The liquid burned going down.

Not like alcohol. Like acid. Like swallowing fire and broken glass and something that didn't belong inside a living body. I tried to drop the glass, but my fingers wouldn't obey. The crystal slipped from my hand and shattered on the floor.

Alexander caught me before I hit the ground.

"There," he said, his voice distant. "That wasn't so hard."

My legs gave out. He lowered me to the carpet, and I felt the softness against my cheek, but I couldn't move. Couldn't turn my head. My limbs had gone numb, heavy as stone.

The Wolfsbane was spreading fast.

I tried to speak, to beg him to call a healer, but my tongue was thick in my mouth. All that came out was a choked sound, barely human.

"Shh." He crouched beside me, brushing hair from my face with false tenderness. "It's just to help you sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."

Liar. I could feel it in my blood, in the way my heart was stuttering, in the black spots creeping into my vision. This wasn't sleep. This was dying.

He stood and walked to the dresser. When he came back, he was holding my grandfather's Silver Dagger.

"Can't have you keeping this," he said, turning it over in his hands. The blade caught the moonlight. "You've proven you can't be trusted with weapons. What kind of Luna brings a dagger to her mating suite?"

I wanted to scream that he'd stolen it. That it was mine. That it was all I had left of my family, of my heritage, of the mountain home I'd left behind for him.

But I couldn't make a sound.

He slipped the dagger into his jacket pocket. Just like that. My last line of defense, my grandfather's legacy, gone.

Then he disappeared from view. I heard him moving around the room, heard fabric rustling. When he came back, he was dragging something—the decorative rug from beside the bed.

He rolled me onto it. My body flopped like a corpse, lifeless and unresponsive. The world tilted as he wrapped the rug around me, cocooning me in darkness and the smell of dust and old wool.

"Solving the problem," he muttered. "Just like Jemma said. She was right. You're a threat. A jealous, unstable threat to everything I've built."

His footsteps moved away. A door opened—not the main entrance, but something else. The service exit, maybe. Cold air hit my face through the gap in the rug.

Then I was moving. He'd lifted me, thrown me over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Each step jarred my bones. I tried to fight, to struggle, but my body wouldn't respond. The poison had me completely.

We went down stairs. Through hallways. I caught glimpses through the rug's weave—stone walls, dim lighting, the back corridors where servants walked. No one stopped us. No one asked questions.

Why would they? He was the Alpha.

Outside, the night air was sharp and cold. Rain had started to fall, light but steady. I heard a car door open. He dumped me into what felt like a trunk—no, a back seat. The rug unrolled slightly, and I could see the leather interior of an SUV.

The door slammed. The engine started.

We drove.

I don't know how long. Time had gone strange, stretching and compressing. The Wolfsbane was doing something to my perception, making everything feel distant and unreal. I focused on breathing. Just breathing. In and out. Don't stop. Don't let it win.

His phone rang.

Alexander answered on speaker. "What?"

"Are you on your way?" Jemma's voice, sweet and poisonous. "Juan's people are getting impatient."

"I'm twenty minutes out."

"Good." A pause. "You're doing the right thing, you know. She would have destroyed everything. The bond, your power, us."

"I know."

"This way, the debt is cleared, and you keep what matters. It's strategic. It's what a real Alpha does."

I heard him glance back at me. "She's useless anyway. Wolfless. Paranoid. What kind of Luna tries to reject her mate at the altar?"

"Exactly. You're trading dead weight for your true source of power. For me."

"For you," he repeated, like a prayer.

They talked a few minutes more, but I stopped listening. The words had carved something out of me, left a hollow space where hope used to be. He wasn't confused. Wasn't under a spell he couldn't break.

He'd chosen this.

Chosen her.

Chosen to drug me, to steal from me, to trade me like property.

The SUV slowed. Stopped.

Alexander got out. I heard other voices—rough, male, speaking in low tones. The back door opened, and hands grabbed the rug, dragging me out.

I hit the ground hard.

The impact knocked what little air I had left from my lungs. The rug fell away, and rain hit my face. Cold. Clean. I lay there in the mud, staring up at a sky I could barely see through the darkness and the poison.

Footsteps approached. Boots. Expensive ones, barely touched by the mud.

Alexander looked down at me. His face was blank. Empty.

"The debt's cleared," he said to someone I couldn't see. "She's yours."

A different voice answered. Deep. Controlled. "You're trading your mate."

"She's defective. You're welcome to her."

Something changed hands. Paper rustling. A ledger, maybe.

The new voice spoke again, and this time I heard the disgust in it. "You're pathetic."

Alexander didn't respond. I heard his footsteps retreating, heard the SUV door slam, heard the engine start.

He left.

Just drove away.

I lay there in the rain and the mud, my body shutting down, my mate's mark burning on my neck like a brand. Around me, shadows moved—rogues, I realized. The ones Alexander had traded me to.

One of them crouched beside me. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I felt his gaze. Steady. Assessing.

"Get her inside," he said. "Carefully."

Hands lifted me. Gentle this time. Strange.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me completely was the taillights of Alexander's SUV disappearing into the night.

And I thought: I hope the poison kills me before they do.

I woke to the smell of earth and canvas.

