After My Mate Let His Mistress Slash My Throat

The world tilted under the weight of my own paws.

Blood poured hot down my neck where Brinley’s silver blade had cut, sizzling against my new fur like grease in a pan. My breath came out in jagged, white clouds. I wanted to tear Remington apart, but my bones felt like melted glass. A first shift at twenty-two was tearing my body to pieces from the inside out.

A second car door slammed.

A man stepped out of the lead SUV. He was tall, his broad shoulders wrapped in a dark coat, radiating an aura so cold and lethal it sucked the remaining warmth right out of the air. Prince Caelan Creed. He smelled of mountain cedar and frost, clean and dangerous.

Remington was still on his knees in the mud. He tried to push himself up, his face twisted in humiliation.

"This is Shadowvale land!" Remington choked out. He tried to summon his Alpha command, but his voice cracked, coming out like a frightened pup’s whine. "You have no right to cross our borders—"

Caelan didn't even break his stride. He turned his head and gave Remington a single, unblinking look.

The air grew impossibly heavy. Remington’s mouth snapped shut. His chest hit the frozen dirt as Caelan’s unspoken power crushed what was left of his pride.

"Secure the perimeter," Caelan ordered quietly. Royal guards moved past him in a blur of black tactical gear. "Nobody leaves. If an Alpha twitches, put him down."

My vision blurred. The silver in my veins burned too hot. My knees gave out, and my massive Lycan body began to fall.

Before I struck the stone, arms caught me.

King Emerson didn't care about the blood or the sheer, crushing weight of a three-meter beast. He wrapped his arms around my neck, pulling my massive head against his chest.

"I've got you," he whispered, his deep voice shaking with twenty-two years of grief. "I've got you, my girl."

The fight left me. My body snapped backward, bones shrinking and cracking as the shift reversed. Pain dragged me into pitch black.

***

I woke to the smell of fresh snow and bitter herbs.

I wasn't on the stone floor of the Shadowvale kitchen. I was lying in a massive bed with crisp white sheets. A soft bandage was wrapped snugly around my throat.

Across the room, tall glass windows looked out over jagged, snow-capped mountains. King Emerson stood by the glass, his broad back tense, his hands clasped behind him. Near the foot of my bed, a woman with graying hair in a pristine white coat was holding up three vials of dark red liquid.

Chief Healer Evelyn Ross.

"She's awake, Your Majesty," Evelyn said softly.

Emerson turned so fast the hem of his coat whipped the air. The golden glow in his eyes softened the moment he looked at me. "Juliana."

I tried to speak, but my throat was raw. "Where..."

"My mountain stronghold," Emerson said, crossing the room to sit carefully on the edge of the mattress. His large, scarred hand hovered near mine, hesitant, as if he was terrified I might vanish into smoke. "You're safe. Nobody will ever touch you again."

"Your Majesty," Evelyn interrupted, her tone grave. She held out a silver tray holding the vials. "You need to see this."

Emerson looked at her, his jaw tightening. "Tell me."

"Her bloodwork is an outrage," Evelyn said, her voice shaking with quiet fury. "The Princess was never wolfless. Her Lycan blood was screaming to wake up."

My heart gave a sudden, hard thud against my ribs. "What?"

"Refined wolfsbane," Evelyn said plainly. "A high-grade synthetic blend, dosed in micro-quantities over twelve to fourteen months. Mixed into food or tea. It wouldn't kill a full-grown wolf, but for an unshifted female? It paralyzed her shifting glands. It trapped her beast inside her marrow."

A deafening silence fell over the room.

I stared at the vials. All those mornings in the pack house. The herbal tea Brinley had so sweetly offered to make for me every week while I scrubbed the halls. *“To help with your fatigue, Juliana.”*

They knew.

Emerson didn't shout. The temperature in the suite simply plummeted.

A suffocating, ancient pressure burst from his chest. The glass in the windows groaned, spider-webbing with thin cracks. Evelyn and the two junior healers dropped to both knees instantly, gasping for breath beneath the King's fury.

"They kept my daughter in a cage," Emerson said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "In her own skin."

The heavy wooden door clicked open. Prince Caelan stepped inside, unbothered by the crushing pressure in the room. He held a secure tablet in his hand.

"Father," Caelan said. His golden eyes flicked to me for half a second, assessing and steady, before settling on the King. "Interrogations have begun on Shadowvale grounds."

"Do not spare them," Emerson ordered, his voice vibrating through the floorboards. "Find whoever poisoned her. Bring me their hands."

"I don't need their hands," Caelan replied flatly. "I already have the throat."

***

Caelan set the tablet on the bedside table and tapped the screen. A live feed flickered to life.

It was the Shadowvale Alpha office. The pack's ranked members were lined up outside under heavy guard, but inside the room, Pack Healer Corin Vance was sitting in a wooden chair.

Or rather, sliding off it.

Corin was trembling so violently his spectacles were crooked on his nose. A trickle of dark blood leaked from his left nostril. He hadn't even been touched; the sheer aura radiating from the royal interrogators in the room was enough to rupture his blood vessels.

A royal guard threw a stack of leather-bound notebooks onto the mahogany desk.

"I... I didn't want to!" Corin’s voice came through the tablet's speaker, shrill and weeping. He dropped to the floor, pressing his forehead into the rug. "Alpha Remington said she was just an orphan! He said she carried an illegal bloodline that would bring the Crown's wrath down on the pack!"

"Speak clearly," the guard barked.

"Brinley paid me!" Corin sobbed, clutching at his own collar. "She brought the poison from the southern black markets! Refined wolfsbane extract. I forged her pack transfer documents so Remington could claim her at the altar! And I... I altered the medical charts."

My breath hitched in my chest.

"What charts?" the guard demanded.

"Juliana's," Corin wept, shaking with terror. "I wrote that her womb was barren and her shifting biology was dead. So Remington would have a pack-approved excuse to reject her publicly without the elders questioning his honor. The journals... the journals have the exact dosages! Every drop she was given! It's all there!"

I closed my eyes. Tears burned behind my lids, but I forced them back.

Two years of humiliation. Two years of believing I was broken, that I was a burden Remington was saintly enough to keep around.

It had all been poison.

I looked down at my hands. Beneath the pale skin, the silver flame of my wolf purred—alive, awake, and hungry.