CHAPTER 2~ A LAMB AMONGST BUTCHERS

The frigid air bristled against Linessa’s skin, a throbbing pain in her heart and weakness in her legs as she walked up the aisle of people. Each step felt heavy as though the weight of Kenneth’s betrayal rested on her shoulders.

All eyes stayed fixated on her, assessing her with what she could only pin as disgust...not pity and certainly not sorrow.

She looked through the many faces, searching...perhaps foolishly...for one face that might soften.

Her eyes found her mother's...

And her heart sank.

She looked at Linessa just as everyone else did; like a flaw...like a sickness...like something that needed to be scorned...

And her father who stood beside her wore the very same look on his face.

No hesitation...

No pity...

No sign that the woman being marched to her death was once the little girl he once carried on his shoulders.

They weren't monsters...that would've made them easier to hate.

They were believers...and somehow that felt far crueler.

Holding her head down, she continued, the two men who escorted her out of her cell now lost somewhere in the crowd.

Her gaze stayed fixated on her feet, wavering from defiant to diffident, and her tiny hands were curled into angry fists behind her back. She didn't know how to feel, especially when she was trying to feel nothing.

Whispers unfurled around her, creeping like spiders inside her ears, and every single one of them had tremors running down her spine. She tried to block them out, but that made the sound of her palpitating heart a bit too loud…so she listened as the same people she loved brought her down to the very ground.

As she approached the altar, she finally looked up, her eyes immediately meeting his. Her breath caught in her throat, and memories; good and bad flooded her mind, creating a tsunami that drowned out her thoughts.

Beside him was Katya; a woman Linessa thought would forever be her friend…but tonight Linessa was neither a friend nor a foe...to them, she was their sacrifice.

She took the first step up, the chains that shackled her wrists clinking softly as she did so. Kenneth didn't look away, he watched her climb with a terrifying sense of satisfaction. It was as if he was watching a difficult puzzle finally fall into place. Beside him, Katya's expression mirrored his, polished with a hint of victory.

Linessa swallowed the bile rising in her throat. She would not feed their triumph by begging, her pride was the only thing she had left, and she wouldn't diminish it.

With a deep, determined breath, she descended the final step, but before she could even level herself with the leading elder of the council, Katya moved. It was a fluid, sudden motion that almost made Linessa flinch, however she caught herself; locking her knees and stiffening her spine.

'No weakness' she told herself, the words a mantra against the cold. 'Not a single tear for them to drink'.

Katya didn't strike her. Instead, she reached out with a delicate hand, her fingers hovering near a loose button on Linessa's tattered shirt. "Oh, Linessa..." She murmured, loud enough for the front row to hear. Her voice was calm and sweet as she clasped the button into place, but Linessa could practically taste the venom dripping from it. "You look so worn out and tired...let's at least have you looking like a Luna one last time. You deserve so much more than just that."

She leaned in, arms latching around Linessa in an embrace that wasn't warm at all. It felt like the breeze; sharp, lifeless...cold as ice.

She breathed against Linessa's neck and for a second, Linessa's heart refused to beat. If it hadn't before, then everything sank in now. She'd basically been valuing people who never in their life valued her. The people she always saw as her friends were always her enemies. She was a lamb in a place full of butchers.

Katya pulled away, stepping back to Kenneth's side with a mask of sadness for the crowd. She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm; a claim staked in front of the entire pack.

Kenneth smiled, his eyes cold as he looked at Linessa. It was as if ~to him~ she was already dead.

Linessa didn't blink. She didn't look at the ground. She held her head high, finally seeing everyone as who they were. She saw them as they saw her; as a lamb that she wanted to butcher...all of them.

Every eye that mocked her, every mouth that disrespected her and every hand that had taken her protection only to scorn her now...

All of them.

Squaring her shoulders, she stepped in front of the elder. "Shall my trial begin?"

He looked at her, his stare was cold, no empathy even though he was looking at his Luna. “Yes," he intoned, the word echoing across the now silent ground. "We shall begin your trial."

The elder stepped forward, clearing his throat to begin. "Linessa Raven, are the charges brought up against you true? Are you unfit to bear a child, thus rendering you unworthy to be a mate and, consequently, a Luna?"

That question had her throat feeling tight, because fter what Kenneth said in that dungeon…she concluded that she wasn’t infertile. It was those medicines he gave her, they must’ve been what made it impossible for her to have a child.

Her eyes shifted towards Kenneth, the calm look on his face made it obvious that even if she told the pack the truth, nobody would believe her.