You know, it’s funny how life works out sometimes.

Or, well… I guess it’s funny how death works out.

Hi there! My name is Elijah Cassian, and I’m… well, I was the family idiot.

It’s not like I tried to be!

Some people are just born smart, you know?

They get all the good genes—the ones for quick thinking and clever comebacks and remembering to tie their shoes.

Me?

I think I got the genes for… being really good at staring at clouds. And forgetting where I put my juice box. And trusting my older brother, Leo, when he grinned at me and said, “Here, Eli, it’s just lemonade!”

Spoiler alert: It was not just lemonade.

See, I’m super, super allergic to peaches.

Like, my throat tries to tie itself into a pretzel and my body goes on strike.

It’s very rude of it, really.

So when I drank that water Leo gave me—the one with the peach extract he’d secretly squeezed in for a “prank”—my body decided to throw the biggest, messiest tantrum ever. It wasn’t a cute little rash.

Oh no!

We went straight to the main event: vomiting blood all over Mom’s favorite white rug.

It looked kind of pretty, in a really gross way. Like a modern art painting.

I titled it “The Consequences of Trusting Leo.”

The weirdest part?

I didn’t even cry. I just stood there, feeling this hot, awful pain in my tummy, watching my parents’ faces go from annoyed to… well, still annoyed, but with more yelling.

“Elijah, you idiot! Look what you’ve done!” Dad shouted. Mom was just clutching her pearls, looking at the rug like I’d murdered her favorite pet. Leo was trying not to laugh behind his hand. Classic Leo.

Then everything got really fuzzy and dark, like someone was turning down the lights on the world. The last thing I remember is the ceiling spinning, and then… nothing.

I thought that was it.

Goodbye, world of juice boxes and being called dense.

But then I woke up!

And it was… cold. Not snuggly-blanket cold. More like my bones had been turned into popsicles. My throat felt like I’d tried to swallow a cactus, and my head was hosting a tiny, angry drum circle.

I was in a hospital bed, which made sense.

Mom and Dad must have brought me here after my dramatic performance on the rug. I looked around the little curtained-off area, feeling that familiar, heavy loneliness.

Of course they’d left.

They probably had more important things to do than sit with their idiot son who couldn’t even tell peach water from regular water.

I was just starting to feel properly sorry for myself when the nurse came in.

She was all cheerful and bouncy, saying something about checking my vitals. And my slow, cloud-watching brain, which usually takes its sweet time processing things, finally delivered the information it had gathered.

She had big, round, gray-furred ears on top of her head.

They twitched.

And she had a long, pink, hairless tail swishing behind her.

A tail.

I blinked. I scrunched my eyes shut. Maybe I’m still dreaming? Maybe this is the peach allergy afterlife? A place where nurses are… mice?

“Good, you’re awake!” she squeaked. Literally squeaked. Like a little mouse. Because she was one. “You gave us quite a scare, Mr. Cassian!”

My mouth fell open. All I could manage was a tiny, “Wh… what are you?”

She just tilted her head, her whiskers twitching, and looked at me like I was the strange one. “I’m Nurse Millie! Your attending nurse. Now, let’s not fuss.”

She checked my pulse with her little paws—I mean, hands—and wrote on her clipboard, her tail giving a happy little flick. Then she bustled right out, leaving me alone with my popsicle bones and my completely shattered understanding of reality.

So, let’s review: I, Elijah Cassian, the family idiot, died from a peach. And I woke up in a place where nurses have tails and ears.

I don’t think I’m dense anymore.

I think I might just be… lost. Very, very lost. And honestly? It’s a lot more interesting than staring at clouds.

My legs felt like wobbly jelly, the kind that hasn't set properly yet. Pushing back the stiff hospital sheets, I planted my feet on the cold floor, a shiver running straight up my spine. Standing up seemed like a really big project, but lying there feeling sorry for myself was getting boring. I had to figure out where I was, and why everyone had… extra parts.

I’d just managed to get my balance, clutching the metal bedframe for dear life, when the door to my room swung open with a soft whoosh.

And then I saw him.

Oh. Wow.

My slow brain, which usually processed things at the speed of a sleepy turtle, suddenly decided to work in high-definition, ultra-fast motion.

He was… the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Tall, with shoulders that looked like they could carry the world, and hair the color of dark chocolate that fell in soft waves around a face that belonged in a museum. His eyes were a sharp, piercing amber, and they were currently narrowed right at me.

