After My Mate Poisoned My Wolf

The banquet hall was full.

I counted the tables as I walked through the doors—twelve in all, draped in white linen, silver candelabras at the center of each one. The pack elite sat in clusters, dressed in formal evening wear that probably cost more than my entire seven years of mission bounties combined. The air smelled like roasted meat and wine and expensive perfume.

And underneath it all, layered so thick I could taste it on my tongue, was Leon's scent mixed with hers.

Fiona stood near the head table, one hand resting lightly on Zayden's shoulder. My son. He was wearing a suit. His hair was combed back. He looked older than thirteen. He looked like someone I didn't know.

The room went quiet as I stepped inside.

I didn't blame them for staring. I was filthy. My patrol gear was stiff with dried blood and mud. My hair hung in matted tangles down my back. The fever made my skin feel too tight, too hot. I probably looked like exactly what they'd been told I was.

A rogue who didn't belong here.

Leon rose from his seat at the head table. He was wearing a dark suit, perfectly tailored. His hair was swept back. He looked every inch the powerful Alpha the gazette had called him. The most dominant wolf on the West Coast.

He looked at me like I was a problem that needed solving.

"Bianca," he said. His voice carried across the hall without effort. "You've returned."

I opened my mouth to speak.

That's when Zayden moved.

He stepped forward, out from under Fiona's hand, and his face twisted into something I didn't recognize. Rage. Disgust. Something worse than either.

"Get out," he said.

I took a step toward him. "Zayden, I need to—"

"I said get out!"

He shoved me.

Hard.

I wasn't ready for it. My legs were already shaking from the fever. The silver wound in my ribs screamed as I stumbled backward, and my palms hit the stone floor before I could catch myself. Pain shot up through my wrists. The impact jarred my teeth.

I didn't go down.

I stayed on my hands and knees, breathing hard, staring at the stone floor. Somewhere behind me, I heard a woman gasp. No one moved to help me up.

Zayden stood over me, his chest heaving, his hands still clenched into fists.

"You don't get to come back here," he said. His voice cracked. "You abandoned us. You're nothing. You're a filthy rogue, and you don't belong in this pack."

I looked up at him.

His eyes were the same color as mine. I used to hold him when he was small enough to fit in the crook of my arm. I used to sing to him. I carved wooden wolves for him in Alaska, by firelight, after missions that nearly killed me, because I wanted him to know I was still thinking of him.

Fiona burned every single one.

I didn't know that yet. But I would.

"Zayden," I said quietly. "Please listen—"

"Enough."

Leon's voice cut through the hall like a blade.

He didn't shout. He didn't need to.

The Alpha aura hit me like a physical wave—crushing, suffocating, pinning me to the floor with the weight of his authority. My wolf tried to rise, tried to push back, but the wolfsbane was still in my system. She couldn't surface. She couldn't breathe.

I stayed on my knees.

Leon walked down from the head table, slow and deliberate, his footsteps echoing in the silence. He stopped three feet away from me. Close enough that I could smell Fiona's mark on his skin, layered so deep it had become part of him.

He looked down at me.

And then he spoke the words I had been halfway expecting since the moment I walked through the gates.

"I, Leon, Alpha of the Ironveil Pack, reject you, Bianca, as my mate and Luna."

The mate mark on my neck went cold.

Not gradually. Not like something cooling over time.

All at once. Like a live coal replaced with ice.

I pressed my hand to it instinctively, and the bond—thin, frayed, barely a thread—snapped. I felt it break. I felt the place where it used to live go hollow and empty, a scar that would never fill.

My aura cracked.

I didn't see it, but I felt it—a fracture line running through the air around my body, visible to every wolf in the hall. A few of them flinched. One woman at the nearest table looked away.

Leon straightened his cuffs.

"You are no longer Luna of this pack," he said. His voice was calm. Professional. Like he was conducting pack business. "You will sign the renunciation documents before you leave the territory. My Gamma will escort you to the border."

He pulled something from his pocket—a small glass vial, no bigger than my thumb. Healing salve. Low-grade. The kind you'd give to a Delta with a sprained ankle.

He tossed it at my feet.

It rolled across the stone and stopped an inch from my knee.

"For your wound," he said.

Then he turned his back on me and walked back to the head table.

Fiona was smiling.

Zayden wouldn't look at me.

The Gamma stepped forward—Marcus, Leon's second. I knew him. He used to nod to me in the hallways. Now he looked at me like I was a stranger.

"Come on," he said quietly. "Let's go."

I picked up the vial.

I stood.

My legs shook, but they held.

I looked at Leon one last time. He was already seated, already lifting his wine glass, already accepting congratulations from the wolves at his table.

Like I had never been there at all.

I turned and walked out.

My wolf didn't make a sound.

But the wolfsbane tin was still in my pocket.

And the gazette was still in my pocket.

And I was still walking.