Chapter 130: Finally, Judgment

SELENE’S POV

"My decision has been made. I’m going to kill him," Lucian said to me.

"No, you can’t. They’ll hate you more for it," I said back.

A murderer giving someone advice against killing ... I knew how that sounded. But he was willing to hear me out, so I kept going.

"I need them to hate me. More than that, I need them to fear me. These are the same people who wanted me gone ... who didn’t want me as their Alpha anymore," Lucian said, and I understood his pain. I truly did.

But this was betrayal. Kael hadn’t taken a life. There were other ways to deal with a traitor that didn’t end in death.

Even as I thought it, I felt the hypocrisy settle over me like a second skin. I had killed Aiden after he betrayed me. The difference, I supposed, was that I had started to love him ... and what he did had cut me in a place I hadn’t even known was open. A betrayal from someone you were once close with always hit differently. Always hit harder.

"That’s what you talked me out of the last time," Lucian said quietly. "And even now, standing here, I can’t bring myself to kill Kael. We go too far back."

I was glad he was thinking it through. Glad the part of him that still reasoned hadn’t gone completely dark.

He made up his mind to give Kael a punishment that fit the crime ... one that didn’t require blood.

"Guards, get Kael ready and bring him for final judgement," Lucian declared to the wolves standing at attention.

---

Later that day, after Lucian and I had spoken, I went to see Tessa.

I needed it to be face to face. I wasn’t the kind of woman who handled things from the shadows and hid behind closed doors. If I was coming for you, I was coming to your face.

"Hey, Tessa," I said, smiling the moment I stepped into her cell. Not warmly. Mockingly.

She looked at me ... then immediately looked away.

"You can’t even hold my gaze anymore, can you?" I said. "Good. Because today is the day your bill comes due."

"Do whatever the fuck you want," she snapped. "I’ll rise back from it and I’ll end you."

I laughed. Not a nervous laugh. A real one.

"You killed my baby," I said, letting the words sit in the air between us. "You killed my friends. And you think you’re going to walk away and have a normal life?"

"Yes," she said, lifting her chin. "Because I’m Tessa. And I always get what I want."

"Oh?" I tilted my head. "You think you’ll get your way after sleeping with the same beta who’s currently on trial?"

The colour drained from her face.

She stared at me like she couldn’t understand how those words had just come out of my mouth. Like the ground beneath her had cracked open.

"You thought no one would find out?" I said softly. "Queen of the districts. Your night is coming, Tessa, and when it arrives, it won’t be over quickly."

I pulled out my phone and showed her the footage ... her slipping into Kael’s room late at night and not coming out until hours later. The time stamp told the whole story on its own. Whatever happened behind that door was never meant for public eyes. Not for a queen like her.

I laughed again. I couldn’t help it.

"You exposed everything there was to expose about Lucian until he had no defence left," I said. "But nobody knows your secrets yet."

Her whole demeanour shifted. The hardness cracked and underneath it was something I had never seen on Tessa’s face before ... fear.

"Please don’t do it, Selene," she said. "I know you. You’re the reasonable one. Just have mercy, please."

It felt good to watch her beg. Better than I expected it to.

But I wasn’t that girl anymore ... the one who had walked into Winterwood as a breeder with nothing to her name and nowhere to go. Tessa herself had helped turn me into something harder, something sharper. And now she was going to feel exactly what she had helped create.

"Say your last prayers, Luna," I said.

Then I walked out and left her in that cell.

She was screaming my name before I even reached the door.

"Selene! Please come back! I’m sorry ... please don’t do it!"

I didn’t turn around.

---

I went straight to Lucian and showed him the video.

"I have something you need to see," I said.

He told me to show him.

"I need you to keep your composure first," I said. "What you’re about to watch is going to sting. Just don’t react out of proportion."

"Selene and her advice," he muttered, shaking his head. "Just show me before I snatch those glasses off your face."

I opened my phone and handed it to him.

All this time ... while Tessa had been working to publicly dismantle Lucian, to strip him of his power and paint him as unfit ... she had been privately sleeping with his closest ally. His beta.

Lucian watched it in silence. When it ended, something in his expression shifted ... not into rage. Into something quieter. More wounded.

"How did I not know about this?" he asked.

"Because you trusted her," I said. "She was your wife. You assumed that meant she was on your side." I paused. "Maybe now you’ll believe she was the one who killed my unborn child."

He sat down on the edge of his bed.

I could see the weight of it all pressing down on him ... the betrayal, the humiliation, the exhaustion of holding power in a place that kept turning against him.

"The people’s favourite Luna," he said slowly, almost to himself. "She did all of this to me." He looked up. "They’re about to lose their Luna. And she’s going to lose that title ... permanently."

He called out to the guards without another word.

"Bring Tessa and Kael out. Now."

His face had changed completely.

It was about to get very messy.

We arrived at the council room ... Lucian, myself, and eventually the two of them, brought in under guard.

Their faces said everything. They looked like people who had already accepted that something was ending.

I wanted Tessa, specifically, to understand what it felt like ... to stand in front of a crowd, under the weight of a judgement she couldn’t buy or charm her way out of. The elders who had always propped her up, the backbones of her support system, were bound and sidelined. They could only sit there and watch. The entire press and media had been called in. Every camera was rolling.

The whole world was about to see Tessa for exactly who she was.

"These two," Lucian said, addressing the room, "have been sleeping together behind my back."

The gasp that came from the crowd was enormous and slow to die. The two of them stood there under the lights and the cameras and swallowed every second of it.

"That’s one," Lucian continued. "Two ... Kael’s judgement is ready. Three ... Tessa’s judgement is also ready. There’s quite a lot to get through."

He turned to Kael first.

"You are guilty on multiple counts. You conspired against your Alpha. That alone warrants what follows." He paused. "Kael, you are hereby banished from Winterwood permanently. If you are ever found within its borders again, you will be killed on sight."

The guards lifted Kael from the floor.

"As for Tessa," Lucian said, and the room went still again. "You killed my child. That makes you a murderer. You betrayed this pack and this throne from the inside." He let the silence stretch. "You are banished from Winterwood ... but for three years only. Because you were, once upon a time, the people’s Luna, and that counts for something. During those three years, you are free to keep Kael’s company. Bear his pups if you want. But when those three years are up, you will return to Winterwood ... not as Luna. As a servant in the general kitchen."

Tessa broke.

She dissolved into tears right there in front of the cameras, in front of the crowd that had once adored her, in front of every elder who had shielded her. The people who had worshipped her finally saw her ... not as their saviour, but as what she had always been underneath the crown.

They were chanting Lucian’s name.

"I’m not angry at you for what you did to me, Tessa," Lucian said, and his voice was calm in a way that was more devastating than fury would have been. "I’m grateful. Because of you, I finally get to be free. So I want to say ... thank you." He looked to the guards. "Take them out."

They moved immediately.

Tessa was wailing as they dragged her away. Begging. Calling out for mercy that no one in that room was willing to give her anymore.

Lucian didn’t answer her.

Whatever mercy had existed before ... if any had ever truly survived ... it was gone now.