The Alpha's Forbidden Grimoire

chapter 4: The Pack Dinner

Elara's POV

I didn't know werewolves ate like they were about to go to war.

The dining hall was long, stone, and loud. Thirty wolves, all in human form but barely. They ripped meat with their teeth, laughed with blood on their chins, growled over bread. It smelled like sweat, pack, and raw power.

And then I walked in.

Liam had told me to wear something of Kade's. "It will mask your scent. Help you."

I refused. I wore my own black dress, the only decent one I packed from the shop. My Grimoire tattoos were hidden under long sleeves, but my scent - rosemary, old books, witch blood - couldn't be hidden.

Every head turned.

Silence dropped like an axe.

A woman with a baby pulled the baby closer. A man stood up, his eyes flashing yellow.

"Witch," someone whispered.

Kade sat at the head of the table, in a black shirt, black veins now creeping up to his jaw. He didn't look sick anymore. He looked angry. He looked at me and his eyes flashed gold.

"Sit," he said.

One word. Alpha command. Not for me, for them. The wolves who had stood sat down slowly, reluctantly, eyes never leaving me.

The only empty chair was at his right hand. The Luna's chair.

Seraphina was already sitting in the second chair on his left, in a red dress that screamed look at me. Her smile when she saw where I had to sit could have cut glass.

I walked the longest walk of my life. Past bared teeth, past whispers, past a young wolf who actually snarled at me. My hands were shaking, so I fisted them.

I sat in the Luna's chair. It was still warm from Lyra. It still smelled like her.

"As most of you know," Kade said, his voice carrying without effort, "this is Elara Crowe. The Seer says she is the only one who can break the rot curse. She is a healer. She is under my protection. While she is here, she is pack."

"She is a witch!" A big man at the middle of the table stood - Beta Karl, I remembered him from the fire. He held a torch that night. "Magnus died because of her kind! My brother died because Magnus ordered us to burn them! And you bring one to our table? In Luna Lyra's chair?"

My blood went cold.

Kade moved so fast I didn't see it. One second he was sitting, the next his hand was around Karl's throat, holding him over the table.

"She is under my protection," Kade repeated, each word edged with his wolf. "And this is my pack now, not my father's. Anyone who has a problem with my orders can challenge me outside. Right now."

Karl choked, then nodded. Kade let him drop. Karl fell back into his seat, gasping, not looking at me again.

No one else spoke.

Plates were brought out. Stew. Bread. For me, a bowl of something clear - broth.

Seraphina stood up sweetly. "I made it myself for our healer," she said, placing it in front of me with perfectly manicured hands. "Bone broth. To give you strength. You look so... fragile."

Liam, across from me, stiffened. He sniffed the air subtly and his eyes widened.

I lifted the spoon. It smelled like herbs. Too many herbs. Under the rosemary, something bitter and metallic. Wolfsbane. Small amount - not enough to kill a werewolf, but enough to make a witch violently ill, enough to make my powers misfire.

She was trying to poison me at the Alpha's table.

I looked up at her. She smiled. Drink it.

I looked at Kade. He was watching me, jaw tight. He couldn't smell wolfsbane in broth, his nose was ruined by the curse. But his eyes were on my shaking hand.

If I accused her, I'd sound crazy. A witch accusing the future Luna candidate of poisoning.

If I drank it, I'd vomit blood in front of the whole pack.

I did a third thing.

I let my sleeve slip, just an inch. Just enough that the faintest blue glow of my Grimoire tattoo showed. And I tipped the bowl - not towards my mouth, but towards the floor.

The broth hit the stone and sizzled. Like acid. The stone smoked.

The whole hall gasped.

"Oops," I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, my voice shaking but clear. "I think your bone broth is a little... off, Seraphina."

Seraphina's face went paper white.

Kade looked down at the smoking stone, then slowly, very slowly, up at Seraphina.

His gold eyes were no longer just angry.

They were murderous.

---

Kade's POV

She tried to poison my mate at my table.

In my mother's chair.

The smell hit me a second too late - wolfsbane, hidden under rosemary to trick a sick Alpha's nose. But Elara caught it. My clever, stubborn little witch caught it.

And she showed the whole pack.

The broth ate through stone. If she had drunk it, it would have eaten through her throat.

Vargr, who hadn't spoken in months, roared so loud in my head I thought my skull would split.

KILL HER. KILL THE FEMALE WHO HURT MATE.

I stood up. My chair flew back and crashed into the wall. Every wolf in the room dropped their heads, whimpering from the wave of Alpha fury I couldn't control.

Seraphina stumbled back. "Kade, I - I didn't -"

I was in front of her in one step. My hand around her throat, lifting her off her feet, just like Karl. Her feet kicked.

"You put wolfsbane in her food," I said, my voice not human anymore. It was Vargr and me together. "You tried to kill what is mine. In my house."

"I thought - she's a witch! She -"

I squeezed. Just a little. Enough to make her eyes bulge.

Behind me, I heard Elara gasp. Not in satisfaction. In fear. She was afraid of me again.

That made me let go.

Seraphina fell to the floor, sobbing, clutching her throat.

"Take her to the cells for the night," I ordered the guards, not looking at her. "No food."

"No!" Seraphina screamed as they dragged her. "Kade! You can't do this for a witch! You said you hated witches! You watched her family burn!"

I turned around.

Elara was standing behind the Luna chair, pale, her hand pressed over the faint glow of her tattoo, looking at me like I was exactly what she thought - my father's son.

The pack was staring. At her. At me. At the smoking hole in their floor.

I did the only thing I could do to keep them from seeing the truth - that I wanted to carry her out of here and lick the fear from her neck.

I sat back down and snarled, "Everyone eats. Now."

But I pushed my own untouched plate of meat towards her side of the table, so close our knees brushed under the wood.

A silent offering. Eat. You're safe.

She didn't touch it.