Chapter 2

I didn't go to my room.

I went to the medical wing.

Dr. Elias Crane, the Coven physician who had treated me for three years, was in his office. He was a thin, nervous vampire with wire-rimmed glasses and ink-stained fingers.

"Lady Ashford," he said, looking up from his desk. "You're not due for your appointment until—"

"What's in my medication, Elias?"

He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

I placed the bottle of pills on his desk. The label read: Harmony Blend – For Hybrid Stabilization.

"I've been taking these since my wedding night," I said. "You told me they stabilize my hybrid physiology. You told me without them, my wolf would destroy my vampire cells and kill me."

"That is correct—"

"I'm a surgeon, Elias."

He flinched.

Before I married Damien, I was Dr. Seraphina Valdris. Top of my class at the Supernatural Medical Institute. I specialized in cross-species hematology. I published twelve papers on hybrid blood composition before I turned twenty-five.

Then I married a king, and everyone told me queens don't work. Queens smile and bleed prettily.

"I ran my own blood panel last night," I said quietly. "Using the lab at St. Mirren's, where the Coven doesn't have cameras."

Elias went pale. For a vampire, that meant he turned the color of old chalk.

"The pills contain concentrated wolfsbane extract," I said. "Not enough to kill me. Just enough to keep my wolf in a permanent chemical coma."

Silence.

"Who ordered this, Elias?"

His hands were shaking. "I... I can't..."

"My wolf is being poisoned. That's a violation of the Covenant of Species. The penalty is execution."

"It was Lord Ashford!" he blurted. "He ordered it before the wedding! He said your wolf was too unpredictable. That if she surfaced, you'd be too powerful to control."

Too powerful to control.

I let those words sink into my bones.

"And my father?" I asked. "Alpha Valdris. Did he know?"

Elias couldn't meet my eyes. "Alpha Valdris provided the wolfsbane. It's a rare strain from the Valdris ancestral garden. No one else has access."

My own father poisoned me to keep me docile for a vampire king.

I felt the familiar burn behind my eyes. Tears. But I forced them back. Tears were what they expected. Tears were what the medication was designed to produce—a weeping, helpless half-breed who was grateful for scraps of affection.

I picked up the pill bottle.

"One more question," I said. "What happens if I stop taking them?"

Elias looked at me with genuine terror.

"No one knows," he whispered. "Your mother was the last hybrid with Valdris blood. She died before anyone could study her wolf. But the legends say..."

"Say what?"

"That the Valdris wolf is not just a wolf." He swallowed. "It's a Nightfang. The original predator. The thing that vampires and werewolves were both descended from."

The thing that both species feared.

I pocketed the pills.

"Thank you, Elias."

"What are you going to do?" he called after me.

I paused at the door. "I'm going to stop being sick."

I walked to the nearest bathroom, locked the door, and flushed every single pill down the toilet.

The withdrawal hit within the hour. Fever. Shaking. My skin felt like it was being peeled off with a cheese grater. I bit into a towel to muffle my screams.

But underneath the agony, I felt her.

My wolf.

She was stretching, cracking the chains that had held her for three years.

Finally, she breathed.

Finally.