Chapter 12

SARA 

"She'll serve until I decide upon a punishment that is truly fitting for your crimes. Until then, you will wish for the death I am denying you." It seemed like I had been gutted when I heard those words. 

I stood there in the hall, unsure what to do with myself. I wanted to cry but the tears wouldn't come. I was blank, it all seemed surreal. "How did I end up here?" I finally muttered when my cell doors slammed shut.

I could not believe that Alpha Tristan was capable of such hate. Why is no one believing me that I had nothing to do with Claudia's death. Why have I been denied the right to fair hearing? The alpha may be angry but he cannot become judge and jury in his own case. I knew it was wrong and I was determined to find a way around it. 

I spent the whole night thinking of my options. I needed to fight back somehow, anyhow. Keeping silent and accepting what Alpha Tristan had said was the same thing as throwing my life away. I was so deep in thought that I forgot time and gradually lost my appetite.

I slowly lost my zeal for life as well and wished I was dead. For three days, I had laid in the damp corner of my cell, watching the tray of gray gruel and stale bread sit untouched by the heavy iron door. My body was screaming for sustenance—the remnants of the wolfsbane still made my blood feel like liquid fire, and my recovery required strength I didn't have—but I refused to touch a single morsel. This hunger strike was the only weapon I had left in a world that had stripped me of my dignity, my pack, and was about to take my life away.

If I was going to be a slave to a lie, I would rather be a ghost.

The heavy bolt on the door slid back with a grating shriek of metal on metal. I didn't look up as the heavy boots of my visitor entered my cell. "Hello Sara, I'm not sure we've met officially, my name is Harlan." There was compassion in my his voice as he spoke.

I remember him, or should I say his voice. He was the one who had advocated against my death. "Hi." I murmured, I didn't have the strength to speak after three days of not eating. I rather not waste my strength on needless speeches. 

"Sara," he said, his voice was weary and thick with frustration. He knelt beside the untouched tray, the smell of fresh beef stew wafting from the new bowl he carried. It was a luxury compared to the previous meals, a clear attempt at bribery. "The guards told me that you've not been eating your food. You’re going to kill yourself. You haven't eaten in seventy-two hours. Your body is already frail from the infection. Do you really want Tristan to win by letting you wither away in the dark?"

I didn't plan to speak to him but this was the best act of kindness that anyone has shown me ever since my ordeal began.

"I am already dead to this pack, Harlan," I rasped, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. I kept my eyes fixed on the moss growing in the cracks of the stone wall. "Eating his food is an admission of guilt. It is an acceptance of the 'mercy' he thinks he’s showing me. I won’t accept it."

"This isn't about guilt, it's about survival," Harlan argued, placing the bowl closer to me. "Drink the broth. If you die in this cell, the truth—whatever it is—dies with you. Is that what you want?" There was concern in his voice, tenderness even, it was strange that he'd care about me, but it didn't matter. He could be useful.

I finally turned my head, my vision swimming for a moment as the world tilted. I looked him dead in the eye. "I want to see him, Harlan. I want an audience with Tristan. I won't eat a single spoonful until I can look him in the eye and tell him what he’s doing."

Harlan sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "He doesn't want to see you, Sara. He’s in a state of mourning and rage. Seeing you only stokes the fire. It’s better if you stay down here and stay quiet."

"Then I stay down here and starve," I whispered, my resolve hardening like iron. "Tell him that. Tell him his 'domestic slave' will be a corpse by morning if he doesn't grant me five minutes of his precious time. If he wants his atonement, he needs a living servant, doesn't he?"

We sat in silence for a long time, the only sound the dripping of water somewhere in the shadows. Harlan looked at my sunken cheeks and the skeletal thinness of my wrists. He seemed like a reasonable man, and I was sure after three days without food, he knew I wasn't bluffing. I had nothing left to lose, which made me the most dangerous person in the Twilight Zone.

"Fine," he finally muttered, standing up. "I’ll talk to him. But Sara..." He trailed off and just left. But it didn't matter, what's the worst that could happen. 

