Chapter 68

Chapter 68
Abigail's POV

Morning came grey and cold, mist pressing down over the camp like a layer of ash not yet fully settled.

I stood before the three council elders and the representatives of the packs, my injured arm bound tight against my body, held in place by the bandages. On my face I kept a quiet, grieving look — weak enough, and dignified enough.

"I make this request as the one who was wronged," I began, my voice low but carrying clearly. "I do not ask for her death."

A low stir ran at once through the crowd.

I did not look at the girl kneeling in the center of the ground. I only let my eyes rest on the elders, as if pleading, and as if weighing the matter on the whole pack's behalf.

"The Crimson Fang Pack holds a seat in this council," I went on. "If we stain our name with an execution over nothing but a matter of jealousy between sisters, then the harm falls not on her alone, but on every soul who wears our mark. I would not see it come to that."

I paused, and let the words settle into their ears.

Then, slowly, I added the last of it.

"Let her live — but cast her out. Strip her of her pack, strip her of her name, strip her of every protection she might claim. Banish her from the lands of Silver City forever, and let her become a rogue."

It was a clean, tidy argument. It sounded merciful, it guarded the pack's good name, and it fit exactly what they hoped to hear from a girl who had been wronged and yet still knew her place.

Only I knew what truly lay beneath those words.

Evelyn had already given me what I wanted. Olivia dead was worth nothing to me. But Olivia alive, exiled, hunted by cold and hunger, reduced to a rogue any wolf could put down — that was worth a great deal.

Because Evelyn would have to live every day in the same torment: knowing her daughter was still out there, still breathing, still suffering, and that she could never touch her again, never protect her, never even openly mourn her.

That is a fire slower to burn than any pyre.

The elders conferred in low voices for a while. After a moment, the eldest lifted his hand, and the murmuring in the camp fell away beneath it.

He read out the judgment.

"Olivia Rodriguez, permanently cast out of the Crimson Fang Pack, and banished from all lands under the council's protection. Effective now."

Two guards stepped forward and hauled Olivia up from the ground.

She did not weep, which surprised me.

Instead, she turned her head slowly, deliberately, and across the crowd she found my face with perfect precision.

There was nothing left in her eyes but hate. Pure, thick, undiluted, without so much as a thread of pretense woven through it.

Her lips moved, shaping a string of words with no sound behind them.

But I read them.

It was not a farewell.

It was a promise she had sworn to keep.

Matthew stood apart, his face iron-hard, and did not say a single word from beginning to end. Evelyn had bitten every trace of her breaking down behind her clenched teeth, nails driven into her palms until the knuckles went white. Yet she never lost her composure — even though holding on to that dignity had cost her every last ounce of her strength.

The guards marched Olivia toward the tree line.

I watched her back recede, bit by bit, until just as she was about to disappear into the trees, the edge of my vision was snagged by a figure at the fringe of the crowd.

Selena.

She stood beyond the crowd, watching the direction they led Olivia away, a smile at the corner of her mouth.

Looking at that smile, a chill slid slowly down my spine.

---

Selena's POV

The moment I stepped into my tent, I sent every servant out.

Only when the last flap had fallen back into place, and the footsteps outside had faded into the dusk, did I let myself sink onto the low cot.

Outside, the fire crackled, throwing thin, long lines of orange light onto the canvas wall, swaying with the night wind. But I could not feel any warmth from it.

I dug my fingers into the fur over my knees, knuckles stiff and pale. The knot of resentment in my chest sat there, heavy enough to make me feel sick.

That image came back again.

All afternoon it had burned through my mind, over and over.

During the trial, I had stood at the edge of the crowd, chin high, feigning indifference. Like some noble guest who had wandered by and stopped to watch a bit of spectacle.

But my eyes would not obey me.

They always go looking for him first.

Three years, and I still cannot break the habit.

As long as Nicholas is present, I have to see him first before I can settle into anything else.

But this time, when I found him, his gaze was not on me.

He was looking at that girl.

Looking at Abigail.

That was not the look an Alpha ought to give a subordinate under his protection, nor the look he gives a useful ally.

That gaze was too deep, too heavy, and buried within it was something close to possession.

I stood there in the crowd, watching him look at her like that, and the blood drained from my face inch by inch. My fingertips went cold, as if freshly pulled from snowmelt.

People love to say that Selena's feelings for the Winter King are nothing but a girl's infatuation.

They are wildly wrong.

My obsession with Nicholas has never been clean, and it has never been soft.

The year I turned eighteen, my wolf woke for the first time beneath the full moon. And from that very night, I marked him as the single goal of my life.

I understand exactly what he is.

The strongest Alpha this continent has ever produced. Every ambitious pack whispers about him in the dark, weighs him, and fears him.

Whoever becomes the Luna of Winter Pack stands second only to the Queen.

This is not a dream dreamed in the flush of a girl's racing heart.

This is a throne.

And I have schemed for that throne for three full years.

My father has even quietly gone to the other Alphas of the council, laying groundwork for me, using every political means, all so that one day Nicholas's name might be bound to our pack.

I did everything I was supposed to do.

I sent invitations, arranged all manner of "chance meetings," always finding just the right reason to stand where he would pass, to stand where his eyes would inevitably fall when he looked up.

But he never once stopped for me.