My Alpha Poisoned Me To Keep Me Weak

The syringe glinted in Jaden's hand like a promise of oblivion.

"You think you can refuse me?" His voice was soft. Deadly.

I backed toward the door, but he was faster. His hand locked around my arm, yanking me forward with brutal force. My shoulder screamed in protest.

"Let go—"

"You need your medicine, Ocean." He dragged me across the office, toward the small cabinet where he kept his 'supplies.' "You've been so stressed lately. Missing doses. This will help you remember your place."

The cabinet door swung open. Glass vials lined the shelves, filled with amber liquid that suddenly looked nothing like medicine. Everything like poison.

I twisted in his grip, clawing at his hand. "No. No more—"

He slammed me backward.

Glass exploded around me. The cabinet shattered against my spine, and I felt the sharp kiss of a thousand tiny blades. Pain bloomed across my arm, hot and immediate. Blood welled up, dark against my skin.

But Jaden didn't stop.

He grabbed my jaw, forcing my head back. The syringe descended toward my neck, and I saw the liquid inside—thick, concentrated, wrong.

"This is a special batch," he said, almost conversational. "Triple strength. Should keep you compliant for weeks."

I bucked against him. My feet found his shin, and I kicked hard enough to make him grunt. His grip loosened for half a second.

It wasn't enough.

The needle pierced my skin.

Fire poured into my veins.

I gasped, my body going rigid. It felt like molten silver, burning through my bloodstream, racing toward my heart. My vision blurred. The room tilted sideways.

"There we go," Jaden murmured, pulling the empty syringe away. "Much better."

But something was wrong.

The burning didn't stop. It intensified, spreading from the injection site like wildfire. My blood felt too hot, too thick, like it was boiling beneath my skin.

My knees buckled.

"Ocean?" Jaden's voice sounded distant, muffled. "Ocean, what—"

My body convulsed.

It wasn't a seizure. It was a war. Every cell in my body screamed in rebellion, rejecting the poison flooding my system. The smell of my own blood—sweet and metallic and somehow powerful—filled my nose. It smelled nothing like human blood. Nothing like wolf blood.

It smelled like moonlight and ancient forests and something vast and terrible.

Royal.

The word whispered through my consciousness, foreign and familiar all at once.

"Fuck." Jaden grabbed my shoulders, shaking me. "Don't you dare die. Not before the Summit. Not before—"

Another convulsion ripped through me. My spine arched, my fingers curling into claws. Something inside me was breaking. Or waking. I couldn't tell the difference.

"Damn it." Jaden hauled me up, half-dragging, half-carrying me out of the office. My feet scraped against the floor, leaving bloody smears. "You're not dying in my office. Not where anyone can see."

The pack house blurred past. Stairs descended into darkness. The air grew cold and damp, heavy with the smell of earth and silver.

The dungeons.

He was taking me to the dungeons.

"You'll recover down here," he said, his voice tight with barely controlled panic. "Or you won't. Either way, no one will know until I decide what to do with you."

Iron bars clanged open. He shoved me inside, and I collapsed on the wet stone floor. The cell door slammed shut, the lock clicking with terrible finality.

"I'll check on you tomorrow," Jaden said. "If you're still breathing."

His footsteps echoed away, growing fainter and fainter until silence swallowed them whole.

I was alone.

In the dark.

Dying.

The convulsions came in waves now, each one stronger than the last. My bones felt like they were splintering, reshaping, breaking apart and reforming into something new. Something other.

I screamed, but no sound came out.

The suppressant burned through my veins, trying to hold me down, keep me weak, keep me broken.

But my blood—my royal blood—fought back.

It was like watching two tides collide. The poison versus my genetics. Five years of chemical bondage versus millennia of inherited power.

Something deep inside me stirred.

Not a thought. Not a memory.

A presence.

Wake up, it whispered. Wake up, Ocean. We've been asleep too long.

My back arched off the stone floor. Another wave of agony crashed over me, so intense I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't exist beyond the pain.

My bones cracked.

Reformed.

Cracked again.

And then—

Light.

Golden light, pouring from my skin like sunrise breaking over mountains. It filled the cell, warm and brilliant and utterly impossible. The silver bars hissed where the light touched them, steam rising in delicate curls.

The presence inside me grew stronger. Clearer.

Hello, sister, it said. My name is Aurora.

And I am your wolf.