My Mate Rejected Me for the Woman Poisoning Our Son

The mate mark on the left side of my neck went ice-cold at 1:14 on a Tuesday afternoon.

Three years away as a diplomatic envoy, and the bond had thinned to a fraying wire. I pressed my trembling fingers against the scar tissue as Queen Sarah and I stepped through the iron gates of Ironveil. I reached through the mental link for my mate, Alpha Leonardo.

Nothing answered. Just a flat, hollow static.

The courtyard went dead silent the second we appeared. Warriors dropped their eyes. Omegas vanished into the shadows. The air inside the halls didn’t smell like home. It smelled like cheap vanilla and synthetic lilac, coated so thick over the stone that my own scent had been scrubbed clean.

Sarah’s hand touched my shoulder. "Careful, Emilia," the Lycan Queen warned under her breath.

I didn't listen. I walked toward the rear gardens, my heart hammering in my throat, because I heard the high, bright laugh of a child.

My four-year-old son was sitting on the grass by the rose bushes, tossing red rubber balls into a basket.

"Emmett," I choked out, dropping my travel bag. I sank to my knees, holding my arms wide. "Baby, Mommy’s home."

Emmett froze. His small face didn't light up. It twisted in pure, raw terror.

He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, tumbling over the grass, and slammed himself against the legs of a woman stepping out from the terrace shadow.

"Mama!" Emmett whimpered, burying his face in her skirt. "Mama, make the bad lady leave!"

A white-hot knife drove straight through my ribs. The pain knocked the breath clean out of my lungs, so sharp my inner wolf gave a strangled whimper.

I looked up.

Cheyenne stood there in an ivory silk dress. Around her throat hung the Luna pendant I had left in Leonardo’s care. But worse—far worse—was the jagged, raw red bite mark bruised into the crook of her shoulder.

A fresh mate mark.

Cheyenne smoothed Emmett’s hair with painted nails, her lips curving into a venomous little smile. "Hush now, sweet boy. Mama's got you."

The agony in my chest didn't break me. It calcified into ice.

I stood up. I didn't reach for my son again. Instead, the wind shifted, carrying Emmett’s breath toward my face.

My nostrils flared. I had tracked rogues across poisoned borderlands for three years. I knew herbs. Beneath Emmett's puppy scent lay a faint, sickly-sweet tang of metabolized poison.

"Wolfsbane," I said, my voice dead and quiet.

Cheyenne’s smile stiffened.

"You’ve been dosing his meals with low-grade wolfsbane," I continued, taking one slow, deliberate step forward. "Just enough to kill his olfactory nerves. Just enough to rot away his wolf's scent-memory, so he wouldn't recognize his own mother when I came back."

"You're crazy," Cheyenne stammered, stepping back. "Emmett, go inside with the nanny—"

"Stay right where you are," Sarah commanded.

The Lycan Queen stepped past me, her royal aura flaring like ignited gasoline. The garden gravel vibrated. Two perimeter guards immediately dropped to one knee.

"Bring my son Leonardo out here this instant," Sarah ordered, her eyes burning amber. "And summon Dr. Althea. If I find one drop of poison in this pup's blood, Cheyenne, you will hang from the packhouse battlements before sunset."

Cheyenne’s face went white. But she didn't run. She traded a fast, dark look with someone behind us.

"Of course, Your Grace," a voice clipped from the garden corridor. Jennifer, the Head Omega, stepped into view with two heavy-set male Omegas. "Alpha Leonardo is in the lower war room. Please, let's get the child out of the cold first. Follow me."

It was a trap, and we walked right into it.

The moment we entered the narrow stone corridor leading below, the two males shoved us hard from behind. Sarah stumbled. I spun to strike, but Jennifer slammed the reinforced iron door shut.

The deadbolt snapped into place with a sickening thud.

The walls were plated in solid silver.

The metal sizzled against my skin, sending blinding sparks of pain through my nerve endings. Worse, the subterranean cold hit Sarah immediately. Her hand flew to her chest, her breathing turning shallow and rattling.

"My... my drops," Sarah gasped, sliding down the silver wall. "Emilia... my chest..."

Her heart medicine was in her coat, left in the garden.

I pounded the iron hatch with my fists, ignoring the blistering burn of silver dust. "Open the door! The Queen is having a heart attack! Open it!"

A chime echoed in my skull. Cheyenne had linked the entire pack.

Her voice flooded the Ironveil mind-link, trembling with fake, theatrical tears: *“Pack members, please remain calm. The former Luna has returned completely unhinged. She attacked our pup in the garden and has been safely contained until Alpha Leonardo arrives.”*

Through the thick glass of the viewing slot, Jennifer appeared. She was holding up a smartphone, filming us for the live link.

They weren't waiting for Leonardo to save us. They were staging Sarah's death.

"Emilia," Sarah wheezed, her lips turning a faint, terrifying blue against the frost.

I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I dropped to one knee directly in front of the camera lens, letting the silver grit bite into my kneecaps, my eyes burning like flint.

"Cheyenne," I spoke into the slot, my voice ringing clear across the broadcast for five hundred wolves to hear. "You have the Lycan Queen locked in a silver cellar during a cardiac arrest. Pass her digitalis vials through the mail hatch right now. If she dies on this floor, every wolf watching this link will testify that you murdered the Crown."

Silence stretched over the mind-link. A heavy, suffocating silence.

Cheyenne’s face appeared beside Jennifer’s on the other side of the glass, pale with fury. She couldn't risk an open charge of regicide—not with five hundred pack wolves listening.

The narrow brass mail slot clicked open two inches.

A single glass ampoule was shoved through the crack.

I snatched the medicine from the ledge, but before the slot could slam shut, Cheyenne leaned down to the opening, her voice a poisonous whisper.

"Drink it in, Emilia," Cheyenne hissed through the iron. "Leonardo signed the rejection papers an hour ago. You're leaving this cellar in a body bag."