Chapter 121: Audacious
Selene’s POV
What the hell was wrong with Tessa? She wanted to destroy me completely, and it was so damn evident.
No. I wasn’t going to let her.
It had been two days since all the breeders were locked in the cells ... for something nobody was even sure they had done. On the third day, they were brought before the council again. Tessa was there. Lucian wasn’t.
I had met with Lucian earlier that morning.
"The Luna has to be put in check. She can’t just go around killing people," I had said to him ... when both of us knew fully well who had pulled the trigger on Aiden.
"Nothing will happen to the breeders, okay? Don’t worry," he had promised me. I was so assured by his words that I had even cried in his presence. "They didn’t do anything to deserve this. I’ll take the fall instead," I had told him.
"No you won’t. Just leave everything to me," he said, and I had believed him.
Now we were standing before the council and I already knew her judgment wouldn’t stand. Bias bitch.
"Based on our investigation over the past few days, we’ve come to a conclusion," Tessa announced, and I waited, muscles tight.
"Nora, Brynn, Aria and Valerie ... you were seen at that company’s location several hours before the attack. Which means you went to set the ground and then struck at night."
The whole crowd gasped. Like it was the kind of thing they had never heard before. But that was exactly what she did ... she went around apprehending people while she carried sins of her own.
The breeders started shouting.
"Silence! Or I’ll tell the guards to beat the hell out of you!"
She let the threat hang in the air before she continued.
"Therefore, as punishment, it will be a life for a life. Let this serve as a lesson to anyone who takes the law into their own hands. You are sentenced to..."
"Nobody is being sentenced to anything."
Lucian walked in and I broke into a smile before I could stop myself. It was obvious. I didn’t even try to hide it.
Everyone turned to watch as he walked to the podium with that slow, deliberate stride of his ... like a man who owned every room he stepped into, because he did.
"The wolf in question is dead," he said, his voice calm and cutting. "He and his people ran a criminal organisation which has now been burned to the ground ... thanks to whoever did it. You accomplished what the authorities couldn’t discover or do. Frankly, I should be rewarding the people responsible." He laughed, and the sound of it was sharp and fearless.
Tessa looked at him. The fury on her face was almost beautiful.
"Let them go!" Lucian ordered the guards, and butterflies immediately swarmed through my stomach.
"Alpha, I can’t allow that to happen," Tessa said.
"What do you mean you can’t allow it? Are you my Alpha, or am I yours?"
"It doesn’t matter, Alpha. I cannot let this go today." She turned to the guards. "I speak as your Luna ... take them outside and kill them. Now."
Lucian grabbed her hand right there in the council chamber. Everyone rose to their feet. The heat in the room became unbearable.
"Shut up, Tessa. You’ve always loved to show off. I said leave it and you won’t."
"Let go of me, Lucian!" She called him by his name ... in the council, in front of everyone.
"Guards, remove her from this hall. I think she’s lost her mind," he said.
The guards began moving toward her. That was when she started talking.
"You’re the one who made me lose my mind. You ruined my life before you even married me." The crowd stirred. The murmuring started low and then spread like fire.
Lucian was signaling for the guards to keep moving, but she wouldn’t stop talking and everyone wanted to hear what came next.
"You were sleeping with me before we got married. You were promising me everything. I fell for it ... I gave you my heart and my body, and when I got pregnant, you took it away from me without my consent!" Her voice rang through the hall.
Even I was shocked.
"Now I can’t carry a child and give Winterwood its heir because you destroyed my womb. And yet you want to spare the breeders ... because you’ve been sleeping with them after destroying me!"
The crowd erupted. The noise swung in her favour, the way crowds always did when a woman bled in public.
What exactly was she trying to achieve by doing this?
"Is this true, Lucian?" one of the elders asked, his voice heavy in the silence that followed.
"That’s not what matters right now. Free those breeders, all of you ... or you will die one by one." His eyes had already gone red.
The guards rushed forward and removed the chains and handcuffs from the breeders.
"Lucian," the elder pressed again, "is what your wife said true?"
Tessa stepped back and watched. Waiting. She wanted to see exactly how far it would all unravel.
"The truth of any matter is subjective until there is proof," Lucian said, and moved to sit in his chair.
The murmuring swelled.
"Tessa has chosen to frame her husband and tear him apart in front of everyone," he said, his voice flat and unshaken. "I am not a good man. I never have been. But anything you hear today about me is typical ... I haven’t changed."
Then Tessa brought out her phone.
She pressed play on a voice note. Lucian’s voice filled the hall ... his own words, confirming that he had been the one to end her pregnancy.
The matter was unraveling right in front of us and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.
The elders listened. Their expressions shifted. Their silence said everything.
I had never seen a wife this wicked.
"Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?" Lucian said. "Yes. I did it. It was a long time ago ... before I became Alpha. I didn’t know what I was doing."
"This is a criminal offence, especially for an Alpha," an elder said, rising. "You have committed something abominable. You deserve to be punished the same way you punish those who misalign with justice." The elders leaned into each other, whispering among themselves.
When the first elder spoke again, his voice was measured and final.
"You do not have an heir, and it is no longer possible through natural means ... because you destroyed your Luna’s womb, which will be confirmed by a doctor before the end of today. You will find a way to resolve the heir issue. You will not take another wife. The two of you will decide together how it is done."
A second elder stood. "The offence was committed against our Luna. Therefore, Tessa ... the punishment will be yours to decide."
Tessa looked at the elders. Then she looked at Lucian. Then she looked at the crowd.
"He doesn’t deserve to be your Alpha."
The hall exploded. "Tessa! Tessa! Tessa!"
Lucian lunged at her. His hand rose ... fast, furious, aimed straight for her face.
And then someone caught it.
Beta Kael.
His grip locked around Lucian’s wrist before the blow could land. Lucian turned slowly and looked at him, eyes wide, the red bleeding deeper into them.
The audacity.