Burned Luna's Revenge

Chapter 2:The Testimony

Alina’s Pov

Mira, my best friend. She had been my best friend since we were pups. She was the only friend I could rely on. I was glad to see her.

“I didn't do it, Mira. You know me,” I said, my voice already shaking.

She squeezed my hand,

“Stay strong,I will do everything I can to get you out of this. I promise.” Then she walked out and left me alone in that holding room with nothing but a wooden bench and the sound of my own breathing.

I sat there all night. Running through every single patient I had treated in the last month, every supply order I had signed, every person who had access to my medical kit. Because that was the only thing I could do that felt like fighting.

By the time morning came I had three names and no way to prove any of it.

The guards came for me at nine.

The assembly hall looked different in daylight. Bigger somehow. Every seat was filled and then some pack members standing three deep along the walls, pressed into doorways, spilling out into the corridor. Everyone wanted to watch.

I walked in with my head up.

Ryker was already at the head of the table. He didn't look at me when I walked in. He was talking to Elder James in a low voice, and whatever James was saying made Ryker nod slowly with the satisfied look.

That was the moment I felt it. The first real crack in the wall I'd been holding up all night.

Elder Cora, the oldest member of the council, gestured me to the chair at the center of the room. The one facing the table. The one with no desk in front of it, no barrier, nothing between me and twelve pairs of eyes.

I sat down.

"Dr. Alina Hart." Elder Cora's voice was dry and precise. She had delivered judgments for thirty years and it showed. "You understand the nature of these proceedings?"

"I do."

"You are accused of the deliberate poisoning and murder of six Silverpine pack children using refined wolfsbane compounds. How do you answer this accusation?"

"I didn't do it. Someone planted that vial in my kit. I have never kept wolfsbane in my personal supplies and every nurse in my medical center can confirm that."

"Your nurses will be questioned." James folded his hands on the table. "In the meantime, the evidence speaks for itself. Access logs show you were the last person in the supply room each night this week."

"I'm the attending physician. I'm the last person in the supply room every night. That's not evidence, that's my job."

"Combined with the vial found in your kit —"

"A vial that wasn't there when I started my shift yesterday morning." I looked directly at James. "Someone put it there between six AM and when your people searched my kit. That's a window of fourteen hours during which multiple staff members, guards, and visiting pack members had access to that room."

James smiled. "We'll let the testimony determine that."

Three nurses testified first. Two of them said I seemed stressed in the days leading up to the children's deaths.

One spoke up, “Forgive me, Luna. I just have to be honest.” She turned and faced them. “I'd noticed Dr.Alina spending extra time alone in the supply room.” All three looked at the floor when they said it.

I had trained those nurses. I had stayed late with them, covered their shifts, attended their mating ceremonies. And they sat in that chair and fed James exactly what he needed, one careful sentence at a time, without meeting my eyes once.

Then Ryker spoke.

"As Alpha, I authorized this investigation based on the physical evidence recovered from my mate's medical kit." His voice was the same voice he used at pack announcements. He sounded impersonal and personal at the same time. "I want the record to show that this decision was not made lightly."

"Do you have anything to add about your wife's state of mind in recent weeks?" Cora asked.

"She was under pressure." He picked up his water glass then set it back down.

"Because I was right," I said.

Every head turned toward me.

"I was right that the deaths weren't accidental," I continued, looking straight at Ryker. "The wolfsbane was refined. I told you that on the phone when Tommy Morrison was still alive. You told me to handle it. If you had let me investigate then instead of shutting me down, maybe the testimony today would look very different."

Ryker looked at me for the first time since I'd walked in. His eyes gave me nothing.

"My wife is a gifted physician," he said, turning back to the council. "But gifted people break under pressure too."

I felt the room turn against me. Felt it the way you feel weather changing.

Then Elder Cora said, "We'll hear from the character witness."

I heard the side door open. I turned around.

Mira walked in wearing a pale gray dress, her dark hair pinned back, her face arranged into grief that photographs well.

She looked, in other words, exactly like she always looked when she wanted something.

She would fix this. She was the only person in this room who actually knew me, and she was going to stand up in front of these elders and remind them of that.

She took the chair. Crossed her ankles. Looked at the council with those wide, sorrowful eyes.

"Thank you for letting me speak," she said. "I know how hard this is for everyone."

"Tell us about your relationship with the accused," Cora said.

"We've been best friends since we were children." Mira's voice was soft. Warm. Perfectly calibrated. "I love Alina. I want to make that clear before I say anything else. I love her and I have spent the last twenty-four hours hoping there was some other explanation for what happened."

I watched her speak.

"But?" James prompted.

Mira took a breath. "But I've watched her change over the past year. She became obsessed with the idea of having children. It consumed her. She stopped talking about her work. The way she used to, everything became about what she didn't have, what other pack members had that she couldn't." She paused.

"She told me once that she couldn't walk through the residential quarter anymore because seeing the children playing made her feel physically ill."

And I felt my heart break in a way it hadn't since they'd brought me in.

"That's not what I said." My voice came out sharp. "I said it was hard. There's a difference."

"Alina." Cora's tone was a warning.

"She's twisting the narrative. Mira, please." I begged.

"You'll have the opportunity to respond when she's finished."

I pressed my mouth shut. I looked at Mira. She looked back at me with an expression so full of performed sorrow.

A fraction of a second where the sorrow dropped and satisfaction seeped out through her eyes.

"She talked about those families like they had something that belonged to her," Mira continued, turning back to the council.

"I told myself she was just grieving. I didn't think…. I never imagined she would —" Her voice broke on cue.

"Those were innocent children. And I keep thinking about how many times I watched her with them. How gentle she was. And I can't reconcile that with what happened, I can't, but the evidence says the truth."

"Mira." I leaned forward. "Look at me."

She looked at me.

"You know I didn't do this."

Nothing moved in her face. "I know you were in tremendous pain. I know you felt invisible and replaceable."

"Did Ryker ask you to say this?" The words came out before I could stop them and I didn't try to. "Did he tell you what to say or did you come up with it yourself?"

The room erupted. Cora was calling for order. James was already talking over her. Ryker's chair scraped back.

Mira. My Mira. Twenty-three years of friendship. The woman who held my hand when my mother died. Who stayed up with me the night before my mating ceremony telling me I was the most stunning woman she'd ever seen. Who knew every one of my secrets.

She sat perfectly still in the middle of all of it and watched me with that soft, sorrowful face, and I understood she hadn't been asked to do this. She had volunteered.