I couldn't speak for a moment.
How could he ask me that?
I was the one who had been poisoned. I was the one who suffered and thought I was dying. And now he was accusing me of doing it to myself?
It was insulting. Ridiculous, even.
"That's a far stretch, Alpha. You saw that I almost died," I said, my fists slowly curling against the sheets. My wolf stirred within me faintly, quiet but furious, her growl humming like a low current through my blood.
"But you're alive now," Finn said evenly, like survival proved his suspicion. "Maybe you calculated it just enough to survive."
I blinked at him, disbelief cracking through my skull like ice splitting under pressure.
"You think too highly of me." I lifted my eyes to his, sharp and unblinking. My voice was steady, but only because I was too tired to raise it. "I wouldn't know how to pull that off alone. Especially not in this place, with all your people watching me."
He didn't flinch.
"You hate me, Vivien," he said. It was no question. Just certainty. "That's why I think you might've done it. So the council would question my choice. So I'd be forced to pick someone else. You want to ruin me. Ruin my pride."
He smiled faintly, but it wasn't pleasant. It looked more like a bruise forming under the surface.
"To get back at me," he added.
I looked at him.
I could have denied it outright. But instead, I bit the inside of my cheek and let the silence stretch until my thoughts settled.
"You might be right," I said finally.
"I want to get back at you." My words didn't waver. "But hurting myself just to do that? That's not something I'd waste energy on, Alpha."
His jaw tightened.
"I'm investigating it."
Then the warning came, "Let's hope I'm wrong, breeder. Otherwise you will face a grave punishment."
He stormed out.
I leaned against the headboard, breath shaky and shallow. My chest ached, not from exhaustion, but from something else entirely. A pressure building beneath my ribs, simmering just beneath the surface. It was anger.
Anger at Finn.
I closed my eyes and tried to calm the storm in my head, but his words echoed there like poison. I couldn't understand how he had changed so much. how the boy I once knew, the boy I used to be friends with, had become this cold, calculating Alpha. Or maybe… maybe he'd always been this way. And I was the fool who couldn't see it.
Was that gentleness from before ever real?
I didn't know anymore. It didn't matter.
A faint noise broke through my thoughts.
I opened my eyes, my gaze darting to the window.
I straightened slightly and watched the glass, already suspecting what I'd find. Sure enough, the crow was there, perched on the sill with its dark head cocked to one side. Its beak struck the window in short, insistent movements.
The same crow from this morning.
I stared at it, unmoving for a few seconds. A memory stirred - of it circling above me, screeching, when I began eating the breakfast tray earlier this morning. I hadn't understood it then. I'd brushed it off, assumed it was just a wild thing acting on instinct.
But now…
My stomach twisted.
I got to my feet carefully, still feeling sore from whatever was in the food. My steps were quiet as I crossed to the window and unlatched it.
The crow wasted no time. It hopped inside with a flutter and landed neatly on the bedside table.
I sat back on the bed, knees tucked up loosely.
There was something tied to its leg again. A scrap of paper, hastily fastened with thin thread. But this time, the paper was balled up, crumpled as if it had been shoved there in a hurry. I leaned forward and carefully untied it, letting the paper unfold in my palm.
A small pill rolled into view.
I blinked. It rested on the creased note like a pearl, plain and unmarked.
My eyes skimmed the writing, scrawled in familiar elegant lines:
'This will prevent you from getting poisoned again, stubborn girl.'