Violet

The young male swallowed. "La—lady Palisa assembled us weeks before departure. She told us we were tracking a dangerous fugitive. A Lycan. She said the council had authorized the mission."

"The council authorized nothing," Calder said flatly. He looked at the semicircle. "Did any of you?"

Silence. Heads shaking.

"Your Supreme Alpha was serving a punishment and barred from leaving her castle, much less her own territory and you believed that sorry excuse?!"

The young wolf flinched.

"Your punishment is coming. How many of you did she assemble and from what packs?"

"Forty-seven of us, my Lord. From two packs. Shadowpine and Delvor," he whimpered.

"And your Alphas are dead too," a Supreme Alpha said simply and they meekly nodded.

"What happened when you located Bei? Fresna’s wolf." Calder asked.

Their faces paled. One of them looked down at the floor. Anger heated my chest.

"Lady Palisa questioned her. Asked where the Lycan had gone. The woman... Bei... she wouldn’t answer."

"And then?"

"Lady Palisa struck her."

"Struck her?" Calder repeated.

"Once." The young male’s voice dropped to a whisper. "She was dead."

The hall went silent.

"There was no further questioning?" Calder pressed. "No interrogation? No attempt to extract information through other means? You are saying your Supreme Alpha killed her on the spot?"

My hands shook and I had to tighten my grip to stop it.

Those bastards.

"No, my Lord. She just..." He swallowed. "She just hit her. We thought she would question her more. But she just..."

His eyes watered.

The older wolf spoke up. His voice was steadier than the young wolf but carried a hollowness that made his voice even more hoarse.

"When the Lycan arrived, Lady Palisa ordered us to attack immediately. All of us. At once."

Something was odd. They were being so cooperative.

What exactly had Kael, and Rowan done to them?

"What happened during the fight? Only seventeen of you survived." Calder pressed on. "Against one wolf."

"Ah, it wasn’t just one. She had her wolf with her!" the one that hadn’t spoken until now cried out. "Most of us were killed and disabled within the first few minutes. Her wolf tore through the rest of us and—"

Calder frowned, along with the others. "Her wolf?"

He turned to me. "You have a wolf?"

"Yes."

"You made no mention of it," he hissed.

"You did not ask," I retorted. "You did not ask of what came before my battle with her. My wolf was fighting by my side until she attacked it. I felt the toxins through my wolf before I felt it. And it took even more effect when she latched onto me after."

Calder frowned. "You—"

"You have a wolf...?" two of the other Supreme Alphas whispered in unison, astonished.

The rest looked curious.

"We will address this." He eyed me. "Before that..." He glanced at the wolves. "What happened after? Palisa then engaged the Lycan directly?"

The wolves vigorously nodded.

"Then speak. What did you see?"

"Lady Palisa was... they were fighting. It was so hard to keep track of them, but she was dealing with the Lycan until they—they rolled into the water. We... when—we ran off to get more... help..."

The last words were uttered so weakly that they were barely audible.

Disapproved stares hit the centre of the hall and I couldn’t help but wonder if some of them were directed at me.

It was obvious they had run for their lives and not to get help. There was no other wolf in the vicinity they could have asked for help.

If they wanted to leave a proper lie, they could have just stated they were returning to spread the news... assuming Palisa had been dead by the time they had gone.

"You did not even wait till your Supreme Alpha’s pulse had vanished," one of the Supreme Alpha spoke up, his fist tightening on the table. "You cowards!"

They flinched.

Calder looked furious too. "So, you ran off when you could barely even see the outcome of the battle?! You dishonourable lots!"

"No, the water was—"

"Silence!" he boomed.

What was happening?

"Take them away," he grumbled.

The guards immediately moved, dragging the wolves back out.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Calder sat back. His face was unreadable but the aggressive edge had dulled considerably. He studied me with an expression I couldn’t place.

His voice was surprisingly quieter now. "You mentioned earlier that Palisa forced her way into your mind during the fight. You said she showed you things she had done. What exactly does that mean? Explain."

My mind snapped in place.

This was the part I had been preparing for.

But was this a bright idea? The verdict for this matter hadn’t even been called yet and I was about to bring up something else.

Still, I could use this to drop a hint, and it was true.

"She showed me her own memories. Centuries of them."

A slight frown came over Voya’s face.

Murmuring rippled through the hall. Calder raised his hand for silence.

"Centuries? What are you saying? That is not possible."

"I am only revealing what she showed me," I continued. "Lycans being tracked across territories. I saw her torturing Lycans. Wolves like me. Children..." My voice remained steady but my hands had tightened at my sides. "She showed me experiments. Tortures. Deaths that she delivered. That—"

"Enough." His face hardened. "I will not hear such rubbish. Neither will I entertain hallucinations. You were poisoned, disoriented. Your own mind could have—"

"She is speaking the truth."

My heart stopped.

I turned before I could stop myself, and my eyes landed on the one person I had been deliberately avoiding since the moment I walked into this hall.

Fana was still seated, and she was looking directly at me.

I couldn’t breathe.

Her face—that face that had made my stomach lurch every time I remembered it, was calm. But her eyes were set with a quiet, unbending resolve that was nothing like her mother’s.

"What the Lycan has described is true," she continued. "My mother has lived for centuries. And she has used methods of sustaining her life that I do not fully understand and do not wish to describe. My close resemblance to her is no mistake."