Chapter 75
75 Retribution and Resistance
Aubrey’s POV
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“Ah!” I gasped and pretended to stumble back in panic, allowing the Beta officers to lunge forward and shield me..
They shifted into their wolf forms, their claws slicing through Aurelia’s flesh with sharp, wet rips. The sound of skin tearing beneath claw was nauseatingly vivid. Aurelia shrieked, collapsing and forced back into human form, a crumpled, blood–drenched heap on the floor.
The trial that followed was absurdly smooth. Jimmy’s testimony cleared me of all suspicion. Aurelia and Bailey, however, were thrown into cells laced with wolfsbane. As the ringleader, Aurelia was sentenced to one hundred lashes. The whip had been soaked in wolfsbane–every strike a fiery brand that would burn for weeks.
Before the sentence was carried out, one of the enforcers turned to me respectfully and asked, “Ms. Aubrey, do you wish to pardon her? If so, we can cancel the punishment.”
“No,” I replied coldly. Without hesitation.
I would not forgive.
At those words, my father opened his mouth, likely to plead, but then shut it again. He had no right to ask anything of me.
I didn’t watch the flogging, but Aurelia’s screams pierced through the walls like music–beautiful, cathartic.
But it wasn’t enough.
I clenched my fists, fighting back the seething hatred surging inside me. Compared to what she and Bailey had done to me, this was nothing.
When it was over, Aurelia was dragged out like a corpse, leaving a trail of blood across the floor. The whip had shredded her clothing, and her back was a grotesque mess of torn skin and blackish–purple bruising- wolfsbane coursing through her veins, poisoning every inch.
Shadowmoon Pack law was brutal but fair: those who were punished were denied wolf–healer care. It was a deterrent, a reminder. Her wounds would fester and rot with pain for weeks, and that brought me genuine satisfaction.
By the time I left the security station, it was already deep into the night.
“Aubrey,” my father called out.
I stopped.
“Come home,” he said, voice low and almost pleading. Perhaps he felt guilt for having believed the wrong daughter all along.
Home?
That snake pit of deceit? That place where I’d been shackled, manipulated, and nearly destroyed?
“That’s not my home,” I replied without looking back.
1/2
Outside my spare building. I found myself replaying what far happened before I left the station.
Jimmy bad begged me pleaded for the to tell Alpha Henry not to tend him to the vampire lands. He claimed he only told the ith because Henry had ordered him to
Alpha Hemy did that for me?
Suddenly. Ella’s voice shrieked in my mind. “Alpha Henry! He’s under the tree!”
In the moonlight, a tall silhouette stepped out of the shadows. His dark–purple irises glinted like flame beneath the night sky, and a faint, unreadable smile hovered at the corner of his lips.
At the sight of him, the tension in my body loosened for just a second. Something in me quieted, calmed- like his presence alone was a kind of shield.
Damn it.
I instinctively reached into my pocket, brushing my fingers over the cool metal of the wolf–fang ring. Why did it feel like I was getting more and more tangled up in him?
This had to stop. I had to end it.
I had to make it clear–cut it off clean.
“Alpha,” I said, voice careful, “if I told you I don’t like you anymore, that what happened today was just a misunderstanding… what would you say?”
Strangely, those words were harder to say than I’d expected.
Alpha Henry’s expression froze.
“You’re joking?” His voice dropped to a dangerous rumble..
“No. I don’t joke,” I said, forcing my tone to stay steady.
His eyes darkened, the heat behind them twisting into anger, his voice low and cold:
“You’re playing me?”
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