Life Sentence

Mariana

The jury foreperson of the National Wolf Council stood up to announce the verdict of the judges before the silent but harsh crowd inside the court.

“This court has found the accused, Mariana Rose…”

I clenched my hands on my lap and stared at the heavy cuffs on my bleeding wrists while comforting my crying wolf.

“It’s okay, Nirvana,” I kept telling her. “We are going to be fine a month from now.”

I still hoped that I would walk away free from this place no matter how impossible it may seem despite the fact that the powerful family together with the wealthy fiancé of Margot Hill, the luna of the Crest pack, the dead woman on the road, made sure I would rot in jail.

“…guilty of murder beyond reasonable doubt. Her wolf will be suppressed and she will serve a total of seventy years in the national penitentiary. So ordered.”

The judge punched the gavel handing me practically a death sentence.

I felt numb all over. I expected this already. I knew it would happen but still, my flesh is trembling.

Life sentence…

A lifetime imprisonment for a morbid sin that I did not commit but is willing to admit for my love.

My wolf will be sacrificed just because I want to prove how I love my mate and husband.

“Oh, thank goodness!” The victim’s family rejoiced and embraced each other in celebration. “Finally! Justice for our dear Margot!”

Tears fell from my eyes as I clutched my chest especially when my gaze fixed on my stepfather crying in the corner. He is probably asking himself what went wrong. What did he do wrong for his precious daughter to commit such a heinous crime?

He brought me up in his own small pack wishing that I would flee from my own mother’s fate but here I am again in the same court that my mother stood up in years ago.

“I’m sorry, dad,” I said in my head knowing I could never say that to him face to face anymore. He is dying and his funeral must be the first thing that I am going to go to the minute I get released from prison. “I’m sorry for being such a disappointing daughter to you.”

But it’s okay, Mariana, I kept telling myself as my eyes locked with Evan seating on the last row in the court.

He is my fated mate and the alpha of the powerful DarkNights pack. A month ago, we had a secret ceremony where he accepted our bond and promised me to be his one and only wife and luna.

The man nodded at me assuring me that I will be alright. He will get me out of there. He promised me. He loves me so much to not help me. He loves me more now because he saw how I am willing to sacrifice everything for him.

It’s okay because my husband will save me. He promised me that he will save me, I repeated in my head.

Our eyes met again when the prison guards pulled me up. For a second, doubt filled my heart when I read something in him but I quickly dismissed it.

I love him. He loves me too much too. We will get married in the grandest wedding everjust like in my dreams.  

Everyone will know that I am someone’s mate and wife.

I know he will not fail me. I know he will come for me.

“Mariana!” My father’s frail voice filled the entire room when he tried to run towards me but his weak knees due to cancer stopped him. “Mariana, I know you did not do it, my child! I know you cannot do that! I know you are innocent, my daughter!”

I let out a cry and tried my very best to smile at him. “It’s okay, dad. I’m fine.”

“Let my daughter go!” he yelled at the guards who restrained him while the rest of the crowd began leaving the court still cursing my name.

I saw my life flash before me as the judge stood up and left.

 It was supposed to be a happy honeymoon after our wedding ceremony. Evan and I were happily sitting in his car, singing our wedding tunes when a woman drastically crossed the street. Before I knew it, Evan took out his gun and shot the girl to my surprise.

Everything that happened after that became a blur in my head.

“Mariana, I don’t know what to do anymore!” Evan is panicking when we are back at our apartment and the news of the murder spreads like wildfire. “I cannot be jailed! My father would kill me! He will strip me off my title as the alpha of my pack! You know it’s my dream to be one!”

Seeing how depressed he is, I held his hands and looked into his eyes, bent to appease his panic-stricken face.

“What do you want me to do? Tell me and I will do it for you.”

Relief flooded his eyes as he kissed both of my hands. “Can you tell them you’re the one who did it? Admit to the crime. Just say that you accidentally killed her and I will do the rest. Don’t worry, I will help you! I’ve got connections.” He caressed my face lovingly. “I will certainly get you out of the prison myself, my mate. I will pull my connections. Please, save me. In return, I will save you too.”

I fell silent. It’s like I swallowed my own tongue at his suggestion.

“Evan…”

“Please, Mariana. If you really love me, then you will do it for me, for our future.”

“I love you!” I exclaimed.

I am a weak person with a weak wolf that is why I never expected that a strong man like him from a powerful pack is going to be my mate.

He is a dream come true. He is my savior! There isn't anything in this world that I would not do for him.

“Then show me! Tell the police it’s your gun, not mine. Tell them you are the one who did it, not me. Please, save me, my love! Save your mate!”

“Yes,” I answered with tears streaming down my face, my decision final and irrevocable. “I am the one who killed that woman, Evan.”

So here I am taking all the blame for my husband.

But before the guards could completely usher me away, a man in a suit who is obviously in power by the way they accorded him, gripped my arm and smothered my shoulder.

His eyes reminded me of my own father when he learned that my mother remarried to my stepfather now.

“I will make sure you will forever rot in jail, murderer!” Victor Phillips said in gritted teeth, his eyes spitting out venom.

“I-I’m sorry…” was all I could say as I slowly sank into my knees and kissed his feet. “I’m so so sorry for your loss.”

“Your sorry cannot undo anything. You cannot bring my luna back alive! For that, I will show you what a real hell is like Mariana Rose. You will forever regret what you did to my mate!”

The guards dragged me away into the yard of the court where a heavily guarded vehicle was waiting. They travelled me to the national penitentiary, the known prison in the land where the cruelest criminals are locked up.

Depositing me to a tiny cell, they injected me with a medicine that basically rendered my wolf comatose.

“Mariana Rose?” A tall dark woman with piercings all over her face entered my cell with a grin on her mischievous empty eyes.

Nightcrawlers. They are rogue wolves that are paid to kill.

“Yes…” I said in a shrill voice when I slowly stood up from the cold steel bunk bed, cold sweat trailing down my back. “W-Why are you…”

I did not have time to finish my sentence when she slammed my face down into the lavatory using her big calloused hands. Blood surged out of my nose as I fell down to the floor clutching my dizzy head.

My wolf whimpered wishing it could help me but the bind the National Wolf Council put on it prevented me from letting it out.

She pulled my hair and spat on my face, his nails digging into the flesh in my head.

“I wonder what you did to the great kind man for him to ask me to do this to you.”

She kicked me on the stomach and punched my head repeatedly until I could only see nothing but darkness.

“Mr. Phillips asked me to take good care of you and that’s exactly what I am going to do, pretty little criminal hoe,” she whispered into my ear before laughing and leaving me alone, the scent of her cold-blooded wolf still lingering in my nose.

As I lay there in the cold tiled floor of my small prison cell, my head swimming in the pool of my own blood, nothing is running in my mind but pain.

“A month,” I whispered through the cuts and blisters in my lips. “I just have to endure a month here.”