Chapter 45: Steps Ahead Of You

Selene POV

"What can we do to Tessa?" Nara asked from somewhere deep inside me.

I was boiling on the inside and she could feel every bit of it, which was exactly why she wanted to act.

I’d decided to actually talk to Nara today. I needed to talk to someone, and she was already living inside me, so why not?

"I don’t know what to do, okay? I just hope justice will be served," I told her.

"Do you really think justice will be served? Tessa is a supposed Luna ... she won’t be easily apprehended. But we can take the law into our own hands."

"No, Nara! I don’t believe that. It was Lucian’s child too. He can’t be unjust," I countered.

"Tessa has been here long before you came. You can’t outsmart her on your own ... you need my help."

I wondered what kind of help she was actually offering. The investigation was still ongoing and the culprit was close to being caught. I knew it in my gut that it was Tessa. But I had no proof. Maybe I needed to consider what Nara was bringing to the table. I came to my senses slowly.

"Very good, Selene," she said. "We won’t let injustice stand."

Nara told me to get up at midnight and look outside the window. There were wolves everywhere, patrolling in the dark.

"One of them is Tessa. She’s among them ... but you can’t tell, because she’s cloned someone else’s appearance," Nara said.

That meant they couldn’t catch her. She wouldn’t have been the one anyone recognised that night of the fire. How the hell had she pulled that off?

Tessa was a crook, and there wasn’t a strategy she didn’t know.

Nara explained that she’d used effective makeup to disguise herself and clone another person’s face. Damn. She’d escaped again.

She deserves to be punished, I thought.

"We can kill her. Let it be a life for a life."

I wasn’t saying I wanted to kill her. I didn’t want to act like a rebel and take the law into my own hands. I wasn’t even a bona fide member of the Winterwood pack yet. Shit.

"Nara, that can’t happen. She can’t die by my hands ... only by the law," I said firmly.

"You don’t understand, Selene. I’m older than you, and I know for certain that Tessa won’t allow the prophecy over you to be fulfilled."

The prophecy. The one she was supposed to fulfil ... to bring the territories of Morvaine together in one mind and body.

"Yes, that one," Nara said. "Tessa is a hindrance, and based on history, we have to clear obstacles before they become too big and impossible to eliminate."

"We’re not killing her. Period!" I snapped at her and made up my mind not to listen to her anymore.

The last thing she said before going quiet was, "Not everything is in your hands to decide."

That was when I knew she was planning something ... something that wouldn’t need my consent to carry out.

God, how did I end up possessed by a parasite like this?

I just hoped it wasn’t my body she intended to use to carry out her plan. That would have an effect on all of us. She had to stop. But I didn’t know how to make her. As far as I knew, she was only a voice in my head ... for now.

The next day arrived, and they were finally ready to give us an update on what had happened the night of the fire.

Lucian came to find me in the morning.

"Selene, we’ve found out the truth. The offender will be punished accordingly."

I didn’t answer him. I just acted like I was hoping for the best.

We went to the courtroom together. It was already filled with people, all of them ready to hear the verdict.

"We have found the real culprit who set the fire in Selene’s room that night," the judge announced. "The fire nearly killed her, and it took her unborn child from her."

The room went silent.

"Bring her out."

They brought out someone else. Not Tessa. When I heard "bring out the culprit," I had already known it was going to be someone else because Tessa was standing right beside me.

The person they dragged forward ... I believed she was the woman Tessa had impersonated the night of the fire. She was crying, screaming.

"I swear by the goddess, it wasn’t me! I don’t even know the road to Selene’s room!"

She was still dragged to the front. The elders marked her as the culprit.

The judge began declaring her fate: "Having been found guilty of the attempted murder of Selene and the murder of her unborn child..."

She was still sobbing. "No, I was in my room sleeping at midnight when it happened! I don’t know anything about this ... please, I beg you!"

The judge continued. "You have been sentenced to death by drowning. The child belonged to the Alpha, and that carries the highest consequence."

She raised her stamp. And I objected before it could land.

"Killing her isn’t enough punishment. I object."

I wasn’t going to stand there and watch an innocent person die for Tessa’s sins.

Tessa must have been smiling on the inside, because someone had already taken the fall for her.

"What do you mean?" the judge asked me.

"I want to speak with the Alpha privately, please."

The Alpha stood and walked to where I was.

"Wait ... everyone wait. I want to hear from the mother of the deceased."

I leaned in and spoke into his ear, tears burning my eyes. "I don’t think she should be killed. I forgive her. Please, just banish her."

Lucian looked at me like he was seeing someone he’d never quite met before. She wasn’t the real culprit, and I couldn’t let her die for it ... but I also didn’t want to argue again that Tessa was the one. She had outsmarted me, and with my hands tied on that front, I chose to go another way.

Lucian leaned close. "Are you sure about what you’re asking?"

"Yes. That would give me more peace."

He sighed. Then he stepped up to the podium.

"Everyone ... as we all know, the child belonged to Selene and myself. But we must acknowledge that none of us will ever feel what a mother feels at the loss of a child. That child grew inside her. It had already become part of her. And she has chosen to forgive the wolf who set that fire."

The entire room erupted. She’s crazy. How could she do that? It’s your child we’re talking about ... the murmurings came at me from every direction.

"Wait ... wait." Lucian raised a hand. "She has decided on a punishment she finds more fitting, which is banishment. This wolf is never to be seen within the walls of Morvaine again. I say this as the Alpha of this territory." He turned to the judge. "Stamp it."

He stepped down from the podium. The judge stamped it. The murmurings grew louder as the innocent wolf was led out to be cast away.

Tessa was free. She looked at me with one quiet glance that said everything.

Who’s the winner now?

"We’ll teach her a lesson," Nara kept saying inside me. But I didn’t want her method. I wanted Tessa caught and punished for exactly what she deserved ... but now I didn’t know how, because she had outsmarted me every single time.

I went back to my room. Lucian followed.

"I didn’t expect what you did today," he said. "Why?"

"I decided to forgive her. I want to leave it in the past. I can’t watch someone die because of me," I said.

Lucian pulled me into a hug ... tight. The kind of hug a king like him had never given me before.

"I can’t feel your pain. Only you can. But I want you to know I’m here," he said.

"Thank you."

"No ... thank you. You’ve been there for me, and you have the most beautiful heart of anyone I’ve ever known. Despite everything you’ve been through." He pulled back just enough to look at me. "I love you, Selene."

My heart stopped.

What did he just say?

"What did you say?"

"I said I love you, Selene."

Tears welled up in my eyes. The Alpha loved me. Words I never thought would ever leave his mouth, and yet there they were ... real and warm and impossible to unhear.

I held on to him tighter. The warmth of his body through that hug broke something open in me, and I let myself cry.