Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the King

The burning started the moment I smoothed the cream across my cheekbones.

At first, I thought it was just the usual tingle of my expensive night moisturizer—the one Keith had bought me last month during our fifty-first reconciliation, claiming he wanted to "take better care of his Luna." But this wasn't a tingle. This was fire.

I gasped, stumbling backward from my bathroom mirror as my skin erupted in angry red welts. The cream felt like acid eating through my flesh, and deeper than that—much deeper—Aria began to howl.

Not the usual howl of distress. This was agony, pure and primal, echoing through every fiber of my being as my wolf writhed in torment. Silver. The scent hit my nostrils now, metallic and poisonous, mixed with the familiar lavender of my skincare routine.

"Keith!" I screamed through the mind-link, my hands clawing at my face as the burning intensified. "Keith, help me!"

I collapsed beside the bathtub, my vision blurring as Aria's howls grew weaker. Silver poisoning. Someone had laced my cream with silver, and now it was seeping into my bloodstream, threatening to sever my connection to my wolf permanently.

The bathroom door burst open, and Keith filled the doorway, his dark hair disheveled, still wearing the clothes he'd had on at dinner. His eyes widened as he took in my condition—the angry red burns spreading down my neck, my body convulsing as I fought to maintain my grip on Aria's fading presence.

"What happened?" He knelt beside me, his hands hovering uncertainly over my burning skin.

"The cream," I gasped, pointing toward the innocent-looking jar on the marble counter. "Someone... someone put silver in it."

Keith's jaw tightened as he carefully lifted the jar, inhaling deeply. I watched his expression shift from concern to something harder to read—not quite anger, but not quite belief either.

"This smells like your regular moisturizer," he said slowly.

"Keith, please." Aria's voice was barely a whisper in my mind now, and panic clawed at my chest. "I'm losing her. I'm losing Aria."

He scooped me up, carrying me toward the door. "We're going to the pack hospital. Dr. Martinez will figure this out."

But even as he said it, I could hear the doubt creeping into his voice. The same doubt that always appeared whenever something happened to me that might implicate his precious Sapphire.

The hospital smelled of antiseptic and pine, a combination that usually comforted me but now made my stomach churn. Dr. Martinez worked quickly, administering IV fluids and a silver neutralizer that burned almost as much going in as the poison had coming out.

"She'll be fine," he assured Keith as I drifted in and out of consciousness. "But another few minutes, and we might have lost her wolf permanently. Someone knew exactly what they were doing."

I expected Keith to demand answers, to launch an investigation, to show even a fraction of the protective fury he displayed whenever someone looked at Sapphire the wrong way. Instead, he nodded absently, his phone buzzing in his pocket.

"I need to take this," he murmured, stepping into the hallway.

Through the thin hospital walls, I could hear fragments of his conversation. Sapphire's voice, high and distressed, bleeding through the phone speaker.

"...can't believe she'd accuse me... never hurt anyone... so scared, Keith..."

My heart sank as I recognized the tone—the same wounded innocence she'd used after destroying Mama's flower shop, the same trembling vulnerability that never failed to make Keith forget everything else.

When he returned, his expression had shifted completely. Gone was any trace of concern for my near-death experience. Instead, he looked tired, almost annoyed.

"Sapphire is devastated," he said, not quite meeting my eyes. "She's crying so hard she can barely breathe. She thinks you're going to blame her for this... accident."

"Accident?" The word scraped against my raw throat like broken glass.

"The cream was probably contaminated during manufacturing. These things happen with beauty products sometimes." He was already moving toward the door, his mind clearly elsewhere. "You should rest. I'll check on you tomorrow."

"Keith, wait—"

But he was gone, leaving me alone with the steady beep of monitors and the devastating silence where Aria's voice should have been. Through the window, I could see him crossing the parking lot with quick, purposeful strides—not toward home, but toward the pack house where Sapphire would be waiting with her tears and her perfectly crafted story.

I closed my eyes, feeling the last threads of my mate bond stretch thin as Keith chose, once again, to comfort the woman who had nearly killed me while I recovered alone in a sterile hospital room.

Somewhere deep in my chest, what remained of Aria whimpered—not from the silver anymore, but from something far more poisonous: the growing certainty that my own mate would never protect me from the one person who wanted me gone.