6. Betrayal at It's Best

Serena

I was there in that cell for four days and nights if my mathematics weren't wrong.

Since I was bored after I had expunged the poison out of me, I started counting the hours and minutes I was there.

I knew I was off and there would be an error because I had been unconscious at the beginning and I was also taking short naps here and there and that was my rough estimate.

I couldn't get comfortable and just let myself sleep like a log because for all I knew, they were waiting for me to sleep so that they could kill me in my sleep. 

Why hadn't they killed me by now? I had no idea. But my gut feeling told me that they weren't preparing something nice for me.

I could almost feel the danger in the air. During those four days, the whole dungeon was empty and no one came to visit.

If they were trying to starve me, they were in for another shock because I was used to going for days without food.

The training I went through with master Yibo came in handy now seeing that I was using the same technique to not use a lot of energy even if I wasn't eating and that way, I would be able to go even for a year or at least several months without food or even feeling the hunger pangs.

All I did was meditate and exercise and practice moves in that dingy small cell. Many were the times I would touch the silver bars all around the cell by mistake but since I wasn't like any other alpha, the wounds that would take others months or even years to heal only took me a few hours with the right kind of meditation.

I almost thought that they had forgotten about me but how wrong I was.

Down those steps came four alphas, my former beta, Valen, and the Rivera bitch. Yeah, I don't curse a lot but she hated me and why would I be polite about her?

“Serena, time for you to face the council and answer to the accusations levelled against you.

Now, there are two ways you can leave this cell. One, peacefully and let us escort you or two, we sedate you using any method we see fit and take your body there whether dead or alive.

Which do you choose?” Valen said.

I couldn't believe how fast humans change or how fickle our hearts are. He had been my beta a few nights back and now, he was calling me a traitor whereas he was the one who asked me and basically begged me on his knees to take over the leadership of the pack.

Did he really love me at all if he ever did? That was something I would have loved to know but I wasn't about to ask. Asking that would show that I still held hope in him but I didn't. 

It would also give them the notion that I cared but I didn't. Maybe it was time I died and went to meet my real parents and my adoptive mother.

I missed them. Heavens knew that I missed them. 

“I will willingly go with you," I said, looking straight at Valen.

I wanted him to know that I would never be afraid of him, not even in the eyes of death. If I died, well and good. But if I was able to get out of this, I would make sure that he never betrayed another alpha or anyone else again.

Was his mother even sick or it had all been a ruse to make me trust them further?

I wouldn't call myself an idiot or regret the five years I was their alpha because I am more experienced now and I am no longer that same weak girl who was sent out of Crimson Shadow Pack. I am more experienced now and stronger. The last thing I would do was to show them any kind of weakness.

The cell was opened by a gloved Caspian and he motioned for me to exit the cell. I did as he motioned and I wasn't even ashamed that they had shredded my clothes and that most parts of my body were naked.

This was better than what Kael did to me that night he banished me out of my pack. He stripped me naked to the skin and made sure that I left the pack without even a change of clothes.

So, me having a few strips to cover the most important parts of my body was more than I would have expected.

I walked with two alphas flagging each side of me with dart guns and a real gun pointed at me.

By smell alone, I could tell that the two real guns were loaded with silver bullets while the dart guns were full of darts laced with wolfsbane.

I wasn't in the mood to fight because I knew they would have loved to put me down there and then and then publish that I tried to kill their alpha and that would be that.

No.

I wanted to see how far they were going to spin the lie that I tried to kill their alpha.

Impersonation? Maybe yes.

Murder? Definitely no and I wouldn't accept anything I hadn't done.

I would have chosen to end my life in the cell with the silver handed to me and the wolfsbane in my body but killing myself would be admitting that I was guilty.

We walked with Valen leading and with them hoping that I would act out of line but they were bound to be disappointed.

When we left the cells, that's when I realised that we were still in the Crimson Shadow Pack and I was in the royal dungeons.

That was where the most notorious of criminals were kept and I guess I was one since I had been accused of treason among other crimes.

We left the south wing of the palace where the dungeons were and I knew without being told that we were going to the court where cases were ahead and arbitrated or executed depending.

I knew this palace like the back of my hand since I had been a resident here with access to every room for five years.

We walked towards the east and we came to the big hall that acted and the court for big cases like mine.

As we walked in, there were a lot of people lined up to see me get escorted in and they started booing at me and throwing curse words at me calling me a murderer and an imposter but I didn't say anything. I didn't even acknowledge them.

Would anyone believe me if I tried telling them the truth? Would they believe that I had also been played like they were being played by the same people? 

There was no need.

When the huge doors opened and I saw the number of people in the hall, that's when I knew that they were ready to throw me to the dogs.

There were thousands and thousands of people who turned and looked at me as if I had truly killed someone.

If this case was given back to the people, I was sure by then that I would be killed. They seemed to hate me regardless of all that I had done for them.

How quickly people forget.

Or was it their nature and pull of the royal blood that made them forget the kind of an alpha I was and turn against me? 

Why did I know that I would be killed? Each person present was carrying a bar of wood.

This showed that they wanted whoever was overseeing this case to give me the death penalty by being flogged by the public.

By the mere fact that they were carrying the flogging tools showed that I had already been found guilty even without a trial and this was just a formality.

Poor me. 

However, that knowledge didn't make me lose my cool.

I still walked in with my head held high like the alpha I was.

“Look at the traitor walking in with her head held high as if she isn't guilty!"

“Haven't you ever heard? That's the way the guilty behave so that everyone can think that they are innocent?"

“And to think that she walked among us pretending that she is a saint."

“For all we know, she had poisoned us. How was she able to convince everyone that she was our alpha’s daughter?" 

I picked those and filtered out some of the most vicious ones.

I would have answered them but there was no reason.

Doing so would just show that I was at their level and I wasn't.

I was raven after all.

I was a bird of prey and I had to stand majestically as my name signified. 

I thus walked to the area set aside for the criminal and stood there.

They hadn't bothered to give me a seat even after starving me for days.

I then looked at the council that was holding my life in their hands.