After My Mate Tried Killing Me for His Chosen Luna

The iron lock rattled at dawn.

A man stepped into the silver cell carrying a steel tray. He was tall, thin, and moved with a cold, brisk efficiency that had nothing to do with pack loyalty. His gray coat smelled of antiseptic and scorched herbs.

"I am Dorian Ashke," he said. He didn't look at my face. He set the tray on a small metal stool by the wall. "Alpha Voss brought me in because the standard pack healers refused to touch this procedure. Cowards, the lot of them. Bond severance requires precision, not sentiment."

I sat on the edge of the cot and said nothing. I knew the name. Dorian Ashke had been stripped of his healer’s title three years ago after running illegal severance experiments on mated rogues. Liam hadn't just found a doctor. He had bought a butcher.

Dorian pulled a glass vial from his pocket. The liquid inside was a pale, cloudy violet. Wolfsbane.

"This will be a micro-dose," he explained, snapping a rubber tourniquet around my right bicep. "Just enough to soften the residual bond-energy clinging to your flesh. If we extract the essence while the root is stiff, it curdles. Stella needs it pure."

He jabbed a thick, blunt needle into the crook of my elbow.

I didn't flinch. I kept my eyes fixed on his hands. I watched how his thumb adjusted the plastic roller clamp, how his blunt fingers pinched the tubing to clear an air bubble, and how he angled the needle into the vein. If someone was going to poison me, I was going to memorize every step of how it was done.

Then the valve clicked open.

The wolfsbane hit my bloodstream like molten glass. It didn't spread slowly. It ripped through my veins like acid eating through thin copper wire, racing straight up my shoulder and plunging into the cold, dead hollow of my mate mark.

My breath caught in my throat. My vision went white around the edges. Every nerve in my neck felt like it was being scraped with a rusted blade.

I clamped my teeth together until my jaw ached, refusing to give him a scream. Sweat beaded on my forehead, cold and slick.

Dorian watched the timer on his wristwatch for two minutes, nodded once to himself, and pulled the needle free. He wiped the puncture with a dry cotton ball.

"Good," he said, turning toward the heavy door. "Your silence makes this faster. I'll be back at dusk."

The heavy bolt slid shut. The silence returned, heavy and suffocating.

The doses came twice a day. Morning and night.

Each time, the violet poison carved through my chest, trying to dissolve whatever invisible threads still tied my spirit to Liam's. Between his visits, there was no food. Only a plastic pitcher of tap water on the floor, which tasted like rust and lime. My ribs began to press against my skin, sharp and prominent.

I didn't lie on the cot feeling sorry for myself. I got up.

I paced the small perimeter, dragging my fingertips along the walls. The silver sheets were cold, but they didn't burn me the way they burned regular wolves. When I reached up on my tiptoes, my fingers caught the top edge of the metal. The silver stopped two inches below the concrete ceiling.

I checked the door. The heavy iron hinges were seated on the outside frame, impossible to tamper with from within. Then I stood beneath the overhead grate. A faint, steady draft blew across my face from the northeast, carrying the scent of pine needles and damp earth from the mountain ridge.

Three paces wide. Four paces long. A gap at the top. A vent to the outside.

My thumb rose out of old habit, pressing firmly into the ruined mark on my collarbone. The skin was numb, but as I pressed, the warmth at the base of my spine stirred.

*Thump.*

It wasn't my heart. My own pulse was fast, thin, and fluttering from the wolfsbane.

*Thump. Thump.*

This rhythm was slow. Enormous. It felt like a massive iron bell swinging deep beneath frozen water, vibrating against my ribs with steady, unbothered power. It didn't speak words, but it pushed back against the poison, washing a strange, golden heat through my marrow until the burning in my veins faded into nothing.

On the second evening, long after Dorian’s second dose, a soft scraping sound echoed from the high ventilation slot near the door.

I froze.

A pale hand slipped through the iron slats. It dropped a small, knotted piece of white cotton onto the concrete floor, then pulled back quickly.

"Claire?" a whisper drifted down.

It was Calla, Liam’s eighteen-year-old sister.

I didn't answer. I walked over, knelt down, and untied the knot. Inside were two dry saltine crackers and a torn scrap of pack stationery.

I unfolded the paper. Written in hasty, shaky pencil was a single line:

*I'm sorry.*

I stared at the two words under the dim yellow bulb. Calla had lived in the pack house for five years. She had watched me mend her brother’s shirts, balance the territory ledgers, and manage the kitchen staff. She had watched Liam drag me down to this dungeon without saying a single word to stop him.

Now, she brought two crackers and an apology.

I ate the crackers slowly, chewing each dry bite until it dissolved, forcing the meager calories down my throat. My body needed fuel. Whatever was waking up inside my spine needed strength.

When I finished, I took the scrap of paper. I picked up the small plastic tube Dorian had dropped on the floor—its tip still scorched and hot from the friction of the silver wall where he’d clipped it. I pressed the dry edge of the note against the hot plastic until a spark caught, blowing gently until the paper curled into black ash between my fingers.

Calla's guilt was real. But guilt wasn't a key, and it wasn't a weapon.

I brushed the gray dust off my palms and sat back down on the cot, listening to the second heartbeat grow stronger in the dark.