I tried to catch some sleep and had lost track of time when the cell door opened again. This time, Harlan didn't bring food. He brought two guards who hoisted me to my feet. My legs felt like they were made of water, and I would have collapsed if they hadn't gripped my arms so tightly. They led me out of the dungeon and through the familiar halls of the pack house—halls I had once walked as a.... I trailed off, as thinking about it would make my eyes watery, and I didn't want to appear weak before Alpha Tristan.

The few pack members we passed scrambled away as if I carried the plague. I saw the sneers, heard the whispered words like "murderer" and "traitor." It hurt, but I kept my head as high as my waning strength allowed.

We reached the Alpha’s study. The heavy mahogany doors swung open, revealing Tristan standing by the window, his back to us. The room smelled of expensive bourbon and the heavy, floral scent of the lilies he kept in memory of Claudia. The irony was a knife to the heart.

"You have five minutes," Tristan said, his voice cold and devoid of any emotion. He didn't turn around. "Harlan says you’re playing the martyr. Speak quickly, before I lose my patience and send you back to the hole you crawled out of."

"Tristan," I started, my voice trembling. I stepped forward, pulling away from the guards' grip. "Look at me. Please."

He turned then, and the sheer hatred in his silver-grey eyes made me flinch. He looked powerful, radiating an Alpha aura that felt like a physical weight pressing down on my lungs.

"I am looking at you," he sneered. "I see a shadow of a woman. A pathetic, hollow creature who thinks a hunger strike will somehow wash the blood from her hands."

"I didn't kill her!" I cried out with every ounce of strength I could muster, the desperation finally breaking through my wall of silence. "Claudia was my best friend. We shared secrets, we shared dreams. I loved her as much as you did! Do you really think I could harbor that much darkness? You knew me, Tristan. We grew up together. Think about the bond we had before.... Think about how Claudia used to laugh when we—"

"Do not speak her name!" he thundered, crossing the room in a blur of motion. He stopped inches from my face, his heat radiating off him in waves. "You don't get to invoke her memory to save your own skin. You were jealous. You were rejected, left without a mate, and you saw her holding the life you wanted. You struck her down because you couldn't handle being a nothing. A wolf-less, mate-less reject."

"That’s not true," I sobbed, the tears I had been holding back finally started falling. "I was hap..." I trailed off, I wanted to tell him that I was happy for her. That I wanted her to be Luna. But that was not true. I was furious and angry with her for stealing my man, the love of my life. "I was her best friend, you simply can't believe that I'd kill her in whatever guise. If you ever loved her, you know she'd not be want you to do this." 

Tristan let out a short, bark-like laugh that was devoid of any humor. He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear, his voice a lethal whisper.

"The Tristan who loved her died when her heart stopped beating," he said. Then, he pulled back and looked at me with a gaze so clinical and cruel it felt like he was carving me up. He gave a wicked chuckle. "And look at you. Look at what you’ve become. You’re a human in a world of predators. Without a wolf. You are a weak, shivering little lamb with no bite and no soul. You aren't even worth the effort of an execution."

I felt my heart break into a thousand pieces. The last flicker of hope, the tiny spark that Alpha Rune had tried so hard to fan into a flame, was extinguished in an instant. I looked at him and saw only a monster—a man so consumed by his own grief that he had become the very thing he claimed to hate.

"You’re a parasite, Sara," he continued, louder now, making sure the guards and Harlan could hear his every word. "A wolf without a wolf is a mistake of nature. You’re a broken tool. You will scrub our floors and eat our scraps, and every day you will look in the mirror and realize that you are nothing. You have no destiny. No one is coming for you. Not even that Conqueror you tried to hide behind will want a defective piece of meat like you."

The room went deathly silent. I didn't say another word. I couldn't. The despair was a black tide, pulling me under. Tristan had succeeded. He hadn't just punished my body; he had annihilated my spirit.

"Take her away," Tristan commanded, turning back to his window as if I were a piece of furniture that had bored him. "And make sure she eats. I want her alive to feel every moment of her worthlessness."

As the guards led me back toward my dark and damp cell, the world turned gray. I didn't fight them. I didn't protest. I simply let the silence take me. Tristan was right about one thing: I was alone.