Page 164 of Empowering the Wolf's Heart

“What are you doing?” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth as I tried to maintain a sickly smile.

“Bring to light the shameful things. I will not have any further secrets someone can use against us, Carissimus,” he said, gently kissing my forehead. He turned back to my people. “I am the one you know as Hood. I was trained from an early age to assassinate Reds. I killed a man in cold blood. You knew him as Sir Darius, Alia’s grandfather.”

Gasps came from my Reds. They hadn’t known Hood was the one who killed my grandfather. Very few knew that sensitive information, and I’d planned to take it to my grave.

Whelp, that jackalfish is out of the bay,Ran whispered from where she watched in the woods, her keen eyes picking out the more murderous in the crowd.

Shen got to his knees before my people. “I have no right to ask, but I beg for forgiveness from those I harmed the most. Perhaps the damage the former matriarch inflicted could have been mitigated had this man been here.”

I stepped forward to get between my agitated people and Shen, but he held up a hand, glancing up at me with eyes that implored me to let him do this. I didn’t know if I could, but I stepped back. If anyone tried to harm him?—

“And should you deem me guilty, I will take whatever punishment you wish to meet. Including death.”

He’s a bit dramatic, isn’t he?Ran said.

You don’t have to sound so gleeful about my beloved on his knees about to be swarmed by a bunch of werewolf assassins with a grudge,I replied.

“Son, I am the one who killed your father,” a voice said. My dad stepped forward, his eyes glistening.

“Dad?” I gasped.

But Dad didn’t hear me. He merely stopped before Shen and dropped to his knees, leveling himself with my beloved. “I am an old man with many crimes. Many more than your young years could hold. If you ask forgiveness, then I should also beg it of you,” Dad said. He bowed his head and gave Shen his neck in the wolven form of submission.

“I have ordered the death of a hundred werewolves, fifty mages, and two hundred unicorns,” Elder Pulma said, his lips trembling as a tear dropped from his eye. He quickly wiped it away.

“I have killed thirty werewolves and ten mages,” said Elder Vera. “I beg your forgiveness.”

“I’ve killed two werewolves and a mage, I beg forgiveness,” Jacob said, coming beside Dad and the elders. More came forward, admitting their crimes, and bowing before Shen.

Eventually, I and those who weren’t Reds were the only ones standing.

I swallowed, but then I knelt before Shen. “I have killed thirty werewolves and sixty mages and thirty unicorns, I beg your forgiveness.”

Shen

That did not gohow I expected.

Alia knelt before me, submitting to my leadership. But she was my Luna. We were equals.

“Do not bow before me,” I said, my voice choked. “I am no greater than the next, and my forgiveness means little. The one who we truly hurt is the Great King himself. And he is the only one who can bring us peace.”

Latin emerged from every person who knelt on the ground.

“Vita Source dimitte nobis.”

I glanced out at the people. At the Reds whom I had harmed. Whose father, brother, mother, son, or daughter had I killed?

The only way through this would be together. It would be hard, but it was possible. These people, despite what they had been through, were capable of great kindness even to a killer such as me.

They may have lost their way, but just like me, they admitted their wrongs and faced the consequences, all of them willing to change.

As Alia grabbed my hand and we both stood, it was to a new people. A people absolved of their guilt and ready to face a new future where we all could become better andlive.

Alia

I couldn’t resistthe grin on my face. Nor my pride. My lovely, kind people.

I once thought they were too far for change to reach them. I once thought myself too far for change. But the proof was before me. We would be a people who protected the innocent and the weak and the less fortunate, no matter if they were human, werewolf, elf, nymph, unicorn, mage, or any other creature upon this planet.

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