Chapter 17: The Trial

We tried Adelaide in the lodge hall on the third morning of the new year.

The doors stood open, and the whole pack sat on the benches.

The old law gave an Alpha two choices: judge a crime alone, or put it before the pack.

I had chosen the pack.

Adelaide had spent her life in front of an audience, and I wanted her to feel every face.

She was brought in between two sentries, in her cream cardigan and her pearls.

Someone had let her keep the pearls. I noticed that, and I let it stand.

She sat in the chair they gave her, with her right hand in its glove.

She looked at me the way she had looked at me for twenty years.

As if I were hers.

"Adelaide Draycott," I said. "You are charged with putting silver into the Luna's spine and dosing her with monkshood for three years."

"I am charged by a girl I raised," Adelaide said. "I wonder who in this room thinks that's a clean charge."

A few people shifted on the benches.

Penny testified first, and she did it like a nurse, with numbers and no adjectives.

She read out the weekly dose. She said the word binder twice, and the second time her voice cracked.

The old healer came next, leaning on his cane, with his tin in his hands.

He set the flattened bullet on the table in front of the council and said only, "One piece."

Adelaide did not look at it.

"Bronwyn Carmichael," the clerk called.

I felt Conall go tense beside me. He had not wanted her to do this.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Never Noticed I Stopped Talking, Until My Wolf Woke from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.