But my brain, doing its thing, snagged on the details. On top of his head, nestled in that gorgeous hair, were two triangular, furred ears. They were twitching, pinned back flat against his skull. And behind him, swishing with an agitated, powerful flick, was a bushy, gray-and-white wolf’s tail.

A wolf.

A handsome, angry wolf-man was in my hospital room.

My mouth, which had been hanging open, didn’t seem to want to close.

He strode into the room, his movements all coiled grace and clear irritation. The air around him seemed to crackle.

“Finally awake, I see,” he said, his voice a low, rumbling growl that vibrated right through my jelly-legs. He stopped a few feet from me, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His fluffy tail gave another sharp, annoyed lash.

“What were you thinking, Elijah? Drinking poison? Was it truly so unbearable?”

I just blinked, my grip tightening on the bedframe.

Poison? I drank peach water. Leo’s prank. That wasn't poison... was it?

“I… it was… lemonade?”

I managed to whisper, my voice squeaking worse than Nurse Millie’s.

His amber eyes flashed, and a low, frustrated sound rumbled in his chest. It was almost a growl.

“Do not play the fool with me. We have an agreement. A contract. If you no longer desire this marriage, you simply needed to say the words. We could have arranged a quiet dissolution. There was no need for this… this dramatic, foolish attempt on your own life!”

Each word hit me like a physical blow, leaving me more dazed and confused than before.

Marriage? Contract? Divorce?

My thoughts, slow and muddy, tried to wade through this new information. In my old life, nobody liked me. Not like that.

People would sometimes pat my head and say, “He’s a bit slow, but so cute,” and that was it.

That was the peak of my romantic prospects. I was single. Very, very single. The idea of me being married to anyone, let alone someone who looked like a grumpy prince from a fairy tale—a wolf fairy tale—was the funniest, most impossible thing I had ever heard.

“But…” I started, my brow furrowing in concentration. This was a lot of thinking for one day.

“I’m… I’m not married. Nobody… nobody wants to marry me. I’m dense.” I said it plainly, like it was a simple fact.

The sky is blue, grass is green, and Elijah Cassian is too slow to get a husband.

The man’s stern expression faltered for a fraction of a second, his wolf ears twitching forward as if to catch my words better.

He studied my face, my probably-dopey, utterly bewildered expression, and some of the anger seemed to drain from his posture, replaced by a wary confusion.

“Elijah,” he said, his voice quieter, though the growly undertone was still there.

“What are you talking about? We’ve been married for six months.”

Six months.

I stared at him, at his handsome, annoyed face, his fluffy wolf ears, his swishing tail. I remembered the taste of blood, my mother’s scream, the spinning ceiling.

And a terrifying, dizzying thought finally broke through the fog in my mind.

This wasn’t my body.

This wasn’t my life.

The idiot Elijah Cassian had died on a white rug.

And he—whoever he was—had woken up in a world of mouse-nurses and a husband who was a very, very cross wolf.

The scent of antiseptic and despair clung to the air of the private hospital wing, a bitter perfume I knew all too well. My claws, carefully sheathed within my human-form fingers, dug into the palms of my hands. The report from my security detail was burning a hole in the inner pocket of my suit jacket.

Elijah Cassian-Webster. Ingestion of suspected Wolfsbane. Condition: Stable.

Wolfsbane. A poison. My mate had tried to kill himself.

The thought was a physical blow, a sucker-punch to the gut that stole my breath. I stood outside his door for a full minute, forcing the storm inside me back under control. An Alpha does not show weakness. A CEO does not show panic. A husband… what was I even allowed to show? I was just the man bound to him by a piece of paper and a desperate, foolish hope.

I pushed the door open.

And there he was.

My beautiful, infuriating, heartbreaking husband. Pale as the sheets, clinging to the bedframe like a lifeline, his slender body trembling with the effort of simply standing. Those wide eyes, usually so full of cold disdain or calculated boredom, were now pools of pure, unadulterated confusion. And those ears… his long, pristine white rabbit ears, usually held proudly, almost arrogantly, were drooping, one of them flopping slightly over his forehead.

He looked utterly lost.

A part of me, the primal, possessive Alpha core, roared to go to him, to gather him in my arms and scent him until the fear was gone, until my smell was the only thing on his skin. The other part, the part he had meticulously built up and calloused over six months of rejection, hardened into ice.

