My Mate Fed Me Wolfsbane for Nine Years

The bond broke at 10:14 on a Tuesday evening, though I didn't know it yet. I was folding laundry in the pack house when Taytum stumbled through the door.

She wasn't crying. That was the first thing that told me something was wrong.

My five-year-old daughter crossed the threshold with her small fists clenched at her sides, her face pale, her dress torn at the shoulder. She walked straight to me and pressed herself against my legs without a word.

"Taytum?" I dropped the shirt I was holding and crouched down. "Baby, what happened?"

She turned slowly, and I saw her back.

Claw marks. Four parallel gashes raked across her shoulder blades, the fabric of her dress soaked dark with blood. My hands moved before my brain caught up—I stripped the dress over her head as carefully as I could, and that's when I saw the rest of it.

Puncture wounds. Small, precise, dotting both her arms like someone had been testing a pattern. The skin around each mark was faintly discolored, the edges inflamed in a way that made my stomach drop.

Wolfsbane.

"Who did this?" My voice came out steady. I pressed my thumb hard against the inside of my left wrist, the old reflex, the one that kept my hands from shaking. "Taytum, I need you to tell me who did this."

She looked up at me with those wide brown eyes—Zachary's eyes—and whispered, "The other pups held me down. Finnley used the hurting needles."

Finnley Vane. Rachel's son.

The rage that rose in my chest was unlike anything I had allowed myself in ten years. It was clean and cold and absolute. I wrapped a blanket around Taytum's shoulders, lifted her into my arms, and walked straight out the door.

The elder hall was a ten-minute walk across the pack grounds. I made it in six.

The council chamber smelled like old wood and older authority. Five elders sat around the long table, mid-discussion about something that stopped the moment I pushed the door open. Gareth Wills—the eldest, the one I'd always thought of as fair—looked up first.

"Luna Alice," he said carefully. "We weren't expecting—"

I laid Taytum on the table.

Not beside it. On it. Right in the center, where her small body and the blood-soaked blanket and the needle marks on her arms were impossible to ignore.

"Look at her," I said.

Silence.

"I am invoking my Luna authority," I continued, and my voice didn't shake once. "I want the names of every wolf responsible for this. I want immediate pack protection orders for my daughter. And I want it now."

Elder Wills wouldn't meet my eyes. He looked at Taytum, then at his hands, then at the far wall.

Elder Corin, seated to his left, cleared his throat. "Luna, this is... a serious matter. But Alpha Zachary is attending to urgent pack matters tonight, and we cannot—"

"Then get him here."

"—issue protection orders without the Alpha's direct approval. These matters must go through proper channels."

Proper channels.

I reached for the mate bond, the invisible thread that had connected me to Zachary since the night he marked me. I pushed my awareness down the link, felt it reach him—felt him on the other end, alive and awake and aware.

And then I felt him close it.

Deliberately. Like shutting a door.

The coldness of that severed connection hit me harder than anything the elders had said. My daughter was bleeding on a council table, and my mate had just chosen not to answer.

I pulled my awareness back and looked at each elder in turn.

"Then I'm calling an emergency pack assembly," I said. "Tomorrow evening. Seven o'clock. On record."

Elder Wills opened his mouth. Closed it.

I lifted Taytum back into my arms, blanket and all, and walked out before anyone could object.

Back in our quarters, I sat Taytum on the bathroom counter and cleaned the wounds with hands that didn't shake because I wouldn't let them. The claw marks were shallow—they'd heal. But the needle punctures worried me. I dabbed each one with antiseptic, and as I leaned closer, I caught the scent.

Wolfsbane residue. Faint, bitter, unmistakable.

And familiar.

I froze.

Not from the training yards. Not from rogue encounters. From somewhere closer. Somewhere I couldn't place, but the recognition sat in my chest like a splinter I couldn't reach.

I dismissed it. Exhaustion. Stress. I was imagining things.

I wrapped Taytum in clean bandages, pulled her favorite blanket around her shoulders, and tucked the smooth stone—the "moon piece" she'd carried since she was three—into her small hand.

"You're safe now," I whispered, brushing her hair back from her forehead. "I promise."

She fell asleep within minutes, her breathing soft and even.

I sat in the chair beside her bed and waited for Zachary's footsteps in the hall.

He didn't come home.

I sat in the dark, listening to my daughter breathe, and tried not to think about the way the bond had felt when he closed it. Tried not to think about the wolfsbane scent I couldn't place. Tried not to think about the elders' eyes sliding away from mine.

But the splinter in my chest was still there.

And it was starting to dig deeper.