Chapter 3

SARA’S POV 

I shook my head, trying to speak, but no words came out of my mouth.  

Tristan paused, as if waiting for me to deny it, then his face contorted with rage. “Claudia was the only woman I’ve ever loved. What I felt for you—it wasn’t real—and you’ve taken her from me.”  

I shook my head. “Tristan, I didn’t kill Claudia.”  

But he wasn’t listening. “Do you know what they say about wolfbane? The pain it causes, like a million needles pricking through your flesh.” A broken expression washed over him, and his hard eyes filled with tears for just a brief moment. Then his face went cold. “I’ll make sure you suffer exactly what Claudia suffered—and a hundred times over.”  

Turning to his personal guards, he barked, “Bring her out to the pack’s arena. She’s going to have the fastest trial in this pack’s history, but her punishment…oh, that will be slow and painful.”  

The cold wind bit into my flesh, making me want to fold my arms tight around myself, but they were tied behind my back. An amazingly large crowd had also gathered outside to watch my trial—or the farce of it.  

“Sara Lockwood, you are an evil, wicked woman, the worst mate anyone can ever have, and a murderer,” Tristan declared without even bothering to conduct any hearing.  

I looked up into the anger blazing from his eyes. Where did that teenage boy who had been head over heels in love with me go? I wondered bitterly, but my inner voice taunted me: *He just realized you don’t deserve love. All you’re good for is pain.*  

It was on the tip of my tongue to protest, to tell him that Claudia had tripped on the knives herself. But what was the point? For starters, he wouldn’t believe me, and I was beginning to agree that I deserved whatever he wanted to do to me.  

“You are hereby sentenced to death by the wolfbane infection,” Tristan continued, his voice icy, “but it won’t be an ordinary death. Using hutu leaves, I will prolong the process so that it will take at least an hour before the wolfbane finally finishes you off.”  

I could only stare vacantly at him. These were my last moments on earth, yet I felt like I was floating somehow, staring down on my own body.  

As though on a screen, the death of my parents flashed before me. Claudia, her eyes begging me to understand, telling me she loved me right before she got infected. Tristan rejecting me before the crowd. And Alpha Rune! I never even got to avenge my parents.  

“Say something, damn it!” Tristan shouted. “Beg for your life, you worthless omega. Cry to me about how sorry you are for killing a woman you’ll never measure up to—not even if you had a thousand lives!”  

His words finally got to me, breaking through my shock and shattering my heart. When my tears came, they were violent, twisted. My body convulsed with a pain that tore me apart.  

Tristan smiled—a cold, ruthless smile.  

I would forever remember how it felt when he gathered me in his arms once again after eight long years, but this time, it wasn’t in love. He forced grounded hutu leaves down my throat, then sunk his claws into my belly.  

He smiled coldly as I cried out in pain—first from the wound his claws inflicted, then from the wolfbane infection.  

“I hope your death is slow and painful, Sara Lockwood,” he murmured, “and if there’s an aft

erlife, I hope you end up in hell.”