My Mate Poisoned Me for His Mistress

Twenty-nine days before my scheduled death, I woke to the scent of another woman’s sweat on my mate’s skin.

The mattress dipped beneath a double weight. I couldn't open my eyes. My limbs were lead, pinned flat under a heavy down blanket. But my senses, dulled for three months by the slow drip in my arm, flickered back to life like a dying bulb.

Cash’s voice came from just above my pillow, low and lazy.

"Stop fussing, Aubrey. She can’t feel a thing."

A soft laugh followed. Aubrey Ruiz. Cash’s Beta-assistant.

"I'm not fussing," Aubrey whispered. Her hand smoothed over my forehead, her fingertips trailing with a possessive, sickening tenderness down to my cheek. "I just like looking at her. She looks so peaceful. Like she’s already gone."

Beneath Aubrey's vanilla perfume, I smelled the sharp, sour musk of fresh friction—and something worse. A puncture mark. A second bite. Cash had marked her. Pack law forbade a second mark while the true mate lived, but there it was, reeking of fresh blood and claiming saliva right beside my head.

Through the mate bond in my chest, Cash’s emotions didn't pulse with love or sorrow. It felt hollow and freezing, like an open door in an empty cellar. He didn't care that I was dying. He had planned it.

"Healer Vance increases the wolfsbane tomorrow morning," Cash said, shifting his weight. Fabric rustled as he pulled his shirt back on. "By the night of the Mate Ceremony, her wolf will be completely dissolved. Her heart will give out twenty-four hours later. Clean. Natural complications from the rogue ambush."

"And when do I get to move into the Luna suite?" Aubrey asked.

"After the funeral," Cash replied without missing a beat. "The Silvercrest elders need to see me mourn my heroic mate first. Then we announce our pairing as a tragic necessity for pack stability."

Nausea clawed at my throat. Every instinct screamed to tear my eyes open, to summon claws and rip out his throat. But I clamped down. I didn't twitch. I didn't breathe.

Suddenly, Cash stopped.

His heavy boots creaked against the floorboards as he stepped closer. Two rough fingers pressed against the side of my neck, right over my carotid artery. He was checking my pulse.

My heart kicked against my ribs in pure panic.

*No. Flat. Go flat.*

Inside my skull, I hummed the rhythm of the lullaby my mother used to sing when Parker and I had night terrors as pups. *One, two, slow and deep. Quiet river, go to sleep.*

My pulse slowed. One beat. Two. A dull, comatose drag.

Cash held his fingers there for five agonizing seconds. Then he pulled away, wiping his hand on his jeans.

"She's deep under," he said. "The wolfsbane does its job."

Aubrey chuckled and kissed his jaw. In the darkness of my mind, a low, bloody snarl ripped through the fog.

It was my wolf.

She had been silent since the ambush, poisoned into submission. But she wasn't dead. Her voice was thin, raspy like dry leaves, but sharp as a razor: *Stay still. Catalog everything. We survive this together.*

When the door clicked shut, leaving me alone, I didn't cry. Tears were useless. Instead, I worked.

I forced my thumb to move a millimeter to the left. The smooth curve of Parker’s carved wolf-claw pendant rested against my collarbone, right where my mother had tucked it before they banned visitors. I turned the pendant over against my skin, anchoring my mind.

I counted the drip of the IV. One drop every four seconds.

I memorized the footsteps in the hall. Heavy, limping stride: Healer Vance. Quick, clicking heels: Aubrey. The timing between checks: exactly three hours.

The next afternoon, Cash put on his show.

He didn't know I was awake when he entered with two guards and rolled my bed closer to the tall bay window. He arranged my limp hands carefully over the white fur throw, turning my head so the pale sunlight caught the hollows of my cheeks. He was setting a stage.

The door opened, and a deep, unfamiliar Alpha aura pressed into the room.

"Cash," a gruff voice said.

"Alpha Darian," Cash answered. His voice cracked with perfectly rehearsed despair. He crossed the room, sank into the chair beside my bed, and took my cold hand in his. He pressed his other palm over the mate mark on his chest, squeezing his eyes shut. "Thank you for coming. I know the Silvercrest delegation is busy, but... I wanted you to see her."

Darian Cole, Alpha of the powerful Silvercrest Pack, stood at the foot of my bed. I could smell the mountain pine on his coat.

"She saved your life in that ambush, didn't she?" Darian asked softly.

"She threw herself between me and the rogue's blade," Cash choked out, his shoulders shaking with a sob that never reached his eyes. "And her brother died covering our flank. She is my heart, Darian. If the Moon Goddess takes her, I don't know how I'll lead Ironveil. But we must honor her sacrifice. The public Mate Ceremony next month... I want to seal our pack alliance then. In her honor. Before she slips away."

"You have my word, Cash," Darian said, his voice thick with sympathy. "Silvercrest will sign the treaty. Ironveil will have our full military backing."

"Thank you, brother," Cash murmured.

Two minutes later, the Silvercrest Alpha left.

The instant the latch clicked, Cash dropped my hand. It hit the mattress like dead meat.

The fake sorrow vanished from his face. He walked over to the mahogany desk, pulled out a small black leather ledger, and made a quick note with a silver pen. He closed it with a snap, whistled a tune under his breath, and walked out.

An hour later, Healer Vance arrived alone.

He carried a fresh IV bag filled with clear fluid, but the smell made my stomach heave—the bitter, metallic tang of concentrated wolfsbane.

"Time for your medicine, Luna," Vance muttered.

He swapped the bags. As the freezing liquid hit my vein, fire shot up my arm and straight into my core. My wolf thrashed inside me, screaming in agony as the poison burned her coat, but I held my jaw slack. I kept my breathing shallow, rhythmic, and dead.

"Wolf-signature degrading on schedule," Vance mumbled, checking his tablet.

He tossed the plastic wrapper of the concentrated dosage into the wastebasket by my bedside, then turned his back to adjust the flow valve on the pole.

In that single second, my hand moved.

My fingers shot out, hooked the edge of the discarded wrapper from the rim of the bin, and dragged it beneath the folds of the mattress. My thumb slid it deep into the seam, wedging the printed label—stamped with Cash’s personal Alpha clearance code and the lethal dosage—right next to Parker’s pendant.

Hard evidence. Signed in ink.

Vance turned back, completely oblivious, and picked up his clipboard. He walked to the doorway and paused, calling out to the hall.

Through the crack of the open door, I saw Cash standing under the corridor light, holding a fountain pen over the public Mate Ceremony invitation list.

"Vance," Cash called out, his voice brisk and sharp. "Double the evening dose starting tonight. Let's finish this."