My Mate Tried to Kill Me for an Heir

The wind screamed against the rotting logs of the derelict hunting cabin like a dying animal. Outside, a supernatural blizzard was tearing across the Northern Territories, burying my ancestral lands under feet of unforgiving ice and snow. But the chill in the air was nothing compared to the violent fever burning through my veins.

I curled tighter into a ball on the moldy cot in the back room, my teeth chattering so hard my jaw ached. For three years, I had locked my inner wolf inside a suffocating mental cage. I did it for love. I did it to be the gentle, submissive Luna that Alpha Lucian Arnold claimed to want after he saved me from a brutal rogue ambush. But suppressing a Lycan spirit—especially one as massive and dominant as mine—was like holding a boulder over an erupting geyser. The sheer physical strain of hiding my Alpha aura, combined with the unnatural, biting cold of this freak storm, had finally broken my immune system.

Through the cracked wooden door, I could see the flickering orange glow of the hearth in the main room. Lucian was sitting on the only intact chair, carefully wrapping his thick, insulated wool coat around the shoulders of his Beta assistant, Daphne Flores. He murmured something soft to her, his hand lingering on her waist. He hadn't checked on me once since I collapsed two hours ago.

I closed my eyes, trying to force my breathing to slow. As I drifted in the hazy space between consciousness and sleep, the intense fever began to melt away the heavy mental barriers I had built to suppress my wolf. For the first time in years, my Lycan hearing bled through, sharp and undeniable.

Over the howling wind, their hushed voices drifted through the thin walls.

"We can't wait any longer, Lucian," Daphne murmured, her tone smooth and poisonous. "The storm is peaking. If we do it tonight, no one will question it. We can blame the cold, or say a stray rogue got into the cabin."

"I know," Lucian replied. His voice was entirely devoid of the warm, protective Alpha tone he always used in public. It was cold, calculating. "Once she's dead, the Northern territory dowry officially defaults to my name. I'll finally have the power and the land I deserve. I'm so sick of enduring her pathetic, clinging weakness just to secure the rights."

I stopped breathing. The words struck me harder than a physical blow.

*Enduring her weakness.*

"And our pup will have the legacy he deserves," Daphne purred. I heard the rustle of clothing, the unmistakable sound of Lucian's hand sliding over her stomach. "A true heir. Not like that barren, wolfless bitch in the next room."

A tear slipped hot and fast down my cheek, immediately turning cold. *Our pup.* Lucian had told me I was broken. He had watched me cry myself to sleep month after month, letting me believe my "weak" wolf was the reason we couldn't conceive. Three years