After My Mate Poisoned My Mother for Power

I waited until midnight to open the radio transceiver again.

The pack house had finally gone quiet. I sat at my small wooden desk, smoothing out the crumpled supply manifests Petra had pressed into my hands. One by one, I scanned the pages through the encrypted Blackthorn link.

Along with the files, I typed out a concise summary of the day. I documented Damon’s whisper campaign through the pack mind-link and his attempt to physically lock me out of the administrative records. At the bottom, I appended a single analytical note:

*The redirected wolfsbane antidote stores and stripped training stipends follow the exact fiscal routing pattern of the past six years. Every path converges on external accounts beyond Ironveil’s borders. Run the traces.*

I hit send. The small antenna whined softly against the silence of my room.

Within forty minutes, the tiny console pulsed green. Grantham’s acknowledgment was characteristically spare:

*Operatives cross-referencing now.*

Then the cursor blinked, hesitating for five seconds. A secondary transmission came through—just three words glowing against the dark screen:

*Your mother’s cipher.*

I stared at the letters until the green light burned into my retinas.

Grantham had partially decoded Evelyn’s notation system. My mother had been dead for weeks, her ashes kicked across floorboards by an arrogant interloper, yet she was still speaking from the dark. The answers she had hidden to protect me were finally surfacing.

A cold certainty settled over me. I shut down the unit and waited for dawn.

The first intelligence packet from Grantham’s lead operative, Soren Ashby, arrived before sunrise.

I unlocked the decrypted file on my laptop, scrolling through foreign bank statements, corporate registries, and offshore accounts. The rogue-controlled accounts Reed had been quietly feeding with Ironveil's wealth were all registered under a single name: Camilla Bell.

The audit trail was meticulous. Every disbursement authorization bore Camilla's signature. The account access codes were tied to her personal Silvercrest Pack identity. There was even a registered deed of transfer for prime border property, signed in her sharp, looping handwriting.

Four years of systematic embezzlement, laid out in black and white.

Reed hadn't just stolen from the pack I built for him. He had constructed an evidence cage around Camilla before she even realized she was inside it.

She had strutted into my mother’s memorial in designer boots, flanked by mercenaries she thought Reed bought for her honor. She had called me a packless fraud while clinging to an Alpha she believed was her fated mate. But in Reed’s grand design, Camilla was never a future Luna. She was the fall guy. The moment an allied Alpha or pack auditor questioned the missing millions, Reed would present this exact paper trail, play the heartbroken leader betrayed by an ambitious lover, and watch the Lycan Council execute her in his place.

I stared at Camilla's name on the screen.

I thought of my mother’s ashes on the floor. I thought of my bloody hands scooping gray dust from shattered moonstone while Camilla laughed.

I felt no pity for her. I felt nothing at all.

I copied the packet onto an encrypted flash drive, hid it inside the lining of my boot, and closed the screen. There was more to come, and I needed every piece.

Two days later, the second packet dropped.

It was mid-afternoon. I was down in the pack house kitchen, standing by the stove while a kettle came to a slow boil. The room was empty. The Omegas and kitchen hands had scattered the moment I walked in, terrified of being seen anywhere near the wolfless Luna Damon had marked as an outcast.

My phone buzzed in my apron pocket—a compressed burst signal routed directly through Soren Ashby.

I leaned against the cold stainless steel counter, tapped the screen, and opened the medical attachment.

Grantham’s royal healer had completed the forensic analysis on the blood vials I had smuggled out in my mother’s iron box. The conclusions were clinical, precise, and horrifying:

*Subject sustained progressive organ collapse resulting from continuous wolfsbane micro-dosing over an estimated seven-month period. Delivery method was designed to mimic natural degenerative organ failure.*

*Chemical profile reveals a customized 3:1 alkaloid ratio.*

Below the medical data, Soren had typed a single, unvarnished sentence:

*This specific ratio was developed exclusively by Evelyn Duncan for incapacitating enemy scouts. Only someone personally trained by your mother could replicate this compound sequence.*

The air went still in my chest.

For seven months, Reed had walked into my mother’s room every single night. He had carried a mug of her vitality tonic, smiling that gentle, boyish smile that had fooled me for six years. He had kissed her forehead, sat by her bed, and held her hand while she drank. He had watched her cough blood into her blankets and called it the tragic toll of old age.

He hadn't just murdered her. He had stolen her own remedy, turned it into poison, and fed it to her day by day.

I read the line a second time. Then a third.

My hands didn't shake. I didn't cry. The burning grief that had hollowed me out for weeks suddenly hardened, turning into something cold, heavy, and lethal.

I locked my phone and slid it back into my pocket.

I left the kettle on the stove and walked upstairs to my room. I picked up the small iron box from beneath the floor, placed it securely inside my leather traveling satchel, and buckled the straps shut.

Then I walked over to the tall bedroom window.

Out beyond the Ironveil fences, the sun was sinking behind the jagged ridge of the mountains. A pale, sharp moon was climbing into the twilight, casting a cold silver wash over the frosted pines. Everything Reed Hudson owned—the high stone walls, the fortified armory, the sprawling territory—had been bought with my family's fortune and watered with my mother's blood.

He thought he had stripped me bare. He thought I was an empty shell waiting for his mercy.

Deep inside the marrow of my bones, the dormant wolf stirred.

She did not rage. She did not whine.

Her massive, silver-white presence rose within my chest, towering and immovable, baring long phantom fangs against the dark. She looked out at the rising moon and let out a low, vibrating growl that hummed through my veins.

Certain. Deadly. Patient as stone.