My Mate Used Wolfsbane to Control Me

The food trays kept appearing outside my door.

Every single night, right after sundown.

Whenever I spent six brutal hours trading blows with Crescent Throne’s heavy warriors in the dirt ring, the silver cloche hid thick cuts of seared venison and bowls of garlic greens. When my muscles cramped from endurance drills, there were roasted sweet potatoes and salty bone broth.

Even the tea changed. As the days rolled into weeks and Healer Maren tracked the wolfsbane leaching out of my bloodstream, the bitter silver-leaf brew vanished. In its place came soothing infusions of chamomile, dried elderberry, and honey.

Whenever I ran into the head cook in the corridor, the stout she-wolf offered a polite, practiced smile. "Prince Ashton's orders, Miss Sullivan. He is testing new seasonal menus for the pack house."

Testing menus. Every day. Exactly when I took off my boots.

Then came the late nights in the strategy library.

I sat surrounded by glowing tactical maps, running calculations on territorial borders. Ashton would slip inside, moving so quietly that only my wolf's sudden, curious lift of her head gave him away. He never leaned over my shoulder. He never told me to wrap it up.

He just poured two mugs of black coffee, leaned his tall frame against the edge of the oak table, and pointed at a topographical line.

"If Ironhowl pushes down the ridge, why pull the scout flank toward the river instead of holding the high rocks?" he asked.

His voice was a low, steady rumble. I looked up into his dark eyes and saw the truth instantly: he already knew the answer. He had studied military logistics since he was a boy. He didn't need my lesson.

He just wanted to hear me speak.

"Because the river gorge funnels their heavy fighters into single file," I answered, tapping the stylus against the glass. "You don't fight their numbers. You break their line and pick them off at the crossing."

Ashton nodded slowly. He didn't interrupt. He didn't take the stylus from my hand to show the room how smart he was. For twelve years, Ryder had silenced me mid-sentence, stole my notes, and waved me away like an annoying secretary. Ashton just stood there, letting my voice fill the quiet room.

It wasn't until the third week that I noticed something strange.

My left hand was resting flat against the desk. For ten years, whenever I talked strategy or felt anxious, my fingers unconsciously drifted to my neck, clawing at the numb, scarred flesh where Ryder's brand burned.

Standing in the room with Ashton, I hadn't touched my neck once.

***

Two days later, my mental barrier took a violent hit.

A sharp, jagged pulse echoed through the severed link. It was Ryder. The mind-link thread was dead and frayed, but an Alpha's forced resonance could still rattle the edges of my skull like static on a blown speaker.

*Tiana. Answer me. Pick up your phone. That is an order.*

His voice was cracked. The polished, smug Alpha tone from the airport was gone. Underneath the demand lay a raw, sweating desperation that reeked across three hundred miles.

I slammed my mental shield shut, snuffing his voice into absolute silence.

The rumor mill among the northern packs had already told me why he was panicking.

Four days ago, Ayla had called her first official pack council as acting Luna of Shadowridge. She walked into the hall wearing silk, smiling sweet and delicate, and stood before fifty veteran warriors to present the quarterly border treaties.

She opened the leather binder—my binder, filled with the alliance structures I had drafted before the mate ceremony.

She read the first page flawlessly. But then Shadowridge’s Beta leaned forward and asked a simple question: "Why are we offering the Silverpine Pack twenty percent of our timber rights in the opening offer? That leaves our winter reserves completely exposed."

Ayla froze.

She didn't know. She had never known. For a decade, she had merely repeated my talking points like a parrot. When pressed for the underlying logistics, she couldn't answer. She stammered. She tried to pivot to sweet, breathless consensus-talk about "harmony" and "goodwill between neighbors."

The hardened warriors didn't buy it. The council erupted in furious shouts. Within twenty minutes, the meeting collapsed. Three senior squad leaders walked out, slammed their badges on Ryder’s desk, and demanded to know where their real strategist had gone.

Shadowridge was coming apart at the seams. And Ryder had no idea how to hold it together.

***

Instead of fixing the mess, Ryder did what every cornered coward does. He doubled down on betrayal.

Desperate for cash and political leverage, he reached out to Marcus Reid, the brutal Alpha of the Ironhowl Pack. Ironhowl had contested Crescent Throne’s southern border for nearly fifty years.

Ryder offered Marcus a private deal: he would act as a shadow consultant, supplying proprietary tactical plans to overrun Crescent Throne’s upstate outposts. In exchange, Ryder demanded forty percent of any annexed timberlands and a slice of the mineral rights.

The battle plans Ryder sold weren't his. They were mine.

Every ambush point, every supply route, every psychological profile of Crescent Throne's defensive rhythm that I had mapped out during my fifth winter at Shadowridge—he handed it all to Marcus on a silver platter.

The blow landed on a freezing Tuesday midnight.

A deafening red klaxon suddenly tore through the Crescent Throne pack house, wailing in short, violent shrieks. Emergency red lights strobed across the hallway walls.

I jumped out of my chair, sprinting toward the central war room.

Ashton was already there, his dark coat thrown over bare shoulders, his Lycan aura rolling off him in suffocating waves of heat.

The heavy double doors banged open.

Dominic Hale rushed inside, his combat fatigues splattered with mud and fresh wolf blood. He slammed a cracked, military-grade field radio onto the glass strategy table.

"Ironhowl breached the Blackwood perimeter ten minutes ago!" Dominic shouted, breathing hard. "They slipped past our infrared sensors and hit the river outpost from our blind flank. It’s an exact surgical strike!"

Ashton’s eyes flared an incandescent, lethal gold. "How did they know the blind spot?"

Dominic looked straight at me, his scarred face grim. "Because they’re using our girl’s playbook."

The radio on the table crackled with static. Then, through the speaker, Alpha Marcus Reid's rough, mocking voice blared into the room:

"All units, initiate Sullivan Protocol Phase Two. Torch the Crescent stronghold."