Chose Your SIL's Pup Over Ours and Left Me to Freeze, Now Meet the Luna Who Erased Your All novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Sentence

"I know why," I said quietly.

The judge turned her head.

"Then say it for her."

"No," I said. "She says it."

Lenore's chin came up.

For three days in the cell she had been calm, and the calm was gone.

"Pack law sends a widow with no heir out at the next moon," she said. "I had no family. I had one thing left in the world, and it was in my belly."

Her hands shook.

"Nine days before the birth, he stopped moving. I told the Beta. I thought he would send for the healer."

"What did he do?" the judge said.

"He said, 'Then we need another boy.' He said Rhea carried one, and Garrick would never look at the body, because grief makes a man look away."

"He said that?"

"He said I'd be on the road by the new moon, with a bag and no name. I said yes."

I thought of the horn in the middle of the night, and the guard running up the stairs.

It had never been a labour.

"I rang the horn myself, when he told me to," Lenore said. "So every guard would run to my door, and none would stay at the cell."

Nobody on the Ironbark benches moved.

"I'm not telling you this to be forgiven," Lenore said. She was looking at me. "I'm telling you because she asked. She stood on that hall floor and asked me to say it myself."

"Say the rest," I said.

Her mouth trembled.

"I picked him up. Your boy. He was warm and he was so loud, and I stood there with my dead son in my arms, and I wanted him so much I thought I'd be sick."

"And you took him."

"I took him."

Garrick made a sound.

I did not look at him.

"I wrapped him in the blanket and kissed his head," Lenore said. "I told him I was sorry. I told him I'd come back for him."

"What was his name?" I said.

I had not planned to ask.

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