My Mate Poisoned Me to Steal My Birthright

The champagne flutes caught the chandelier light like a thousand tiny suns, and I smiled through every single one of them.

That was the job. That was always the job.

I am Athena Bishop, Luna of the Dark Moon Pack, and tonight was our mating anniversary gala. Five years of what the pack called a blessed union—Kane's strength, my grace, two bloodlines woven together by the Moon Goddess herself. The great hall smelled of jasmine garlands and roasted boar, and somewhere behind me, a string quartet played something soft and romantic that I couldn't quite hear over the sound of my own heartbeat.

I pressed my fingertips to the bite mark on my neck without thinking. An old habit.

The warmth that used to radiate from that spot—that quiet, steady pulse of the bond—was barely there tonight. Thin. Like a candle burning down to its last inch of wick. I told myself it was the stress of the upcoming Alpha Summit. I told myself Kane was simply distracted by pack business.

I told myself a lot of things.

"Luna Athena." Mira, one of the younger Deltas, dipped her head as I passed. "Have you seen the Alpha? It's nearly time for the toast."

"He's nearby," I said, keeping my voice light. "I'll find him."

She smiled, reassured. That was the other part of the job—making everyone feel like everything was fine, even when the bond running through your chest felt like a phone call no one was answering.

I moved through the crowd, nodding, touching shoulders, laughing at the right moments. Fifteen feet of silk train whispered behind me. The ceremonial white was Kane's preference—he said it made me look like what a Luna should be. I used to find that romantic.

Kane's scent hit me on the second-floor landing. Pine and dark amber, familiar as my own skin. I followed it the way I always had, instinctively, the bond pulling me like a thread.

And then I smelled something else.

Sweet. Thick. Cloying in the way that cheap perfume gets when it's sprayed over something you're trying to hide. Floral, but wrong—like roses left in stagnant water.

Skyla Fox.

I knew her scent. Every wolf in the pack did. She was an Omega who worked in the pack house, always hovering at the edges of rooms Kane occupied, always smiling that particular smile at him. I had noticed. I had dismissed it. I had told myself I was imagining things, that Kane would never—

The restricted corridor. His private office.

I stopped outside the door.

Every rational part of me said to walk away. To go back downstairs. To give the toast, cut the cake, and deal with this later, quietly, the way a Luna handles things.

But my wolf had gone very, very still inside me. Not calm. Coiled.

I pressed my ear to the wood.

Kane's voice first, low and amused. "—doesn't even notice. She floats around down there in her white dress, playing queen, completely oblivious. Frigid as ever."

A soft laugh. Hers. "She always did care more about appearances than anything real."

The clink of glass.

Then Skyla again, quieter: "Is the dosage ready? For tomorrow's tea, before the Summit?"

"Concentrated wolfsbane and silver, dissolved in the blend she always requests." Kane's voice was so casual. So utterly, terrifyingly casual. "By the time the opening ceremony starts, she'll be fighting her shift in front of every Alpha on the continent. They'll see exactly what I've been telling them—that she's unstable. Dangerous. Unfit."

"And then?"

"And then I reject her in front of the Council, void the mating contract, and her family's territorial claim dies with the bond." A pause. The sound of fabric shifting. "It's almost too easy."

I don't remember walking to the guest bathroom at the end of the hall. I don't remember locking the door.

I remember the cold tile against my knees. I remember my body deciding, without my permission, to empty itself of everything—the champagne, the canapés, five years of a life I had built around a man who was currently discussing the most efficient way to destroy me.

My wolf screamed. Not a sound—a sensation, something tearing through my ribs from the inside, claws raking against my control, demanding I go back through that door and—

"Stop."

I said it out loud. To her. To myself.

I gripped the edge of the sink and pulled myself upright.

The mirror showed me a woman in white with silver flashing in her eyes, jaw clenched so hard it ached, mascara threatening at the corners but not—not yet—falling.

Kane wanted feral. Kane was counting on feral.

I breathed in. I breathed out. I watched the silver fade from my irises, replaced by something colder and far more dangerous.

He wanted to destroy me in front of the Council.

I was going to let him try.