Page 81 of Claimed By My Fiancé's Brother

Micah rose to her feet with the help of her pack warriors, her hand on her bleeding shoulder as she turned down their offers to escort her to the infirmary.

“No,” Micah growled, her voice holding both panic and fury. “Bring the physicians to me. I will see this traitor punished for attempting to kill my child and me to jeopardize the future of the Nightshade Pack.”

This was her plan all along, and I’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

I was literally caught red-handed. Nothing I said could exonerate me now.

“Micah, don’t do this,” I said, struggling against the guards.

Dark amusement sparked to life in her brown gaze, but her voice was shaky with righteous indignation.

“You should’ve thought twice before attacking me,” she said.

The attempted murder of the luna of a pack was bad enough. The attempted murder of apregnantluna by someone whose mate was in line to inherit was much,muchworse.

She could order me executed that very moment.

“You can’t kill me without a fair trial,” I announced loudly, hoping to buy some time.

Micah’s features hardened.

“Take her to the square,” she instructed the pack warriors sharply, her hand still applying pressure to her wound.

I might have demanded a fair trial, but I knew that was the last thing I would get from the moment it began.

“She tried to kill our luna. I saw it,” said Sona, who was the first to testify.

The rest of the warriors who’d arrested me corroborated her claims, and naturally, since Micah was still bleeding and was the leader of the trial’s council, I wasn’t even allowed to speak.

The two pack warriors who’d arrested me stood at my side, holding me captive even though my wrists were chained with silver.

From my stand below the elevated podium, I could see Seraphina pushing her way to me. West was at her side, but several pack warriors surrounded them, preventing them from reaching me.

There was no escaping this.

Micah spoke last, the clamoring crowd falling silent at the sound of her voice.

“I summoned Eleanor to pass on a message from the alpha, but she attacked me and accused me ofstealingher position as luna of this pack. I thought she was a friend, but she attacked me.”

The crazy part was that she sounded like she was telling the truth. Her voice trembled at exactly the right moments, as if she’d actually been shocked by this violent act against her.

“According to the laws of this pack, the punishment is death,” Micah announced, and murmurs broke out across the crowd. Though I was too far away to hear most of them, I could pick out one word—a name.

Alexander.

With the obvious lack of affection between Alexander and me, it was rather obvious to the entire pack that our relationship wasn’t real, which was why the pack hadn’t truly accepted me.

At least, that was my theory.

But it didn’t change the fact that I was Alexander’s mate. What would he do if he returned to find that his mate had been executed?

Micah remained unfazed, looking over the crowd with an almost benevolent look in her eyes as she continued.

“However, I can’t do that to a wolf who is not just my sister-in-law, but was my good friend.” She turned to face me. “I have decided to grant her mercy. If she takes a hundred strikes of a silver-studded whip, I will accept her apologies for her transgressions and let her live.”

A smatter of murmurs broke out across the crowd and I barely held back a shiver of fear at Micah’s words.

A silver-studded whip was exactly what it sounded like—barbed with tiny pieces of silver that often ended up embedded in the skin being whipped, it was an infamous torture device that ended up killing people instead of getting intel out of them.

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