After My Mate Tried Killing Me

The soup tasted wrong.

I noticed it halfway through the bowl. A bitter edge beneath the salt, like metal on my tongue. I set the spoon down and stared at the pale broth, watching a thin film of oil swirl on the surface.

Kylie stood across the dining hall, arranging flowers in a vase. She glanced at me once, her lips curving into a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

I pushed the bowl away.

Too late.

By midnight, I was on the floor of my guest room, retching into a basin. My stomach twisted in knots. Sweat soaked through my shirt. My wolf whined somewhere deep inside me, weak and disoriented. The pain came in waves—sharp, burning, like something was clawing its way through my insides.

Wolfsbane. Not enough to kill. Just enough to make me wish I was dead.

I stayed on that floor for three days.

No one came to check on me. Not Duncan. Not Marcus. Not even the Omega who usually brought my laundry assignments. The pack house hummed with life above me—footsteps, laughter, the clink of dishes at meals I couldn't attend.

On the fourth day, I could stand.

I washed my face in cold water. My reflection stared back at me, hollow-eyed and pale. My hands still shook. But I could walk.

I found Kylie in the east hallway, carrying a stack of linens toward the master suite.

"Kylie."

She stopped. Turned. Her eyebrows lifted in false surprise. "Alivia! You're up. I was starting to worry."

"We need to talk."

Her smile tightened. She glanced down the hall—empty—then back at me. "Of course. What's wrong?"

I stepped closer. Close enough to see the flicker of unease in her eyes. "The soup. Three nights ago."

"Oh, that." She shifted the linens in her arms. "I hope it wasn't too salty. The new cook is still learning."

"It wasn't salt."

Silence.

Kylie's smile didn't move. But something changed in her face. A hardness. A coldness I'd seen before, buried under all that sweetness.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

I took another step. My wolf stirred, thin and angry. "Yes. You do."

For a long moment, we just stared at each other.

Then Kylie's mask cracked.

She laughed. Low and sharp. "God, you're pathetic. You actually thought you could come back here and what? Reclaim your life? Your mate?" She dropped the linens on a side table and crossed her arms. "Duncan never wanted you, Alivia. The mate bond was a joke. A political arrangement. He told me everything."

My chest tightened. Not from pain. From rage.

"He faked a coma for five years," she continued, her voice rising. "Five years so he could be with me instead of you. And you know what? It worked. You ran off to the Wastes like a good little martyr, and we got exactly what we wanted."

I said nothing. My hands curled into fists at my sides.

Kylie leaned in, her eyes glittering. "And your precious mother? She didn't just die, Alivia. She was removed. Taken out of the picture so my mother could take her place. And guess who signed off on it?"

My breath stopped.

"Your father," she whispered. "Alpha Albert himself. He wanted my mother. Wanted me. And your mom was in the way. So they made her disappear."

The hallway tilted. My wolf roared inside me, clawing for control. I felt my nails sharpen, my teeth ache. The shift pressed against my skin, desperate to break free.

Kylie smiled. "Go ahead. Shift. Attack me. Give Duncan a reason to throw you out for good."

I forced myself to breathe. Once. Twice. My wolf snarled and thrashed, but I held her back.

I looked at Kylie. At her smug face. At the Luna pendant still hanging around her throat.

Then I turned and walked away.

Her laughter followed me down the hall.

---

I didn't sleep that night.

I sat on the floor of my room, my back against the wall, and let the truth settle over me like a weight.

My mother. Murdered. Covered up. Sanctioned by my own father.

Five years in the Wastes. A lie.

The Devotion Mark. A joke.

Everything I'd given. Everything I'd sacrificed. Built on a foundation of rot.

My wolf pressed against my ribs, still weak but burning now. Not with grief. With something colder. Sharper.

*We're going to destroy them.*

Yes.

I pulled out my phone and opened the encrypted folder Elena had sent me. The bank transfers. The forged medical records. Dr. Garrett's signed NDA.

I started a new file.

Wolfsbane. I'd smelled it in the soup, tasted it on my tongue. Someone had to have purchased it. Someone had to have signed for it. Wolfsbane wasn't something you could just pick up at a corner store—it required pack authorization, a healer's signature, documented use.

I sent Elena a message. *Need purchase records. Wolfsbane. Silverfang Pack. Last six months.*

She replied within an hour. *On it.*

Then I opened a second file. My mother's death certificate. Cause of death: sudden heart failure. No autopsy. No investigation. Signed by Alpha Albert and witnessed by Duncan's father, the previous Silverfang Alpha.

Two powerful Alphas. One convenient death.

I pulled up every document I could find. Pack meeting minutes. Financial records. Correspondence between Silverfang and Moonveil from that year. I cross-referenced dates, names, signatures.

Patterns emerged. Payments. Transfers. A healer who'd retired early and moved out of state. A coroner who'd left the pack suddenly, no forwarding address.

A cover-up. Methodical. Thorough. Expensive.

I worked through the night, compiling everything into a single dossier. By dawn, I had a file thick enough to bury them all.

But I didn't move yet. Didn't send it to the Council. Didn't confront anyone.

I saved it. Encrypted it. Backed it up in three separate locations.

And I waited.

---

Kylie noticed the change in me.

I saw it in the way she watched me now. Not with smug satisfaction. With something else. Unease. Suspicion.

I moved through the pack house quietly. I took my Omega assignments without complaint. I folded laundry. I scrubbed floors. I kept my head down and my mouth shut.

But I was always watching. Always listening.

And Kylie knew it.

She started checking over her shoulder when she walked past me. She stopped leaving her phone unattended. She whispered to Duncan behind closed doors, her voice too low for me to hear but her body language screaming paranoia.

She was scared.

Good.

Two weeks after the wolfsbane, I saw her slip out of the pack house late at night. She wore a dark coat, hood pulled up, and she moved fast, glancing back every few steps.

I followed.

She drove to the edge of neutral territory and parked near an abandoned warehouse. A truck was already there, engine running. Three men stepped out. Rogues. I could smell them from where I crouched behind a stack of crates—unwashed, feral, dangerous.

Kylie handed one of them a thick envelope.

"She's in the lowest guest room," Kylie said. Her voice carried in the still night air. "East wing. No guards. Make it look like an accident."

The rogue opened the envelope and flipped through a stack of bills. He grinned. "When?"

"Soon," Kylie said. "This week. Before she has a chance to—" She stopped herself. Shook her head. "Just do it."

She got back in her car and drove away.

I stayed crouched behind the crates, my heart pounding, my wolf growling low and steady.

Kylie had just hired someone to kill me.

And I had just watched her do it.

I pulled out my phone and hit record. The rogues were still talking, counting the money, laughing about how easy the job would be.

I recorded every word.

Then I slipped back into the shadows and disappeared into the trees.