I was unconscious through the night. The furs beneath me soaked through with blood. The scent of it filled the small room, iron and salt and something sweeter underneath that I couldn't let myself name.
The door crashed open with a kick. Sable Ashveil strode in, flanked by several older den workers. Her scent hit me before I could focus my eyes: overripe plum and that cloying sweetness that never quite covered the sharper thing underneath.
She glanced at me, drenched in blood from the waist down, then settled into a chair by the table and poured herself a cup of tea as if she had all the time in the world.
"Don't blame me. The pup in my belly has to be the firstborn heir. That's the only way I'll have any standing in the Blackthorn Pack. Surely you understand."
I braced myself against the wall, barely upright. "So you had my pup killed."
Sable let out a short laugh. "Now that's unfair. Caelan was the one who laced the food. Caelan was the one who didn't want it. All I did was mention it in passing."
I stared at her, unblinking. My nails dug into my palms until the skin split.
She rose and walked over to me, one hand resting on her belly.
"Besides, you should count yourself lucky. Even if your pup had survived, it would have been taken from you and raised under the recognized mate. Better this way, really."
"Bring the tincture over. Make her drink it. Help her recover."
The den workers pried my jaw open and forced the liquid down my throat. I recognized the taste. Bitter and acrid, burning like poison. Concentrated wolfsbane tincture. The kind that kills the womb.
I thrashed, tried to spit it out, but they pinned me down and held my mouth shut. My wolf surged once, a single desperate lunge against the inside of my ribs, and then the wolfsbane reached her too. She collapsed somewhere deep inside me, and I felt the exact moment she went still.
Sable crouched beside me and patted my cheek, slow and deliberate, every touch a humiliation. "Can't have you bearing more pups down the line. All that squabbling over heirs gets so tiresome."
"My mating ceremony is in two days. I still need to go try on my jeweled ceremonial crest. If you'll excuse me."
As she stood, she let her robe fall open just enough to reveal the moonstone pendant at her waist.
Caelan's moonstone pendant. He told me once that his mother left it to him, the only thing he had of hers. And he had given it to Sable.