Chapter 3: The Poisoned Cup

ANAIYAH

Adrian stood behind his desk when I was pushed through the door. He lifted a silver tray without looking at me and held it across the desk.

"Deliver this to Alpha Dravenmoor's quarters."

I crossed the room and took it.

The cup was full—dark liquid, wine by appearance. My fingers wrapped around the tray, and I walked out.

The smell reached me in the corridor. A shadow beneath the wine, bitter in a way that had no business being there. Lunara stirred immediately.

'Put it down.'

I kept walking.

Deep down, I knew what the smell meant. Couldn't have explained how, but I just did. Something inside me had recognized it, and what it recognized was dangerous.

I'd taken it anyway, because the alternative would be immediate and severe, and I knew exactly what that looked like. I had the healed bruises to remind me when I forgot.

So, I climbed the stairs with the tray level and my mind turning the same question over with every step: I wasn't going to watch him drink it. I knew that already. What I hadn't figured out yet was what exactly I was going to do instead—and I was running out of corridors to decide.

This silver tray was bound to give me away before I reached the door.

My hands had developed a strong opinion about this situation, and that opinion was trembling. I kept my elbows locked and my eyes forward.

'Turn around,' Lunara pressed, low and urgent.

"Working on it," I muttered.

That was a lie from the pit of hell.

I stopped outside the door.

No guards in the corridor. No sound from inside—nothing. An Alpha with Nikolai Dravenmoor's reputation didn't travel without warriors, and warriors didn't go silent unless they'd been told to, and Alphas only gave that order when they wanted to hear everything else.

He already knew I was standing here.

The door opened.

Every thought I had evaporated.

Nikolai Dravenmoor stood in the doorway without a shirt, which felt like an ambush I hadn't been warned about. Pale skin, broad chest, scars crossing his ribs in patterns too old to be recent. His silver-gray eyes landed on me, and my brain decided at that moment to stop functioning.

'Mate,' Lunara breathed.

"No," I said out loud.

His eyebrow lifted. "No?"

Heat climbed my neck. "Nothing. I've been instructed to deliver this to you."

I lifted the tray. He stepped aside, and I walked in—either brave or catastrophically stupid. The door shut behind me with a click that sounded permanent.

Then his scent hit me.

Cedarwood and cold smoke, rain-soaked earth, and something darker underneath. My body registered it before my mind could argue. Warmth spread through my chest, down my arms, and into my fingertips still wrapped around the tray.

'Go to him.'

"Absolutely not," I muttered.

"Something you'd like to share?"

He was watching me from across the room. Arms crossed. Head tilted.

"I talk to myself," I told him. "Occupational hazard of being invisible."

He didn't respond. His gaze dropped to the tray, and something shifted underneath his control—too quick to read.

"Set it down."

I moved to the table. His eyes followed me the whole way, which was uncomfortable considering what was on the tray. He crossed the room without hurry, stopping close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.

His scent was worse at this distance. Better. Both things simultaneously.

'Touch him.'

I gripped the edge of the table instead.

He reached for the cup.

Everything lurched. My hand moved before I'd decided—catching his wrist, then the cup was already falling, dark liquid arcing sideways and shattering across the floor between us.

The silence afterward was enormous.

Nikolai looked at the broken pieces. Then at me.

Then he moved.

I had one second before my shoulders hit the wall; his arm came up beside my head, and his mouth crashed onto mine. It wasn't gentle. It wasn't asking. His free hand caught my jaw and tilted it upward.

The kiss was the most disorienting thing that had ever happened to me—and I'd had a bucket of dirty water dumped on me this morning.

I shoved at his chest. Hard.

He broke the kiss but didn't step back.

"You can't just—" I started.

"You're my mate." His voice was low and certain. "I can do whatever I want."

I stared at him.

"That is the single most arrogant thing anyone has ever said to me, and I once sat through the Alpha giving a speech about his own humility."

Something flickered across his expression. Not offense. Closer to amusement, which he clearly found inconvenient.

"The cup," he said.

"What about it?"

"What was in it?"

"Wine."

"Try again."

"Grape juice."

"Anaiyah."

The way he said my name—flat, quiet, expecting—made being difficult significantly harder. I hated that.

"I genuinely don't know what was in it," I said. "I know what it was supposed to do."

He studied my face. "And you knocked it away anyway."

"Obviously."

"Why."

The question came out quiet. Not suspicious—genuinely confused, which I found slightly devastating for reasons I couldn't afford to examine.

"Because I don't want to kill anyone," I told him. "Not even someone I've known for thirty seconds. It's a personal rule."

"Adrian threatened you."

Not a question. I didn't confirm it. He already knew.

"You could have let me drink it," he said lower. "Solved your problem."

"You weren't my problem." More honest than I'd intended. "You were just the person holding the cup."

He went still.

Not the courtyard stillness—something different. A shift that moved nothing physical but changed the weight of the room.

His eyes searched my face.

I became acutely aware that I was still against the wall, that very little space existed between us, and that Lunara had gone completely quiet in the attentive way she did when something important was happening.

'Our mate,' she said softly.

'I know,' I told her.

'We should probably deal with that.'

'I'm working on it.'

Nikolai's jaw tightened. "You have no idea what you are."

"An Omega who just destroyed property and committed witness intimidation in front of the most powerful Alpha alive." I held his gaze. "That's what I am."

His mouth curved. Not quite a smile. Something more dangerous.

"My mate," he corrected quietly.

My heart slammed, hard.

He leaned closer. His hand came up beside my head against the wall, not trapping me—giving me room to refuse. I registered that distinction. Catalogued it. Didn't move.

"Tell me to stop," he whispered against my temple.

I didn't.

His mouth found mine slowly, deliberately, nothing like the violence I'd expected from someone everyone feared. He kissed me the way someone tasted something they weren't certain they deserved—careful at first, then less careful when I stopped holding my breath and kissed him back.

Lunara surged forward. I let her.

His hands moved to my waist, lifting me without effort, and I wrapped my legs around him because my body had apparently been waiting for permission I hadn't consciously granted. The wall was solid behind me. He was solid in front of me, while his scent was everywhere. I stopped thinking in complete sentences.

He carried me to the bed without breaking the kiss. Set me down like something he intended to keep. Then he pulled back far enough to look at me—really look, the same thorough attention he'd given everything since arriving, except now it was only me.

"You can still tell me to stop."