Forever The Alpha

~Serena~

I will never forget the day the life I knew was ripped from my grasp by the people I trusted and loved. This was the day I tasted the bitter tang of betrayal, leaving me with nothing apart from anger and hatred. This was the day I learned how revenge can motivate a person to endure anything, even death.

~~

The chains linking the shackles around my wrist sang a terrible song of death and agony. It was heavy and cold, leaving bruising marks on my blood-matted skin.

Anton and Mike dragged me by the arms, their fingers digging into my skin. They had been part of my family's security detail since I was a little girl. Now, they're the entourage leading me to my execution. They were indifferent. Cold and distant. They don't see me as the princess of this pack anymore, but a mere criminal who tainted their pack with disgrace.

Everyone we came across through this excruciating walk towards the amphitheater, where I'll meet my end, vibrated with hate and anger.

We halted before a metal double door; the hinges groaned as it opened. 

After a week locked up in a dark cell, sunlight finally struck my skin. The daylight blinded me, battering warmth on my pale skin. When my eyes adjusted to the light, a hundred pairs of eyes stabbed me with daggered glare.

I kept my head held high as I walked the aisle cordoned by silver chains, isolating me from the townspeople in attendance to witness my punishment. If they could, they'd hurl stones and throw fists, scream words a traitor and murderer deserved. 

I've read about public executions in school. There were a few written in our history. A lesson for children not to commit a heinous crime for their names would ring through centuries and be despised by our kind. I listened well to those stories, not knowing my name would be remembered in the same manner.

Gazing at the clear blue sky, I say a brief prayer to my mother and father, begging for their forgiveness. I failed them. Everything they worked for went to waste because I fell in love.

The odds were against me. My chances of surviving this were slimmer than none. But as I walked, I made a promise to them. 'If I would be given another chance to live, I would spend my days reckoning my mistakes, punishing the people who gaslighted me into handing over the pack to the real enemies.'

We reached the platform nestled in the middle of the arena. The wood was warm against the soles of my feet. The chains rattled as Anton secured their ends on the round steel bar attached to the floor.

I scanned the witnesses in attendance for my judgment, committing to memory the hatred and disgust of the people who've known me since I was a little kid. These were the same people who watched me walk with their sons and daughters to school. It's sickening how they easily believed what they heard before hearing my truth.

Tipping my chin up, I stared at the podium where my husband, Alpha Declan Mitchell, stood. This was the first time I'd seen him since the night of our wedding. I pictured our first week as husband and wife basking in newlywed euphoria, not facing one another on opposite sides of the law.

He was the trump card in his family's scheme to take away what was mine. Blinded by love, I married him the second he proposed to me, signing over my father's pack to him without questioning his intentions. They planned everything so well, and, being a foolish girl in love, Declan played me like a puppet.

I prepared myself for this execution, holding onto the mask I practiced in my dark cell. Without it, I knew I would break down and fall into a fit of tears. I thought I could keep it together, but the emptiness in Declan's eyes was my undoing.

'Was he really part of his family's scheme?' I couldn't believe everything he showed me was all lies. The deteriorating hope in my chest died down the moment he opened his mouth and addressed the crowd.

"I, Alpha Declan Mitchell, have gathered you all here today to sentence Luna Serena Mitchell for her heinous crime against the pack." 

I closed my eyes, shunning away the effect of his voice on my aching heart. This isn't the man I loved. He's a traitor, a heartless monster who manipulated me to achieve their family's goal. To steal Embercrest from me.

The noise of the court became a mere buzz in my head. My husband's icy glare was colder than the cuffs restraining my wrist. I narrowed my eyes at him, blinking the sting of his betrayal away.

'I won't cry in front of you. You will never see me cry.'

"She had no motive to kill Alpha Oliver," I heard someone murmur from the crowd. It was a bare whisper in the wind. No one would dare protect a murderer in front of this crowd. No one was on my side, not even the members of my own pack. 

"... Serena Mitchell, do you confess to killing my grandfather, Oliver Mitchell?" A tense silence fell on the stadium. Hundreds of eyes bored holes into my head from every direction.

I wish I could pretend that I give no fucks to whatever they're thinking about me, but I do.

It hurts not to have the luxury of telling my side of the story. It hurts to be locked up, waiting for someone to come and hear me out, only to be gutted by the reality that no one was coming. But what hurt even more was the look in my husband's eyes. An endless abyss of emptiness replaced the familiar warmth in them. 

He doesn't hate me; he doesn't loathe me. But he looked at me as if he couldn't recognize me at all. He'd detached himself somewhere no one could reach him. He had this same look the first time we met when he had just lost his mother to the rogue siege.

"Yes," I said, and the crowd exploded in anger.

I didn't listen to any of the words they screamed. I never knew a public execution could be this loud, almost a fiasco.

"Silence!" Declan roared, his alpha aura rolling off him in white smoke.

This execution would be written in history and whispered through time. What was supposed to be a grandiose gathering for our wedding became a memorial for my husband's grandfather.  

Declan's brows knitted together, the first genuine emotion I had seen on him, but he managed to mask it quickly.

I met his eyes, stabbing him with the anger boiling inside me.