My body felt wrong. Heavy. Like someone had filled my veins with lead and left me to sink. I tried to move, but my muscles screamed in protest. Everything hurt.

I forced my eyes open.

A tent. Low ceiling, rough fabric walls, a single lantern casting shadows across packed dirt. Not the bridal suite. Not the pack house. Somewhere else entirely.

Panic hit me like ice water.

The rogues. Alexander had traded me to the rogues. I was in their camp, and I was alone, and—

"You're awake."

I jerked my head toward the voice. Pain exploded through my skull, but I didn't care. I had to see.

A man sat cross-legged near the tent entrance, crushing something in a stone bowl. His hands moved with practiced precision, grinding herbs into paste. He didn't look at me. Didn't rush over. Just kept working.

"Don't try to sit up yet," he said. "The Wolfsbane is still in your system. You'll only hurt yourself."

His voice was calm. Too calm. Like he was discussing the weather, not the fact that I was his prisoner.

I tried to speak, but my throat was raw. All that came out was a rasp.

He finally looked up. Dark eyes, sharp features, a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. He studied me the way my grandfather used to study patients—assessing, calculating, seeing things I couldn't hide.

"You're a Healer," he said. Not a question. A statement.

I managed a nod.

"I could smell it on you. Under the poison." He set the bowl aside and reached for a waterskin. "Most people reek of fear when they're dying. You smelled like mountain sage and silver birch. Old bloodline."

He moved closer, offering the water. I flinched.

He stopped. Waited. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"You're a rogue."

"I'm Juan Diaz." He set the waterskin within my reach and backed away, giving me space. "And you're Camilla Wells, the Luna who was traded like livestock by her own mate."

The words hit harder than they should have. Maybe because they were true.

I grabbed the waterskin with shaking hands and drank. The water was cool and clean, washing away some of the bitterness coating my tongue. When I finished, I looked at him properly.

"Why am I alive?"

"Because I don't kill Healers." He picked up the bowl again, adding something that smelled sharp and medicinal. "Especially ones who've been poisoned by their own pack."

"You could ransom me."

"To who? The Alpha who dumped you in the mud?" His expression didn't change, but I heard the contempt in his voice. "He made it clear you're worthless to him."

I looked away. The mark on my neck throbbed, a constant reminder of Alexander's betrayal.

Juan stood and brought the bowl over. "This will help purge the Wolfsbane. But you'll have to mix the final ingredients yourself. Healer's magic only works when the Healer does the work."

I stared at the paste. Recognized some of the components—bloodroot, activated charcoal, something that looked like crushed moonstone. "Where did you get these?"

"I have resources."

"These are rare. Expensive."

"So is a Healer's life." He set the bowl in my lap along with three small vials. "The rest is up to you."

I looked at the vials. Knew what they were without asking. The final components of a purge ritual—the kind my grandfather had taught me for emergencies. The kind that would hurt like hell but might save my life.

My hands shook as I uncorked the first vial. The smell alone made my stomach turn. I added three drops to the paste, then the second vial, then the third. The mixture turned black, thick as tar.

"Drink it," Juan said quietly. "All of it."

I lifted the bowl to my lips. The taste was worse than the smell—bitter and rotten and wrong. I forced it down anyway, swallowing until the bowl was empty.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the pain hit.

It felt like my insides were tearing apart. Like every cell in my body was rejecting the poison and trying to expel it all at once. I doubled over, gasping, and Juan was there with a bucket.

I vomited. Black, tar-like liquid poured out of me, reeking of sulfur and decay. The Wolfsbane. The dark magic. Everything Alexander had put inside me.

It went on forever. Wave after wave of agony, my body purging itself while Juan stayed beside me. He didn't speak. Didn't try to comfort me with empty words. Just held my hair back and offered water when I could breathe again.

When it finally stopped, I collapsed against the bedroll, shaking and weak but alive.

Juan handed me a damp towel. "Better?"

I wiped my mouth. "Why are you helping me?"

"Because you don't deserve what he did to you." He sat back, watching me with those dark, assessing eyes. "And because I have a proposition."

I should have been afraid. Should have refused to listen. But I was too tired, too broken, too angry to care.

"What kind of proposition?"

His eyes flashed gold. Not yellow like Alexander's corrupted gaze. Pure, molten gold—the mark of something ancient and powerful.

Lycan.

"I'm not just a rogue," he said. "I'm royalty in exile. And I've been watching the Silverfang Pack rot from the inside for months."

I stared at him. At the gold fading back to brown. At the calm confidence in his posture.

"You want revenge," he continued. "I want justice. Your former pack is dying because of that witch, and the innocents inside don't deserve to suffer for their Alpha's stupidity."

"What are you asking?"

"An alliance." He leaned forward. "I provide the army. You provide the healing. We go back together, expose the truth, and save the ones worth saving."

"And Alexander?"

"Gets what he deserves."

I should have hesitated. Should have thought it through. But the mark on my neck burned, and I could still taste the poison, and I remembered the way Alexander had looked at me in the mud.

Like I was nothing.

"Partners," I said. "Not subordinates."

Juan's mouth curved into something that might have been a smile. "Partners."

He offered his hand.

I took it.