LOGINAbbott looked from one woman to the other; he looked tired and old and moved.He knew what Lula was doing; he had known her for forty years. He had seen her give up everything, her mate, her pack, and her place in the world so that his marriage would not end and his son would have a father at his side. By any law of the wolves, she was the one who had the right. She was his true mate, and she had stepped aside and kept quiet and let the world believe she had run away.She did it for Noah, he thought. She did it for all of us.Harriet knew it too; she studied Lula’s face for a long time, and then, abruptly, she laughed.“You really are impossible,” she said.“So I have been told.”“You would give away the sun if it made someone else’s evening easier.”“It’s a gift.”Harriet shook her head, still smiling; she reached over and squeezed Lula’s hand. Then, to Abbott’s great surprise, she squeezed his as well.“Fine,” she said. “No divorce, but I am taking the entire floor upstairs.”“You ma
No one had needed to be told twice.The banquet hall was enormous.It had been built three hundred years ago, in an age when the Knight pack was young and proud and rich, and it showed. A great arched ceiling of dark timber soared overhead. The long tables had been pushed aside, leaving a vast floor of polished oak, and at the far end stood a carved chair, and beside the chair, on a silver cushion, rested the crown.It was a beautiful crown, almost plain, glowing faintly in the candlelight. It had belonged to the first Luna of the Knight pack; it had not been worn in sixty years.The hall was packed; hundreds of guests stood shoulder to shoulder, dressed in their finest clothes, whispering, craning their necks toward the great double doors.A hush fell.A single horn sounded.The doors swung open.Laurel walked in on Noah’s arm.For a moment, no one breathed.She wore a white ceremonial gown. Her hair was loose over her shoulders; she wore no jewelry but her two rings. She looked, in
“I felt sick,” Sherry whispered. “I remember, I went to my room and sat on the floor and thought, 'That's not right; you can’t do that to a person.' "I felt like I had swallowed something rotten.” She drew a shaky breath. “But I didn’t stop; I told myself it was how things were, that he was happy, that he wanted to be with me.” Her voice broke. “I told myself so many things.”“And then he married Laurel.”“And then he married Laurel.” Her mouth twisted. “And all of it went black.”“I had never been so jealous in my life,” she said. “I hated her; I hated everything about her. The way she looked at him, the way he started to look back.” Her hands clenched. “I didn’t think; I didn’t think about what it would mean. When Mother and Father began to talk about ruining her family’s company, I said yes, I said yes, Wyatt, and I helped them.”“Why?”“Because I thought…” She stopped. “I thought that if her company went bankrupt, if she lost everything, she would blame him, she would be furious,
He let her cry for a while.It came in slow and silent; she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, but the tears leaked through anyway, running down her wrists and into the cuffs of the grey uniform. Her shoulders shook. Wyatt did not reach for her or tell her to stop; he just sat across the table with his hands open, patient as stone, until the worst of it passed.“They hate me,” she said at last, thickly. “Everyone does, Noah, Laurel, the whole pack.”“Not everyone.”“Everyone.” She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I read the newspapers; I heard what they said at the trial. I am the girl who held their Alpha’s mind in her hand for twenty years. I am the one who took a baby.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “I am a monster, Wyatt.”“You are not a monster.”“I did monstrous things.”“You did.” He did not soften it. “You did terrible things, and nothing I say will change that.” He leant forward. “And I don’t think you are done yet; I think you are still deciding who you w
It had been the same at the Council.Laurel remembered it vividly; the old elders had sat with hard faces, staring at the man in the gray suit. Abbott had been the first to speak. “She spent twenty years controlling my son’s mind,” he had said. “And you ask us to forgive her?”“I am not asking you to forgive her,” Wyatt had said quietly. “I am asking you not to destroy her.”“Why?”“Because I know what it is to hate them?” He had taken off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I hated the Hamiltons for years; I had reason. They took things from my mother that she never got back. I spent most of my life wanting them to suffer.” His voice had dropped. “And then I got what I wanted, and do you know what I found?”Nobody had answered.“Nothing,” he had said. “Only the same emptiness; it doesn’t fill anything.” He had put his glasses back on. “If I can let go of that hatred, after everything they did to me, then who is anyone here to hold on to it?”The hall had been very quiet.One by one, th
She did not feel triumph; she felt a door closing at last, after years of standing open to the dark.“Derek Hamilton.”The old ex-Alpha raised his chin.“You were found guilty of conspiracy, of kidnapping, of corporate sabotage, of conspiring with the accused Roberts, and of complicity in unlawful experimentation. The court has heard evidence that you orchestrated the abduction of the child Noah Knight twenty years ago and that you profited from the crime ever since.” The judge’s eyes were stern. “You sat at the dinner table of the family you had wronged, and you accepted their gratitude. You took their favors, and you called that child your friend.”“I have never…” Derek Hamilton began.“For these crimes, the court sentences you to thirty years’ imprisonment, without possibility of parole.”He said nothing, and his face went white and then gray. “Louise Hamilton.”Louise did not drop her gaze.“You were found guilty of conspiracy, of kidnapping, of the unlawful use of a harmful magi







