After My Mate Poisoned My Wolf

I made it to the pack house steps before my legs gave out.

Not all the way. Just enough that I had to catch myself on the stone railing, one hand pressed flat against the cold surface while my ribs screamed and the fever turned everything too bright, too sharp. The silver was winning. I could feel it spreading through my bloodstream like ice water, slow and deliberate.

I didn't have much time.

I set my patrol pack down on the top step. My hands were steadier than they should have been. Maybe that was the fever. Maybe it was something else. I unzipped the interior lining—the hidden pocket I'd sewn in myself seven years ago, back when I still thought I'd need a place to keep things safe—and pulled out the two documents I'd been carrying since Alaska.

The Luna renunciation form. The parental severance pact.

Both pre-prepared under Ironveil pack law. Both waiting for my signature.

I'd known, somewhere deep down, that I might need them. I just hadn't let myself think about it until the herbalist showed me that requisition log with Fiona's name at the top.

I sat down on the step. Pulled a pen from my pocket. And signed.

My handwriting didn't shake. Not once. I wrote my name in clear, even strokes on both documents, right where the pack law required it. Then I folded them carefully and set them on the top step where they'd be found before morning.

I wasn't suppressing grief. I'd finished grieving somewhere between the gazette and the herbalist's annex. This was just paperwork.

I pulled the wolfsbane tin from my pocket and set it beside the signed pacts. Let them figure out what it meant. Let Leon see it and know exactly how long the lie had lasted.

Then I stood up, shouldered my pack, and walked north toward the border.

My wolf was silent inside me. She'd been silent since the rejection. But I could feel her there, pressed flat against the inside of my ribs, like something waiting.

I didn't look back.

---

Two hundred meters past the territorial boundary, I went down.

Not gradually. Not like exhaustion finally catching up. All at once. My legs stopped working, and I pitched forward into the snow face-first, and the impact drove the air out of my lungs in a single sharp gasp.

The silver reached my bloodstream in full.

I felt it happen. Felt the sepsis spread through my veins like fire, like something alive and hungry. My vision blurred. My chest seized. I couldn't breathe.

I tried to push myself up. My arms wouldn't hold.

I was going to die here.

In the snow. Two hundred meters past the border of a pack that didn't want me. Alone.

My blood soaked into the frozen earth beneath me—dark, too dark, laced with silver and something else I didn't have a name for.

And then my wolf moved.

Not muffled. Not suppressed. Not strangled.

She erupted.

Golden light cracked out of my body from the inside. I felt it split through my skin, through the air, through the ice beneath me. The ground fractured in a radial pattern, spiderwebbing out from where I lay. The light was so bright I could see it through my closed eyelids.

My wolf didn't howl. She roared.

The sound wasn't audible—not with ears. But I felt it move through the territory like a shockwave, rolling out in every direction, pressing down on every wolf within miles. A scent flooded the air. Ancient. Enormous. Nothing like the thin, half-starved scent I'd carried for seven years.

Lycan-royal.

I didn't understand. I didn't have time to understand.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard wolves drop to their knees. I heard someone shout. Inside the pack house—far away now, but still close enough that my wolf could sense it—Fiona went completely still, her hand flying to the Luna pendant at her throat.

The golden light pulsed once more, then faded.

I lay in the snow, breathing in shallow gasps, and my wolf—fully awake for the first time in seven years—lifted her head inside me.

*Not yet,* she said. Her voice was clear. Strong. Nothing like the muffled whisper I'd been hearing through the wolfsbane. *But soon.*

Then the world went dark.

---

I woke to the sound of engines.

Not pack vehicles. These were heavier. Military-grade. I forced my eyes open and saw headlights cutting through the snow, two armored SUVs pulling up to the border with the kind of precision that said they'd done this before.

Lycan Crown operatives.

I tried to sit up. My body wouldn't move.

Two figures stepped out of the lead vehicle—both wearing tactical gear, both moving with the controlled efficiency of trained soldiers. One of them knelt beside me, gloved hands checking my pulse, my breathing, the silver-laced wound in my ribs.

"Scent confirmed," he said into his radio. His voice was calm. Professional. "Lycan-royal, first-tier. Stage-four silver sepsis. We're bringing her in."

I tried to speak. My throat wouldn't work.

The operative looked down at me. His face was hard to make out through the haze, but his voice was steady. "Don't try to talk. You're safe now. It's over."

He lifted me—carefully, like I might break—and carried me to the vehicle. The interior was warm. Clean. I could see the Lycan Crown insignia stitched into the upholstery.

My wolf stirred inside me, stronger now, and said: *Not yet. But soon.*

I closed my eyes.

And for the first time in seven years, I let myself stop fighting.