Chapter 150 Judgement On Hold
Chapter 141
Jax's POV.
"What did you just say?"
My voice came out low. Dangerously low. The kind of low that made people take a small step backward without even knowing they were doing it.
The living room was packed. Servants, guards, palace workers , all of them pressed together like fish in a net. Some held their breath. Some stared at the floor. Nobody wanted to be the one to catch my eyes right now.
But Rosa did not look away.
Rosa stood in the centre of the crowd, chin up, shoulder firm. I never knew she was there. The anger inside of me had taken over my mind and I only saw her when she began to speak.
When she began to speak those words. My legs felt heavy and stuck to the floor. I couldn't try to move nor think of talking. I remained muted there as if all my energy had been drained from me.
But still, the fire in my chest didn't burn out, it rather burned hotter like a burning furnace, ready to melt anything on its path.
I balled my hand into a fist, every one of my fingers bore into my palm, the muscles wound many rounds in my hand like a rope tied around a fetched firewood.
This was Rosa. Rosa, of all people.
The same Rosa who never apologized for anything. The same Rosa who walked into my rooms like she owned them and spoke to pack members like they should be grateful she noticed them. The same Rosa who had a sharp word ready for every situation and a smirk that could cut through glass.
That Rosa.
And now she was walking toward me.
Slowly. Step by step. Moving through the crowd as people quietly shifted apart to let her through, the way water moves aside for a stone dropping into it.
She stopped right in front of me.
And then she did something that made my breath catch in my throat.
She knelt down.
Rosa fucking knelt down.
She slowly dropped to knees on the cold palace floor. Her hands wrapped around chest. Her fingers tangled across each other. Her head bent slightly, like she was battling something heavy on the inside.
I blinked hard not once. But several times and even looking at her carefully, I was wondering if I was imagining things. Or my eyes were failing me. Or probably the anger had grown to the point that I was starting to see what wasn't there.
But Rosa didn't disappear, she knelt there like a lamb.
"Do not use the pain of disloyalty against the throne on her, my lord."
Her voice was steady. There was no shaking in it, no nervousness, nothing. But there was something else in it, something softer than I had ever heard from Rosa before. Something that sounded almost like she actually meant every single word she was saying.
The crowd around us went completely still. I do not think anyone was breathing anymore.
I stood there with my hands clasped stiffly at my sides, watching her speak, feeling the fire inside me flicker , not going out, not yet, but flickering.
"You have every right to banish her from this pack," Rosa continued, her eyes finding mine and holding them there. "But why not go after the real culprit first? I mean Theodore."
Theodore.
The name landed in my stomach like a punch.
Because Rosa was right. I knew she was right. Theodore had disappeared the moment this whole thing started unraveling. Gone. Vanished like smoke when a window opens. One moment he was here and the next moment the palace was empty of him, like he had known exactly what was coming and had made sure he would not be standing there when it arrived.
"I am so sure that is why Theodore left the palace," Rosa said. "That pig must have received the news and finally disappeared, no longer coming back to this pack."
A few people in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Someone coughed. Someone else looked at their shoes.
Rosa did not stop.
"Brielle was manipulated." She said it simply, like it was something obvious that everyone else in the room should have already figured out. "Think about how long she has been working in this palace. Think about how many years she has spent inside these walls."
She paused. The pause was not a nervous one. It was the kind of pause that a person uses when they want the words they just said to sit down properly in the minds of not only me but everyone right there in the room.
Then she looked up at me again.
"My lord, this same young Omega served your father. Meritoriously. Every single day, from when he was alive and walking to this palace. She cooked for him, she cleaned for him, she ran herself ragged for this palace, and she never complained once. Not one time. Your father trusted her. And when your father left this world to meet his ancestors, her loyalty did not pack its bags and leave with him."
She shook her head slowly.
"When you became king, she stayed. Her service did not change. Her dedication did not shrink. She showed up every single morning and did her work and kept her head down and asked for nothing. That is not the behavior of a traitor."
I watched her face. I was waiting for the trick. For the part where Rosa revealed what she actually wanted, because Rosa always wanted something. That was just who she was.
But her face showed me nothing except sincerity. And that was perhaps the most unsettling thing that had happened all day.
"So tell me, my lord," she said quietly. "What went wrong? I believe Theodore went wrong. I believe that man got his hands on Brielle somehow. Maybe he threatened her family. Maybe he found the people she loved most and held them over her head like a weapon. Maybe he whispered things in her ear until she was so frightened and so confused that she could not see any other way out."
"But she collected a bribe."
The voice came from somewhere in the crowd. Sharp and flat at the same time, like an axe hitting wood.
Rosa turned her head in the direction the voice had come from. She did not look angry. She looked like she had been expecting it.
"What if Theodore gave her that money himself?" she said, addressing the whole crowd now, not just the one voice. "What if he put it in her hands as part of his plan? So that if everything fell apart, she would be the one standing in the middle of it holding the evidence? While he walked away clean?"
Nobody had an answer for that. The crowd was quiet again.
Rosa turned back to me.
"My lord, I am asking you , I am begging you, do not be too fast. Do not let your anger make the decision before your mind has a chance to. Look into this. Dig. Find out what actually happened before you pass a sentence that cannot be taken back."
She finished speaking.
The room was so quiet I could hear the faint sound of the wind pressing against the windows of the palace.
And then she said three more things. Simple things. Small words. But they hit me somewhere so deep inside my chest that I felt my whole body go rigid.
"Remember your Mila. Remember my Mila. Remember our Mila."
She looked straight into my eyes when she said it.
"Do not let the same mistake repeat itself again."
The words did not just land. They crashed. Like a giant hammer swinging from somewhere very high and connecting with something very solid, sending cracks running all the way through.
Mila.
I clenched my jaw together. My eyes burnt but I would not let the feeling grow. My chest felt hollow like something had been taken away from it and had been replaced with cold stone.
Rosa knew the power of that name. She knew it would reach me. She wasn't cruel, she was remembering me of my own words.
Never in this life of sin will I allow emotion to over rule my common sense.
Never again would I allow the situation I am in lead me into doing something that couldn't be changed or reversed.
That was my vow.
I stood there quietly. The anger inside me had changed. It was no longer burning widely. It stays low and deep.
A servant stood close by. I signaled him
to come closer.
Go tell them,” I said calmly, my voice smooth and steady, “no one is to lay a single finger on Brielle until I discover the real truth.”