered the way I always answered — clearly, with numbers, because my father taught me that a woman who knows her numbers in a room full of men is a woman who cannot be dismissed.

'The discretionary line is down twelve percent from last year,' I said. 'I've been reviewing where the reductions came from. Some of the cuts don't align with what was approved in the spring.'

It was a mild observation. Factual. The kind of thing I would have said at any table, in any meeting, without a second thought.

Fiona's expression shifted. Just for a moment — a flicker of something sharp and satisfied behind her eyes, like she'd been waiting for exactly this. Her chin lifted a fraction.

Then Dante's aura hit the table.

Not subtle. Not the low background pressure he used to keep the room attentive. This was a full release, the kind that pressed down on every wolf in the room like a hand on the back of the neck. Around me I felt the warriors go still. Elder Marsh stopped mid-reach for his wine glass.

Dante looked at me from the head of the table. His voice was very calm.

'Eloise.' Just my name. But with the Alpha tone underneath it, the one that turned words into commands. 'I think you may have upset Fiona with that comment. She works very hard for the Foundation.'

The room was absolutely silent.

My wolf whimpered. That small, drugged sound she made when the aura pressed too hard, when her legs went weak under the weight of it. Even with the injections stopped, she was still rebuilding. Still fragile in the places three years of suppression had hollowed out.

But I was not my wolf. Not entirely.

I turned to Fiona. Her expression had settled into something carefully neutral, but her eyes were bright. She was enjoying this. She had been enjoying this for a long time, I realized. Every dinner, every meeting, every time she sat in a room with me and knew what I didn't know. Three years of that particular pleasure.

I let none of that show on my face.

'You're right,' I said. My voice came out measured and even. 'Fiona, I apologize if my comment came across as a criticism of your work. That wasn't my intention.'

Fiona smiled. Warm, gracious, the smile she had been performing for a decade. 'Of course, Eloise. No offense taken.'

Dante's aura eased back. Around the table, shoulders dropped half an inch. Elder Marsh picked up his wine glass again. The conversation resumed.

Under the table, my hands were perfectly still in my lap.

Fourteen days. I just needed fourteen more days.

---

He found me in the hallway outside the dining room after the guests had gone.

I heard his footsteps behind me and stopped walking. I didn't turn around immediately. I gave myself one breath — just one — and then I turned.

Dante looked relaxed. That was the word for it. The loose-shouldered ease of a man who had just done something he considered necessary and felt good about how it went. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, the way he used to do in the first year, before the injections started.

'You handled that well,' he said.

'Thank you,' I said.

He walked me toward the sitting room at the end of the hall, his hand at the small of my back. I let him steer me. We sat on the couch by the window, and he poured two glasses of scotch from the decanter on the side table, and he handed me one, and I held it without drinking.

'I need to talk to you about the Ceremony,' he said. His voice had shifted — still warm, but with something underneath it now. The tone he used when he was about to tell me something he had already decided. 'The resource-transfer documents. I need your signature on all three sections, not just the territorial overview.'

'All three,' I repeated.

'The elders are already aligned. The allied packs expect a clean transfer.' He swirled his glass. 'This is the right move for Ironvale, Eloise. For our future. You understand that.'

'And if I don't sign?'

He looked at me. That long, steady eye contact, the tell I had learned to read. 'Then I would have to let the allied packs know that the Foster bloodline's heir is unable to manage her own legacy. That she needs — guidance. The kind of guidance that might require a formal council review of her Alpha standing.' He paused. 'Your wolf can't handle Alpha duties alone, sweetheart. Let me carry this for us. That's all I'm asking.'

Sixty million dollars. The Foster territory. My father's life's work, and his father's before him, and every acre of it signed over to a man who had spent three years calling me defective.

'I understand,' I said.

He smiled. Reached over and squeezed my hand. 'Good. I knew you'd see it clearly.'

'What should I wear?' I asked. 'To the Ceremony. I want to get it right.'

He considered this with the mild generosity of a man who has already won. 'Something modest. You don't want to draw attention from the real business, do you?'

'Of course not,' I said.

I nodded and smiled and held my untouched scotch, and I thought about the dress hanging in the back of my closet. Floor-length. Deep burgundy. The kind of dress my mother used to say was built for a woman who had something to say.

It was not modest.

But then, neither was what I was about to do.