The poisoner. They've found them.

Cyrus's POV.

From that day on, Mira truly stopped appearing in front of me.

"Good morning, darling. Did you sleep well?"

Angelina walked into my bedroom with practiced ease. She had moved into the room next to mine long ago.

I took the coffee she handed me — and found myself thinking of the hot tea Mira used to bring me, the cup with cinnamon in it.

For the first few days I was satisfied with the arrangement. No need to look at Mira's face. Angelina beside me every day. Everything back the way it should be.

But on the fourth night, I started dreaming.

In the dream her body gave off the mint scent I loved. She was warm and soft, like a wool blanket left to sun by the fireplace in winter.

We were close in the dream. She smiled at me, reached up to touch my face, kissed the corner of my mouth — and in the dream, I took pleasure in it.

Every time I woke out of that pleasure, the picture shattered.

I rubbed between my brows, irritated. A woman I had found repulsive — what claim did she have on my dreams?

But I couldn't stop it. The fifth day, the sixth, the seventh — the dreams grew clearer.

And last night, in the dream, Mira sat quietly on the rug in my study, glancing up at me now and then, dropping her eyes whenever I caught her, the tips of her ears going red.

I had to admit it. Even now, remembering, my heart still moved.

"Angie, I have something to handle. Go on out."

Angelina looked startled for a second, but she nodded and closed the door behind her.

I set down the coffee I'd taken a single sip of and stopped the Gamma warrior who was on his way out.

"Where is she?"

The Gamma blinked. "You mean—"

"Mira."

"The Luna has been cooperating with the council's investigation. She reports to the assembly hall every morning. Some days she isn't out until evening."

"Get out."

The next day I went to the assembly hall.

Naturally I wasn't there to sit in on the hearing. I simply happened to be in the archive behind the assembly hall at that hour, looking for an old contract.

The archive and the side chamber shared a single wall. Half the window stood open, and the voices carried through.

"Take us through that day again." That was Elder Morton.

Mira's voice was tired, scraped raw — plainly she had repeated the same account more times than anyone could count — but every word still came out cleanly bitten off. What time, which corridor she had come along, which doors she had passed through, which guard she had met. Orderly, precise.

Morton asked why she hadn't sealed the kitchen the moment Cyrus collapsed. She waited two seconds before answering. She said she had sealed the kitchen first — but the servant register had been taken and altered once. By the time she noticed, it was too late. Someone had rewritten the entry records of three servants, and one of them had a stretch of his shift schedule deliberately erased.

Morton was quiet a moment. "Why not bring it straight to the council?"

Mira said, "I don't trust anyone."

Five words. Soft, and not a flicker of hesitation in them.

I leaned against the shelves at the back of the archive. I didn't notice when the old contract in my hand came loose.

I heard my own heartbeat, and it sounded foreign to me. But I knew that rhythm. The Alpha's primal instinct toward his mate — the kind reason has no authority over.

A chair scraped on the other side of the wall.

"You can go back for now," Morton's voice said. Without thinking, I took half a step toward the window and watched through the gap in the blinds as Mira came out of the side chamber.

Her back was thinner than before. At the corner of the long corridor she stopped, as if she'd felt something, and looked toward the archive.

I stepped back. Something had taken hold inside my chest and squeezed hard — a heat turning up from the pit of my stomach, scalding and bitter at once. Not the blunt, obvious lust of a heat cycle. Deeper than that, and duller — like a wolf shut up inside my ribs, working its claws against the door.

I yanked the blinds shut.

I went back to the study and closed the door. Two glasses of cold water, and then I went through every document I could get my hands on and didn't read one word.

My head was full of that look — her at the corner of the corridor, turning this way. I couldn't make out her expression, but that silhouette rose up the instant I shut my eyes, perfectly clear.

I dreamed of her again.

This dream was nothing like the others.

She stood at the foot of my bed, hair spilling over her shoulders, no outer robe — only a nightgown thin enough to see through. Her pale fingertips eased the strap down off her shoulder, slowly.

I saw her full breasts, the soft pink of her areolae swaying in front of me, drawing me in with something lethal.

"Cyrus."

She looked down at me, her voice blurred, and I could just make out that she was saying my name.

I watched her stroke her own breast, her other hand traveling down over her belly, her fingers rubbing slowly at her clit.

My mind went blank. All I registered was my cock, so hard it was about to split.

Take her.

By the time I understood what I was thinking, I already had her pinned under me in the dream. I caught her wrists and pulled her down onto the bed, and she pressed her whole body against me, her breath hot and damp at my neck, calling my name, indistinct, the tail of it faintly aggrieved —

When I entered her cunt, a tingling pleasure flooded my whole body. I was like a boy who had never done this before, barely able to hold back from coming, and I jolted awake.

My body was drenched with heat. I swore with my eyes shut. The tightness low in my belly hadn't eased.

I looked at my erection and the irritation rose in me.

One look in the daylight, just seeing that she'd grown thinner — I couldn't call up her expression now, but in the dream it had been so clear, even the feel of pushing into her body more real than anything.

I stared at the ceiling. What galled me more was something else — when I stood in the assembly hall today and she was there, that tight, itching thing in my chest was the same as in the dream.

In daylight I wanted to go to her. At night, in the dream, I did go to her. My body had recognized her before my head did.

This was wrong.

I didn't feel this with Angelina.

When Angelina leaned into me I put my hand on her waist — smooth, ordinary, the body raising no objection.

But at the corner of that corridor today, I had nearly walked out of the archive.

I sat up sharply, meaning to wash the desire off me under a shower — it still hadn't gone.

My hand had barely found the lamp switch when someone knocked at the bedroom door.

Gamma's voice came through from outside, so urgent it cracked.

"Alpha! Alpha, are you awake?"

"What is it." I dragged the blanket up over my waist, my voice low and rough.

"The council — there's a result." Gamma swallowed. "The poisoner. They've found them."