Fresh Silver

Nobody spoke.

The monitor beeped. Somewhere down the hall, a cart rattled past. My mother lay between us, gray and still, and I stared at the numbers on the healer’s tablet until they blurred.

Fresh silver. Small doses. For months.

In my last life, Mom never left Dark Moon. She stayed in that cold room at the end of the hall, getting weaker and weaker, and I sat beside her every day thinking her body was just slow to heal.

Someone had been walking into that room the whole time. Smiling at me in the hall, maybe. Then slipping poison into my mother’s veins.

My hands started to shake.

Zion moved first.

“Seal this floor.” His voice had gone low and flat, the voice of an Alpha giving orders that would not be questioned. “No one in or out of this room without my approval. Every healer who touches her reports to you directly.” He turned to the older woman. “Your name?”

“Marta, Alpha.”

“Marta. You’ll handle her care personally. No one else draws her blood or touches her medication.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

His eyes went distant for a moment, the faraway look of a wolf using the mind-link. When they cleared, two warriors were already taking up posts outside the door.

I stared at him.

Medical expenses. That was what the contract said. Not guards. Not a sealed floor. Not that look on his face, cold and furious, as if someone had poisoned his family instead of mine.

I didn’t understand it. I didn’t have the energy to try.

I stood up.

“Where are you going?” Zion asked.

“Back to Dark Moon.”

He stepped between me and the door so smoothly I almost walked into his chest. “No.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Think for one second, Kira.”

“I am thinking.” My voice cracked, and I hated it. “I’m thinking that someone in that infirmary has been killing my mother for four months, and I’m going to find out who, and I’m going to...”

“To what?” He didn’t raise his voice. That made it worse. “Walk in at dawn in your wedding dress and start screaming about poison? Whoever did this pours the rest down a drain, wipes the needle clean, and smiles at you across the table for the rest of your life.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

“And think about who your mother is to them,” he went on. “A woman accused of spying for Silver Lake. If Silver Lake suddenly claims she was poisoned, what do you think Dark Moon will say?”

I closed my eyes.

That we made it up, I thought. That Silver Lake’s healers planted it to protect their spy.

He’s right, Freya said grudgingly. I hate it, but he’s right.

Nobody asked you.

I live here now. I don’t need to be asked.

I opened my eyes. Zion was watching me, arms crossed, waiting.

“So what?” I asked. “We do nothing?”

“We wait. We gather proof. We let them think no one’s noticed.” His jaw tightened. “And when we have enough, we make sure there’s nowhere for them to run.”

We.

I didn’t let myself think about that word.

“Why do you care?” I asked quietly. “She’s not your mother. The contract says you pay her bills. That’s it.”

For a moment, something flickered across his face. Then it was gone.

“She’s under my roof,” he said. “Anyone who poisons someone under my roof answers to me.”

It wasn’t an answer. Not really. But I was too tired to push.

Marta cleared her throat. She’d moved to the counter, where a sealed plastic bag held the IV line and fluid bag that had come with Mom from Dark Moon. “I kept these, Luna. In case they’re needed as evidence. If someone was adding silver to her fluids, there may be traces inside.”

I crossed the room before I could stop myself and pressed my fingers to the bag.

The clinic disappeared.

A hallway. Dim, flickering light. The smell of bleach and wolfsbane. Dark Moon’s infirmary.

A hand in a black leather glove held a syringe. The needle slid into the IV port, slow and practiced, and a thin stream of something cloudy swirled into the fluid.

The hand didn’t hesitate. It had done this many times before.

I tried to look up, to see the face. To see anything. But the vision held me in place, fixed on that gloved hand, that needle, that swirl of poison.

Then it was gone.

I was clutching the edge of the counter, breathing hard. Marta was staring at me. And Zion was right behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him at my back.

“That’s twice,” he said quietly.

I didn’t turn around. “I didn’t sleep last night.”

“Kira.”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t believe me. I could feel him not believing me, the weight of his stare pressing against the back of my neck. But before he could push, his phone buzzed.

He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen.

His face went completely blank.

Not cold. Not angry. Just empty, the way it went whenever he didn’t want anyone to see what he was feeling.

I knew that look. I’d seen it a hundred times in my last life.

Always for the same reason.

“Jessi,” I said.

He didn’t deny it. He turned the screen toward me.

Dark Moon Pack warmly invites Alpha Zion and Luna Kira of Silver Lake to a welcome dinner in honor of their marriage. Three days from now. Hosted by Luna Jessi.

Below it, a second message. Just for him.

Can’t wait to see you. Both of you. 💕

Zion slid the phone back into his pocket. When he looked at me, his gray eyes were unreadable.

“You’re coming with me,” he said. “Per the contract.”

I should have been afraid. In my last life, those dinners were where I bled the most.

But I thought of a gloved hand and a needle. Of someone at Dark Moon, maybe sitting at that very table, who had smiled at my mother while they killed her.

“Fine,” I said.

Good, I thought. Let them all be there.