Chapter 133

There are two floors that I know Caleb would take someone to interrogate them. The first is the dungeon, where he frightens and tortures. The next is the floor up from the dungeon, where interrogation rooms are set up, cold tile rooms with one-way windows like in police stations.

I can’t waste time guessing incorrectly. Caleb won’t take much backtalk from Leah before he starts adding pain into the mix.

Even so, the dungeon is messier. It is reserved for the lowest of the low, in morality and society.

As Leah hasn’t killed anyone, and as she’s Luna of the Riverwood Pack, I take my guess that Caleb has placed her in an interrogation room and not a dungeon cell.

I rush down the stairs, taking two at a time in some places to reach the correct floor. Once there, I throw open the door. When I see Tristan standing in the hallway, I know I picked the right place.

He spots me instantly, then turns to face me. “You don’t want to go in there.”

“Leah is my sister,” I say. “And Caleb already agreed to let me be there for this. I don’t know why he’s going back on it now.”

“Maybe he’s trying to protect you,” Tristan says.

“Bullshit,” I snap. “This happened to me. I don’t need protected from it. What I need is the truth.”

Tristan’s bored stare pushes down on me, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, after studying me for a minute, he stands to the side.

Frustrated, I push past him and throw open the door he had been guarding.

Inside, Leah is sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and her chin lowered. She’s slouching, as if she’s trying to make herself appear small.

Caleb towers over her, glaring down from where he stands directly in front of her. The torture, it seems, hasn’t started yet, but if the fire of rage in Caleb’s eyes is anything to go off of, the knives or claws are going to break out very soon.

As I enter the room, Caleb and Leah both look at me, Caleb with annoyance, Leah with relief. She thinks I’m going to save her from him. She has no idea that she is right where I want her to be.

My loyalty to Leah will only keep Caleb from killing or permanently maiming her. I have no problem with him wanting to instill the fear of the gods into her some, especially if it leads to the truth.

I have lived in disgrace for far too long, without even understanding the circumstances of the evening. After everything I’ve been through, and everything I’ve remembered, I’m determined to find out what happened and why.

Leah might be the only one with those answers.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Caleb says, his voice a low grumble.

“You promised,” I remind him.

He chuffs in response, but turns his attention back to Leah.

“Harper, you have to help me. It pains me to say this, truly! But I think our King has lost his mind…”

A low growls rumbles from the back of Caleb’s throat.

Leah immediately cowers on the chair. “Please, Harper. Talk some sense into him. He thinks I did something to you at the club that night…”

Looking down at her, I lift my chin ever so slightly. “And… Did you?”

The color drains from Leah’s face right along with her unearned righteous indignation. She has no moral leg to stand on and everyone knows it.

“How could you accuse me of something like that?” Leah says. “Your own sister…”

“It is precisely because you are my sister than I can accuse you,” I tell her. For too long, I let her push me around, but no longer. If she did something to me that night, I will find out about it and she will face the appropriate punishment. That’s all there is to it. “I’m remembering things, Leah.”

“The quicker you reveal what you know, the less pain you will be forced to endure,” Caleb growls.

“You wouldn’t let him hurt me, Harper?” Fear undercuts her voice and makes her eyes wide. She’s still looking at me for a rescue. How can I possibly make it clearer that she is as much an enemy to me as she is to Caleb?

“Why shouldn’t I? You drugged me that night, triggering my heat, and then left me there to be assaulted by whatever brute came along. I was so damn lucky that Caleb was the one who found me. If it had been someone else…”

I shuddered, just thinking about it.

“I know it was you, Leah. I’ve been having visions… memories resurface, of you putting something in my drink.”

Leah looks from me to Caleb, down to where Caleb’s hands are turning claw-like. His eyes are flashing red as well. It won’t be long before he shifts, enraged.

Leah closes her eyes. She must attempt to breathe deeply, but her breaths are stuttered with nervousness and fear.

“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt…” she says softly, reluctantly, as if the words are being physically pulled from her throat. “None of this would have happened if you would have just stepped aside and let me have Samuel.”

There it is, the admittance of truth and the motive behind it. She wanted Samuel for herself and she was going to stop at nothing to have him, even if that meant drugging me and hoping some alpha would use me to my disgrace.

“Did you know that drugging me, causing my heat, would trigger a rut in an alpha?” I asked.

“Does it matter if she knew?” Caleb demands. “She admitted she has done this terrible act. Now should surely be the time to kill her.”

“Kill me?!” Leah yelped.

“She is my sister,” I told Caleb. “I want to know the full extent of her crime. I would know whether she was ignorant or truly evil enough to facilitate what could have been true harm to me.”

Caleb turns his full attention back to Leah. “Answer her. Did you know?”

“I d-didn’t. No! Of course I didn’t. Harper, you can’t think that.”

She’s arguing too much, a telltale sign that she isn’t being truthful.

Old pain I had thought long ago buried rises up from within me like a zombie out of his grave. I had already written off Leah as someone who hated me. But I never would have fathomed how much until right at this moment.

She could have drugged me in ignorance. Could have thought I might have stumbled home at 3 in the morning smelling of booze. Maybe she didn’t know that she was leaving me so vulnerable. Any lesser Alpha might have bit me in my delirious state. I could be some stranger’s mistress right at this moment.

But it’s more likely that she knew what she’d be doing to me. Maybe she thought I’d die in the process. Some Alphas in rut are driven to madness. They might have ripped out my throat.

All so that she could have for herself the life I’d been living.

“Would you have cared if I died?” I ask her. I already know the answer. As she looks back at me, her eyes go frosty and cold.

She doesn’t say the words aloud, but I can feel them anyway.

I know, not only would she have not minded if I died, she would have preferred it.