RODERIC'S POV
Alpha Roderic." Elder Caius speaks with care. "Please. Sit."
I stop pacing near the window. The courtyard is still in chaos outside. Everyone runs helter-skelter while some of the warriors have been sent to chase after her.
They're back.
Garrett walks in and looks at me. I can read failure on his face before he even opens his mouth to speak. One look in his eyes and I can tell that it was a failed mission.
Damn.
I turn away from him and face the room.
The Council of Elders sit around the long tables in their tall chairs chairs
They are seven old men and two old women who believe that their age is the only thing that gives them authority over everything, including me.
Elder Caius studied me in his usual calm way with his hands folded on the table. Elder Maris writes in her ledger. Her quill scratches against the parchment, as though what was happening outside is not important.
"I don't want to sit."
"You've been pacing for twenty minutes." Caius replies.
"Then look away."
I walk to the far wall and press my fingers against the stone. I need to hit something solid right now because everything seems to be slipping out of my hands.
"The murderer!" I growl. "How could she have escaped?"
She does not deserve to be alive. She should have been dead two days ago…the morning after Elara was found dead.
But no.
The Council had intervened. They had demanded that due process be followed when the murderer was right in front of them all.
I smiled and agreed at the time. Then I handled things later, as they should be handled.
This time is no different but only that someone had gotten there first.
"The arrow," I demand.
Elder Maris stops writing. I turn around. The faces at the table look at me.
"Someone fired that arrow." I said it slowly, letting each word land. "Into my execution ground, during a sentence I had already passed."
I walked back toward the table. My footsteps are the only sound in the room. "Someone studied what I was doing and decided to interfere."
Caius adjusts his chair. "It's possible it is someone from outside the pack who…"
"It's not someone from outside the pack." I cut him off. My voice stays even. I had learned a long time ago that the-calm-before-the-storm anger is more frightening than the loud kind.
"An outsider does not know the layout of our ground that well. That arrow came from the eastern roof. Our pack warriors guard that roof. Which means someone inside my walls made a choice today."
I let the silence sit. Then turn to my beta.
"Find them. "Whoever fired that arrow, I want them found. Bring them to me. Not to the courtroom nor to this council."
I looked at Caius directly. "To me."
"And then?" Elder Maris asks lightly.
"And then I will deal with them myself."
No one said anything to that. Wise.
I return to looking through the window. One of the warriors in the courtyard catches my attention. He is a young pup barely two years past his first shift and immediately directs his gaze to the ground when his eyes meet mine.
They are all afraid to look at me. Good, because fear is the most honest thing people ever show to you.
But that girl had looked at me. Now that I think about it, despite being starved and bound. She clearly could not hold herself upright yet she had said: Why would I kill the one person who was kind to me?
I grind my teeth.
She knows something. Elara had trusted her far more than she should. More than I had realized until it was almost too late. My mate had been careful around everyone else but she had been careless around the omega.
Comfortable and careless people always say things that they shouldn't.
What had Elara said to her? What did that girl know?
"She can't go far," I say more to myself than to them. "She hasn't eaten in three days. She was shot in the side so definitely she is still bleeding and probably weak by now." I turn back to the Council of Elders. "She will collapse within the hour, if she hasn't already."
"If she collapses in our territory," Caius said, "the warriors will find her."
"And if she doesn't?"
The Elder pauses for a moment."Then we must consider the possibility that she has crossed into the neighboring territory. In which case the matter becomes... more delicate."
"Delicate?" I almost laughed. "You call a clear case of murder that should be easy to deal with especially since knowing who the murderer is, delicate?"
There is only one neighboring territory that matters right now. The only border pressing to the north and east against ours is White Fang's border and White Fang belongs to Zac Arden. I did not say his name aloud, not in a room of Elders with ears like these.
"She will be found," I say. "And when she is, she will be brought back here."
"For a new trial?" Maris asks. Her quill hover above her ledger.
I hold her gaze. "No. For the completion of her sentence."
Her eyes flash and there, it was gone in less than a second.
"Alpha," Elder Caius said. "The execution was interrupted before it was carried out. The Council will need to be consulted before…"
"The Council already gave me their judgment." I snap. "She's been found guilty."
"We only find her guilty of suspicion, pending till when the result of the investigation comes out. We said…"
"I don't want to hear it. You said enough." I raise my palm to stop him from completing his statement. I move to the door and stop without turning around while my hands rest on the frame.
"She murdered my mate. I buried my mate this morning so please forgive me if I am not interested in further debate about the woman who caused her death."
I exit before any of them could answer.
Garrett waits at the entrance to the courtroom waiting for me. His wounded arm has bandage straps against his chest. The arrow wound has been dressed and bound. He straightens when he sees me.
"She crossed the treeline," he said. "We tracked her blood for almost a mile, then it stopped."
"Stopped."
"The trail just... ended." He meets my eyes warily. "Right at the border marker."
"Which border," I said. He does not answer. He doesn't need to.
There's only one place she can run to without any obstruction of crossing water. North. She had run north.
Of all the directions she could have run into; South, West, back through the village, or into the hills. Instead, she had run north. Whether she knew what lay there or whether pure panic had carried her legs that direction, the result was the same. Whether she is alive or dead, she is on Zac Arden's land.
Either way, Zac Arden would find her first.
I need to silence her from the face of the earth and I need to act fast.
Not arrested nor brought back for another trial. Neither would he allow her to be questioned by the Council's investigators.
The bitter truth is that I cannot illegally cross without consequences, a murderer is loose in my enemy's territory and I cannot do a single thing about it.
The omega is a loose thread and if you let loose threads be, they have a way of unraveling everything.
Wherever you are, omega girl, I will find you and when I do…
I clench and unclench my fist.
I will finish what I started.