The Discarded Luna

Duskbane poison

Rhydian's POV

Every head in the room turned toward the door at once.

"Who's that?" I called out, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.

Silence answered me first. A long, stretched silence that made my jaw clench tighter with every passing second. I let a thread of my alpha aura slip into my voice this time.

"I asked. Who is that?"

"It's me. Nadia."

Corven's eyes cut to mine, unreadable, before he stepped toward the door without unlocking it.

"What do you want?" he asked through the wood.

"I saw the healer walking in," Nadia's voice came back, muffled but steady. "I just wanted to check if Alpha Rhydian is alright."

I forced my voice into something calm, something that gave nothing away. "I'm fine, Nadia. There's no issue here. Go back to your room."

"Are you sure? Because it looked serious, the way the guard was rushing—"

"I said I'm fine," I cut in. "The healer and Corven are here discussing pack health matters with me. Nothing more. Go."

There was a pause, long enough that I wondered if she was going to argue. Then, finally, footsteps retreated down the hallway, fading until the silence around the door felt safe again.

Corven let out a breath. "She doesn't believe you."

"I don't need her to believe me," I said. "I need her gone."

Doran, who had stayed quiet through the entire exchange, waited until the footsteps disappeared completely before speaking again.

"Can we continue now?" he asked.

I nodded, turning back toward the bed, toward Seraphine's still, pale face. "Tell me everything."

Doran folded his hands in front of him, choosing his words with serious precision of care that made my stomach twist before he even finished his first sentence.

"She's seriously ill," he said. "This isn't exhaustion. This isn't stress from your aura alone. Something is in her system."

My chest tightened instantly. "What do you mean, something is in her system?"

"Her body contains a high dosage of a reacting substance," Doran said. "A poisonous substance."

I felt the pieces click together too fast, too painfully. "The tea," I said. "She had been taking tea from her pack healer that I found out was suppressing and weakening her."

"Exactly,her system is wearing off due to the poison," Doran said carefully.

Corven's voice came out low, dangerous. "Someone poisoned her? Why? In her pack?"

"It appears that way," Doran said.

My hands curled into fists at my sides. "To weaken her," I said. "Someone wanted her weak enough that…."

"No," Doran interrupted, and something in the way he said that single word made the room go colder. "Not to weaken her, Alpha Rhydian. This wasn't meant to weaken. This was meant to kill her wolf."

The words hung in the air like smoke that wouldn't clear.

"Kill her wolf?" Corven repeated slowly. "How does something even do that?"

Doran reached into his bag and pulled out a small vial, holding it up so we could both see the faint black residue coating the inside of the glass.

"This is what I found traces of in her blood," he said. "Duskbane. It's rare. Expensive. Brewed from crushed moonflower ash mixed with ground silver dust, then aged in wolfsbane roots until it turns black like this."

"I've never heard of it," I admitted.

"Most haven't," Doran said. "It doesn't attack the body the way silver poisoning does. It goes for the wolf's spirit directly, the bond between wolf and human. In small doses, it weakens the wolf side until the person can barely shift. In large doses..."

He didn't need to finish that sentence. I understood exactly what came after "in large doses."

"It kills the wolf first," Doran said anyway, quietly. "And once the wolf dies inside someone, the human body doesn't survive long after. Usually within hours."

I looked down at Elara, at the way her chest rose and fell so faintly I had to watch closely to be sure it was still moving at all.

"Then why is she still alive?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

Doran allowed himself something close to a small, tired smile. "Because her wolf is strong. Stronger than I've seen in a long time. A regular wolf given this dose would have been gone within the first hour. She's fighting it. Her wolf refuses to give up, even now."

Something in my chest loosened slightly at those words, though the relief was thin, fragile, sitting right on top of the fear that hadn't left me since she collapsed.

"Can you save her?" I asked.

"I can try," Doran said. "But it will take time. We need to draw the poison out slowly, purge it from her blood without shocking her system further. It's delicate work. And she's already weak."

Corven finally spoke again, his voice quieter now, almost hesitant. "Who could have done this? Who even has access to Duskbane?"

"That," Doran said, "is a question for the two of you to answer. I only treat what's in front of me."

I stared at Elara's face, at the faint tremble in her closed eyelids, and my mind raced through every name I didn't want to consider from Kade's pack. Someone working for one of them. Someone inside her pack who had decided the easiest way to remove her was to make it look like exhaustion, like a simple fainting spell, nothing worth questioning twice.

"She's not leaving this room unguarded again," I said, my voice hardening. "Not for a second."

"Agreed," Corven said immediately.

Doran began gathering supplies from his bag, laying them carefully on the small table beside the bed, his movements quick now, focused. "I'll need clean water, fresh moonroot if the kitchens have any, and complete quiet. Her body needs to rest while I work."

"Whatever you need," I said. "Just save her."

He nodded once, already turning back toward her, his hands hovering over her forehead to check her temperature again.

"Her fever's rising," he murmured, more to himself than to us. "That's expected. It means her body is fighting back against the poison, but it also means the next few hours will be—"

Elara’s body jerked suddenly on the bed.

"Elara?" I was at her side before I even realized I had moved, my hand finding hers, gripping it tightly.

Her eyes fluttered, not fully opening, her body shaking now with a violent, sudden cough that tore through her chest.

"Doran—" I started, panic rising fast in my throat.

The cough came again, harder this time, her whole body curling forward slightly against the force of it.

And then I saw it.

Dark red spread across

her lips, dripping down the corner of her mouth as she coughed again, blood staining the white sheets beneath her.