Chapter 252
DEREK
They were already seated when I arrived.
+25 BONUS
The sentencing chamber in the central courthouse had the bushed heavy atmosphere of a room waiting to breathe. The kind of place where sound never echoed quite right, and even the air felt weighted thick with old grief and new judgment.
Stone walls loomed high and unmoving, washed in the pale gray light that filtered through narrow windows near the ceiling. Wooden benches, smooth from decades of use, creaked beneath shifting bodies. The faint scent of floor polish hung beneath everything–mixed with something colder. Sterile.
Final.
I kept to the back.
Didn’t announce myself. Didn’t want to be seen unless she wanted to see me. I stood just inside the arched door, near one of the pillars, my hands in my coat pockets, my back to the exit
Close enough to witness.
Far enough to give her space.
Maggie sat at the defense table, her posture so perfectly straight she might’ve been carved from stone. Her hair was braided tight down her back, and her hands were folded neatly in front of her. She didn’t look scared. Not exactly. Just… still. Like someone who’d already accepted what was coming.
Or someone who had run out of things to lose.
Behind her, in the first row, Elena sat with Mason and Erin. Mason had one arm draped over the back of Elena’s seat–casual in theory, but there was nothing casual in the way he watched the room, his jaw tight, his eyes constantly scanning.
Erin, seated on Elena’s other side, held a folded tissue in both hands, twisting it slowly between her fingers. She looked like she was bracing herself. For what, I wasn’t sure–the sentence, the goodbye, or the way this moment would leave a permanent
mark on all of them.
Elena hadn’t seen me yet. Her eyes were forward, calm but tense. Her mouth was pressed into a neutral line, but I could tell by the way she held herself–shoulders squared, chin slightly lifted that she was steeling for impact. Not because she thought Maggie deserved worse. But because watching someone you love be condemned, even in fairness, does something to you.
And Jacob?
He was seated at the high bench beside the other tribunal Alphas, black robes crisply pressed, the silver sigil of his pack shining at his collarbone. He looked entirely at home there. Comfortable. Confident. His gaze was on the papers in front of him, not the room. He hadn’t even glanced my way when I entered.
Typical.
The room settled. The murmuring died down as the final council Elder stood and addressed the court.
“This court, having reviewed all testimony and evidence presented during trial, and in consultation with the full tribunal, hereby sentences Maggie Thorn to life imprisonment under the Global Alliance statute. With the possibility of parole to be reviewed in ten years‘ time.”
Maggie didn’t move.
The rest of the courtroom rippled with shifting posture–relief, disappointment, tension–depending on which side of the conflict you stood on.
I exhaled slowly. It was, in my opinion, a fair sentence. Harsh, but not vindictive. The ten–year parole review was a mercy. And a sign that maybe, just maybe, some on the Council believed she wasn’t a monster. Just a product of the broken world she’d
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grown up in.
But I wasn’t here to weigh legal outcomes.
I was here for her.
For Elena.
The gavel tapped once, closing the session.
+25 BONUS
Moon Sentinels moved forward, prepared to escort Maggie away, But Elena and the others slipped from their bench quickly, crossing the small gap to her before the guards could intervene.
The judge on duty nodded once, granting the moment.
I stood back, hands clasped in front of me, watching Elena press her hand over Maggie’s and say something I couldn’t hear. Mason hugged Elena as she stepped back–tight, respectful. Erin looked like she was barely holding it together.
Maggie turned to Elena one last time and spoke–clearly enough that I could just make out the words.
Chapter 253
