My Alpha Used Wolfsbane to Kill Our Heirs

The bleeding stopped at 6:40 on a Thursday morning. I know because I watched the clock on the healing ward wall while Fiona counted the towels.

My third pup. Gone before it ever had a heartbeat I could hear.

I reached inside myself for my wolf, the way you reach for a light switch in a dark room. Nothing. Not a growl, not a shiver, not even the low hum she used to make when I was scared. Just a hollow space where something of mine used to live.

"Luna." Fiona set a folded cloth on the tray. Picked it up. Set it down again. "I'm so sorry. The Goddess has her reasons."

She had said the exact same sentence two years ago. And the year before that. Word for word, like a prayer she'd memorized so she wouldn't have to think about it.

"Look at me, Fiona."

She didn't. She turned to the instrument cart and started lining up forceps that were already lined up.

The door opened without a knock.

Carmen came in wearing a cream sweater, hair loose, that soft wounded look she wore like perfume. She was one of ours—an unmated she-wolf from the eastern side of Ironridge, always volunteering at pack functions, always somehow near Dallas. She crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed like we were friends.

"Oh, Evelynn." Her hand covered mine. Her skin was warm. "You poor thing."

Then she leaned down, mouth close to my ear, and forced open a private mind-link.

*He's been putting wolfsbane in your tonic every morning.*

My fingers went cold under hers.

*Diluted. Just enough. Three years now.* A pause, savoring it, unhurried as someone eating dessert. *Did you really think the Moon Goddess just hated you?*

She straightened up and smoothed my blanket.

I didn't scream. My chest locked so tight it hurt to breathe, and there was a sound in my ears like water rushing, and my mouth tasted like copper. Three seconds. Maybe four. Then something in me went very quiet and very sharp, the way it used to when a compound finally made sense.

Wolfsbane. Diluted. Every morning.

Of course.

The door swung again and Dallas filled it. My mate. My Alpha. Twelve years of my life.

"Carmen." He said her name first. He always did, and I had spent three years explaining that away. He crossed to the bed and stepped between her and me, one hand out behind him like he was shielding her. From what? From a woman who couldn't sit up.

"Fiona," he said, and the Alpha tone rolled out, smooth and heavy as a wave. "Let my Luna rest."

Fiona's chin dropped. Mine started to. I felt the pressure push down on the back of my neck, that old instinct to bare my throat.

I didn't. I opened my eyes instead and looked straight at him.

Something flickered across his face. Just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. He recovered fast, brushed his hand over my hair.

"Sleep, love," he said. "We'll try again."

We'll try again. Like I was a lock he hadn't picked yet.

He steered Carmen out with a palm on her lower back and never looked back at me. When the door shut I let my head fall to the side and breathed in what he'd left behind. His scent. And under it, layered into his collar, into his skin—her. Not on him. *In* him. Worn in, the way a smell gets after years.

I waited for the grief. It didn't come.

Instead I started counting. Three miscarriages. Thirty-six months of tonic. One cup a morning, handed to me by his own hand, still warm, always with a kiss to my forehead.

That night he went to the alliance banquet in Ridgeport. I got up alone in the Alpha suite and went through it room by room, drawer by drawer, the way I used to go through a failed experiment looking for the variable I'd missed.

I found it behind our mating portrait.

A shallow compartment in the wall. Six vials of concentrated wolfsbane, dark green, properly sealed. And a bundle of letters. Thirteen years of them, in two handwritings I knew—his slanted scrawl, her round loops.

*Second trimester needs more. Half a dram in the morning, and again if she looks strong.*

*She asked about the taste today.*

*Tell her it's the honey.*

In the margin beside a dosage chart for month four, Carmen had drawn a tiny heart.

My hands didn't shake. That surprised me. I photographed every page, front and back, angled to catch the dates. Then I put everything back exactly where it had been—vials in the same order, letters tied with the same knot—closed the panel, straightened the portrait, and went to bed.

He came in past two, drunk, knocking his shoulder into the doorframe. I lay still with my back to him and my phone under my pillow, recording.

He sat down heavy on the mattress. Pulled off one shoe. Then he spoke into the dark, thick and slurred, to a woman he thought was unconscious.

"Your father made me his dog." He laughed, low and ugly. "Twelve years, Mitchell's dog. So I made sure his bloodline dies with you."

He fell asleep two minutes later, breathing against my shoulder.

I lay in the dark with his arm over my waist and let the recording run until sunrise.