MARKED BY THE MOON

Something in the Tea

Kian POV

I hear her before I reach the door.

Not a scream. Something worse, a low, breathless sound of pain that no amount of training could ever teach a person to fake, and I'm through her door before I even remember deciding to move, splintering the lock because I don't have time to find the key.

Luna is on the floor beside her bed, both hands pressed to her stomach, face white as bone.

"Luna." I'm on my knees beside her before the door finishes swinging shut. "Talk to me. What's happening?"

"Cramp." Her voice comes out thin, forced through gritted teeth. "Bad one. It's not stopping."

My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts. I've fought wolves twice my size without this much fear in my chest. "The baby"

"I don't know." Tears spring into her eyes, more from fear than pain, I think, though it's hard to tell them apart right now. "Kian, I don't know."

I don't remember shouting for the healer. I don't remember carrying her down the hall, though my arms ache with the memory of it later, like my body did what needed doing before my mind caught up to any of it. What I remember is the healer's small, candlelit room. Luna laid carefully on the examination table, her hand crushing mine hard enough to bruise while the old healer, Bettina, pressed careful hands against her stomach and listened with an expression I couldn't read.

"Breathe," Bettina says calmly, to both of us, I think. "Panic won't help either of you."

The minutes stretch out longer than any minutes have any right to. I watch Luna's face, watch the way she's trying so hard to hold herself together even now, even here, and I hate every single thing that's forced her to learn how to do that.

Finally, Bettina straightens, and something in her posture eases just slightly.

"The baby's heartbeat is strong," she says, and the relief that floods through me is so total I nearly go dizzy myself. "Whatever caused this, it wasn't the pregnancy failing. But something caused it, and I intend to find out what."

"It was probably just stress," Luna says, though her voice still shakes. "It's been an impossible day."

"Perhaps." Bettina doesn't sound convinced. She crosses to the small table by the window, where a cup of half-finished tea sits, the one Luna's maid brings her every evening without fail, a habit going back to before I even knew Luna was Luna. Bettina lifts it, sniffs it carefully, then dips one finger in and tastes the smallest amount on her tongue.

Her face changes.

"Where did this tea come from?" she asks sharply.

"My room. Same as always. Someone brings it every night before bed." Luna pushes herself up slightly, alarm chasing the exhaustion from her face. "Why?"

"Because there's pennyroyal in this cup," Bettina says, and the words land in the room like a physical blow. "A very small amount. Enough to cause exactly what just happened to you. Not enough, thankfully, to have ended the pregnancy outright. But if you'd drunk that same cup every night for a week, two weeks"

She doesn't need to finish the sentence. I feel the meaning of it settle into my chest like a stone dropped into still water.

"Someone's trying to kill my child," I say, quiet and lethal, every instinct in me screaming toward violence I have no target for yet.

"Someone's trying to end the pregnancy without anyone realizing it was deliberate," Bettina corrects gently. "A slow poison, easy to mistake for stress, or bad luck, or simply an unfortunate pregnancy that didn't take. Whoever did this was careful. Patient."

Luna's hand finds mine, gripping tight, and when I look at her, I see the same cold fury building behind her eyes that I feel building in my own chest.

"Who has access to my tea?" she asks, voice steady now, the fear burned away by something harder.

"The kitchen staff. Whoever delivers it to your room each night." I'm already running through names in my head, already cataloguing every person who's had access to that cup over the past several days, the same way I catalogued the pack this morning after the fire. "I want every person who's touched that tray questioned tonight."

"Kian." Luna's voice stops me before I can storm out and start doing exactly that. "Whoever did this knows I'm pregnant. That was announced today. In council. Which means"

"Which means it happened tonight," I finished, the realization landing hard and fast. "Someone in that council chamber heard the news and acted within hours."

"Or someone already knew," Luna says quietly, "before the council ever did. Someone close enough to have heard it whispered before it was ever official."

The healer busies herself gathering supplies, giving us the smallest edge of privacy, but I can feel her listening, cataloguing every word the same way I am.

"Cassia," I say slowly.

"She's been locked in a cell all day. Under guard."

"Then whoever poisoned that tea is working for whoever Cassia's afraid of. Someone she wouldn't name, even facing execution." My jaw aches from how hard I'm clenching it. "Someone with access inside this pack house who's willing to kill an unborn child slowly enough that nobody would ever call it murder."

Luna is quiet for a long moment, one hand resting protectively over her stomach, the other still locked tight around mine.

"I want to talk to Cassia again," she finally says. "Tonight."

"Luna, you need to rest"

"I need answers more than I need rest." Her eyes meet mine, fierce and unshaken despite everything that just happened to her. "She said someone would be angrier than her about the pregnancy. She wasn't guessing, Kian. She knew this was coming."

I don't want to take her back down to that cell tonight. Every protective instinct I have screams against it. But I also know, looking at her now, that trying to stop her would be like trying to stop the moon from pulling the tide.

"After Bettina clears you," I say. "Not before."

Luna nods, exhausted but resolute, and I hold her hand while the healer finishes her examination, my mind already racing three steps ahead, already planning exactly how I'm going to find whoever put poison in a cup meant for the woman I should have never let go of in the first place.

Whoever did this made one mistake tonight.

They let her live long enough to fight back.