After My Mate Helped My Sister Steal My Gift

The wolfsbane had a taste now.

It didn't used to. For years it had been just smoke—bitter, acrid, something I swallowed without thinking because there was no choice but to swallow it. But three weeks after Judson first descended those stairs, my mother started bringing it to me in a cup.

She knocked. That was new too. A soft rap against the iron door before she pushed it open, carrying a tray with a ceramic mug and a folded cloth napkin. Steam rose from the liquid inside, pale green and viscous, smelling like burnt sage and something underneath that made my stomach turn.

"Drink it all, sweetheart," she said, setting the tray on the stone ledge beside the altar. Her voice was gentle. It was always gentle when she was about to do something that would hurt me. "We have the Crescent Ridge delegation arriving tomorrow, and your father wants to make sure your voice is strong."

I looked at the cup. Then at her.

"My voice is always strong."

"I know." She smoothed my hair back from my forehead, her fingers light and careful. "But Annalise has been practicing so hard. She wants everything to be perfect. You understand, don't you?"

I understood that Annalise had demanded this. I understood that my father had agreed. I understood that the delegation from Crescent Ridge would be followed by envoys from Silverpine, then Ironveil, then three other packs whose names I had memorized from the ceremony schedule pinned to the wall above my cot.

Six performances in eight days.

I picked up the cup. The liquid was still hot enough to scald, but I drank it in four swallows because hesitating only made her wait, and her waiting made the silence stretch until I could feel her watching me the way you watch something you're afraid might break.

The wolfsbane hit my bloodstream before I set the cup down.

It was different this time. Heavier. The old doses had made my wolf drowsy, a distant presence I could barely feel. This one crushed her flat. The faint stirring I'd felt when Judson's scent first reached me—the whisper of *mate* that had cracked something open inside my chest—went silent.

Completely silent.

I pressed my thumb against the inside of my wrist. Three beats. Four. The rhythm felt wrong. My pulse was too slow.

"It will only be a little longer," my mother said softly. She was still stroking my hair. "Once the delegations are finished, things will settle. You'll see."

I wanted to ask her what she thought would settle. Whether she believed her own lie. Whether she had ever looked at Annalise standing in the torchlight and wondered whose voice was really filling the hall.

But my tongue was thick, and the room was tilting, and all I could do was nod.

She kissed my forehead before she left. The lock turned with a soft click.

I told myself it didn't matter. The wolf-stir was gone, yes, but I had Judson. I had the cedar-and-honey scent that made my body sing even when my wolf couldn't. I had his visits, his journal, the bone token I kept tucked inside my sleeve. He had promised to take me to New York. He had promised I would never sing in the dark again.

I could survive a few more performances. I had survived nineteen years.

What was eight more days?

---

The Crescent Ridge ceremony was flawless.

I knew because the applause lasted longer than usual, and when the Deltas came to unlock my cuffs afterward, one of them was grinning. "Your sister outdid herself tonight," he said. "Alpha Ronan's talking about a formal alliance. You should be proud."

I was not proud.

I was dizzy. My throat was raw from holding notes I could barely feel leaving my body, and my wrists were bleeding again where the cuffs had caught me when my knees buckled halfway through the third movement. But I nodded, because nodding was easier than speaking, and the Delta didn't wait for an answer anyway.

Judson came down two hours later.

I heard his boots on the stairs and felt my pulse jump despite the wolfsbane still dragging at my veins. He was early. He usually waited until the guests had cleared the hall, but tonight he must have slipped away before the final toasts.

I stood. Smoothed my dress. Tried to look like someone worth crossing a crowded hall for.

He stopped in the doorway. His hazel eyes scanned the chamber—the altar, the cuffs hanging open, the bloodstains on the stone I hadn't had time to scrub away—and something in his expression shifted. Not anger. Something colder.

Calculation.

"They're increasing your doses," he said. It wasn't a question.

I nodded.

"How much?"

"I don't know. My mother brings it. I drink it."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he crossed the chamber and cupped my face in both hands, tilting my chin up so I had to meet his eyes. The cedar-and-honey scent wrapped around me, thick and warm, and I leaned into it without thinking.

"Listen to me," he said quietly. "I'm meeting with your father tomorrow night. We're going to discuss our future. Yours and mine. I need you to trust me a little longer."

"I do trust you."

"Good." He pressed his forehead to mine. His breath was warm against my mouth. "Because once we leave here, none of this will matter. Not the chamber. Not the wolfsbane. Not Annalise. You'll be mine, and I'll make sure no one ever locks you in the dark again."

I believed him.

I believed him because I had no other choice, because the alternative was a life spent singing for a sister who would never say my name, because the cedar-and-honey scent was the only thing left in my world that felt like it belonged to me.

I believed him because I was nineteen, and wolfless, and so desperately lonely that I would have believed anyone who descended those stairs and called me by my name.

He kissed my forehead. Then he left.

I did not know, as I listened to his boots fade up the stone steps, that it would be the last time I let myself believe anything he said.