“Finally awake, I see,” I said, my voice a low growl I couldn’t quite suppress. I crossed my arms, my own gray tail lashing once, sharply, behind me, betraying the agitation I fought to conceal.

“What were you thinking, Elijah? Drinking poison? Was it truly so unbearable?”

The mere idea that existence with me was a fate worse than death was a blade twisted in a wound that had never healed.

He blinked, those long white lashes fluttering.

“I… it was… lemonade?” he whispered, his voice a soft, thready thing. It was so unlike his usual sharp, dismissive tone that it gave me pause.

Frustration, hot and acidic, rose in my throat.

“Do not play the fool with me.” The words came out harsher than I intended.

“We have an agreement. A contract. If you no longer desire this marriage, you simply needed to say the words. We could have arranged a quiet dissolution. There was no need for this… this dramatic, foolish attempt on your own life!”

I saw the words land, saw the genuine bewilderment deepen in his expression. This wasn’t his usual act. This wasn’t the cold, self-centered socialite who barely acknowledged my presence in our shared home.

“But…” he stammered, his brow furrowing in a way that was strangely… innocent. “I’m… I’m not married. Nobody… nobody wants to marry me. I’m dense.”

The world tilted.

Dense? Elijah?

The man who could eviscerate a business rival with a single, perfectly poised barb?

The man whose every public appearance was a masterclass in calculated charm and icy detachment?

He thought he was… dense?

My ears, which had been pinned back in anger, twitched forward of their own accord, straining to catch the nuance in his scent, in his voice. There was no guile there. Only a profound, shocking sincerity.

“Elijah,” I said, my voice dropping, the growl receding into a wary rumble. “What are you talking about? We’ve been married for six months.”

The silence that followed was deafening. He just stared at me, his rabbit nose twitching slightly, his whole world seemingly crumbling behind those violet eyes.

Six months.

Six months of me, James Webster, Alpha of the Silvermane Clan, owner of a global empire, being brought to my knees by a fragile rabbit who didn't even want to look at me.

I fell for him the moment I saw him. It was at a charity gala his family was desperately clinging to. He was across the room, a vision in white silk, his rabbit ears held high, a glass of champagne in his hand, looking bored and ethereally beautiful. Our eyes met, and for a single, staggering second, I felt the pull.

The mating bond.

It was faint, a fledgling thing, but it was there. I knew, with every fiber of my being, that he was mine.

Then his family’s empire crumbled. The vultures circled. And I saw my chance. I went to him, not as a savior, but as a businessman. I offered a merger. A marriage.

I drafted the contract myself, my hands trembling as I wrote the clause that was both my salvation and my damnation: The union may be dissolved upon the successful birth of a healthy heir.

I didn't want to force him.

I was a wolf, yes, possessive and territorial to my core, but I wanted him to choose me.

I thought, given time, proximity… he might feel the pull, too.

So I waited.

I gave him his own wing in the mansion. I bought him anything his heart desired. I never pressed. I never touched him, despite the agony of sleeping alone, knowing my mate was just rooms away.

And he… he was always cold.

His heart belonged to another.

Alex.

A flashy, preening tiger beastman from his old life.

I knew Elijah met him.

My security team gave me weekly reports, each one a fresh slice of hell. I saw the photos of them having lunch, laughing. I knew the sting of betrayal, the acid burn of jealousy, but I never stopped him.

What right did I have?

Our marriage was a transaction. I was just waiting for him to fulfill his part of the bargain so he could be free.

The pain was a constant, dull ache in my chest.

In the boardroom, I was the stoic, unflappable CEO. At home, I was a ghost, haunting the edges of his life.

And then, the final, cruel twist.

The report that wasn't about Elijah meeting Alex.

It was about Alex.

Caught in a luxury mall, his arm wrapped around a visibly pregnant fox beastman. He had cheated on Elijah. The man my husband pined for, the man he risked scandal for, had thrown him away for someone else.

I never told Elijah.

What would have been the point?

To see the pain in his eyes?

To witness his heart breaking for another man?

My pride, what little I had left where he was concerned, wouldn't allow it. I simply filed the report away, another secret to carry.

Now, standing here, looking at this confused, vulnerable version of my husband, a terrifying, impossible hope began to stir in the ashes of my heart.

The Wolfsbane… the confusion… the way he looked at me as if he’d never seen me before…

He didn’t answer.

He just continued to stare, a lost little rabbit who somehow held the entirety of my bruised and battered soul in his small, trembling hands.