Chapter 3. Bella POV

Another grey and pointless day of my shitty life begins. It has been almost eight months since what was meant to be Helena and Bram’s commitment ceremony. The party where my life completed its path towards self-destruction. 

As the only prisoner currently in the hold, all I can do is wait for my turn to be hung and paraded against the East Wall as a warning for others. It is the only fitting punishment for a crime like mine.

In these desperate times, I seek the past for comfort. I can still easily picture Bram, his dark eyes and slicked-back hair, lying beside me, taking up nearly all the bed. He could paint the most fantastic images with his words.

Worlds of balls, titles, prestige, power to make the world anything we liked, it was intoxicating. He would kiss me gently, pet me and reassure me that I was the most important person in his world.

“Bella, you are my guiding star, you know. Everything I am doing is for you.”

He used to play with my long, dark straight hair, watching it softly fall in ripples between his fingers as he talked. I spend hours of my life replaying these moments in desolate silence, a dead man's words my only company.

I wonder how many hours he spent in my small room at the castle. He often felt as though he was not wanted in the Royal Family, being the younger brother. Everything was lined up for Alexander back then and Bram was merely a spare heir. There was no chance of a shared pack between brothers like some are known to do.

His father was trying to encourage him to specialise in security or espionage, but Bram only wanted the top job. Alpha of the White Forest Pack. And he wanted me there beside him as his queen.

“Can you see yourself cloaked in the finest silks, your choice of jewels from the jewel tower room?”

“Could I?”

“Anything for you Bella, it is what you deserve,” he would coo and gently kiss my hands. "If only you could make it happen…"

I shake my head and snap back into dreary reality. No shiny throne room for me, instead I am suffocated by stark grey brick walls, even the bars on my gate look out onto grey bricks. I have a small single bed, a small sink and toilet and a shelf with spare prison clothes. This has been my world of near-silence for almost eight months.

My hands instinctively run through what is left of my hair. There is no personal grooming, so my long locks quickly became bedraggled after a few weeks in the hold. One of the female guards roughly dragged me into a washroom and briskly chopped the full length of it leaving me with a rough bob.

I felt naked without my long hair but cannot complain to anyone every time it happens. I am here for a perfectly good reason. The next thing they chop could be the noose rope, my rotten carcass shattering on the earth after having served its purpose.

I had adored my small room in the castle, I filled it with trinkets, expensive dresses and possessions that made me feel important. I tried to practice a royal attitude to prepare for being mated with Bram. 

My room had faced out into the central courtyard. I could see everyone coming and going and it was fascinating to watch. In my foolish mind, I started to think of them as my future subjects. 

Back when I was not a prisoner, I ate a lot better too. Now with my strange haircut and weight loss, my grey eyes give me a haunted look. I used to be called beautiful, dramatic, and unique. Now I am a wretched, evil nobody. Silent tears roll down my face once more as I see my future ending only in a noose.

I often cry now, any aloof or grandeur I once strutted with is stripped away. There is no internal comfort from my wolf to rely upon either. The instant my crime was completed, my wolf, Gitte, fled from my consciousness and went into a form of hibernation.

No matter how much I tried, begging for forgiveness or demands I issued, my beloved Gitte was lost to me. I missed her jokes, her guidance even after almost four years.  

It forced me to pretend I had no interest in shifting into my wolf form anymore.  How I used to love my slender silvery wolf form, if wolves could be sexy, well, Gitte had it in spades. We slinked through the night, grey eyes shining, magnificent grey coat and soft build...all gone now. Giving up shifting made me appear awkward and aloof to my closest friends Kyra and Ivan. 

At the thought of Kyra, I winced. Her delicate face had collapsed when she realised my guilt was real. Stood in the centre of the ballroom Helena had grabbed my hand, her brooch hummed and gave her a vision in which the whole dirty secret was laid out before her.

Announcing to the whole room, to a chorus of gasps and whispers that Bram had given the knife to me, that I had gone into his room and murdered his mate.

I killed Luna Grace at the age of seventeen.

I believed with more certainty than anyone could consider possible that I was acting out of love, that I would be Bram’s second chance mate. We believed that after a year I would be eighteen and be his second-chance mate. Well, only I believed as it turns out.

My face burns with regret and I turn over on the bed and face the grey bricks. Perhaps it would be better to just take me to the East Wall now and get it done with. I have nothing to offer the world but my eternal shame now.