Chapter 5 Death sentence

"No," I whispered as I looked down at my blood-covered hands. This couldn't be happening again. "This is a mistake."

"Don't make another move!" The woman screamed, putting her arms out in warning and defence. "Don't come any closer. Everyone will come over and see what you did."

As if to confirm her words, quick footsteps headed our way. Someone must have heard her shouts and was coming to check it out.

"Oh my goodness!" The man who found us exclaimed with a wild look on his face.

"She did this!" The woman confirmed with her finger pointed at me. I shook my head, but words betrayed me. Tears were the only things that I could show them as my proof of innocence.

"We need to take her to the alpha before she tries to run away," the man suggested, launching for me.

I didn't make an attempt to run as he held my left hand and the woman held my right. I was too weak to. Too tired. I stared down at the body of the person I had never met in my life, right up to this moment. None of it made any sense.

"Goddess." "What did she do? Why's she covered in blood?" "Isn't she the same person Alpha Ryle brought from nowhere?"

The pack members asked seemingly endless questions as I was dragged to Ryle's house, covered in the blood of an innocent. Would he believe I was innocent too?

"Stop right there. Don't move any further," Alpha Ryle commanded as he walked out of his house to see us.

The pack members who had followed us all the way stopped in their tracks as the man and the woman tossed me forward like a sack of nothing.

I tripped and fell to the ground, earning scratches on my arms as I tried to prevent the fall from being too painful.

"What's going on here? And whose blood is this?" Alpha Ryle sounded cold. He was an alpha now, and nothing more. He would treat this the way he was expected to, irrespective of what I was to him.

"We found her laying in the pool of Hilda's blood up on the hill. She had killed Hilda and was laying with her body, like some sort of sick creature," the woman explained without trying to hide the disgust she felt.

Everyone who heard her gasped and murmured until Alpha Ryle put his hand up in a gesture to call for silence.

"You're saying you saw her right after killing Hilda, laying there?" He asked for confirmation.

"She didn't have any form of remorse, Alpha," the woman reported. She was saying things she didn't see.

I looked up when everywhere was too silent to find everyone's eyes on me. The man and the woman who had dragged me here looked hateful. There was no emotion on Alpha Ryle's face.

"You have one chance to tell us everything that happened, and you must not tell a lie. This is it. Tell us what happened in your own words."

I let out a shaky breath as tears blurred my vision of him. I got off the ground, keeping my head down as I wasn't even sure what I was ashamed of.

"I didn't do it. I didn't kill anyone. I have no idea who the dead person is. I woke up to screams and realized that I was laying in someone's blood. I don't remember how I got there."

The air was tense. If I was in his shoes, I wouldn't be able to make sense of it either. But that was the truth. That was my truth.

"Unfortunately, that's not enough for you to prove your innocence to us. You can't just forget how you got there, slept, and woke up in the blood of someone you appear to have killed," Alpha Ryle countered.

"Then there's only one thing that explains it," I said, not wanting to let this go. This couldn't be following me around. Not after what happened to my parents.

I was five when this first happened, unable to defend myself. Surely, I couldn't be quiet now.

"I was framed," I said.

This caused the man to laugh in my face. "You think someone in this pack would frame you for murder, of all things? This hasn't happened in the history of this pack. Not until you came here, and it hasn't even been two days!"

"That's enough," Alpha Ryle told him. "I'll have to investigate what happened myself. I'll check out the body and if there are any other witnesses. For now, because you're the only suspect, you will be locked up in the dungeon."

Mutters only grew when two guards grabbed me and took me down to the stale-smelling dungeon, where I was placed in a cell that seemed like the walls were closing in on me.

"I can't believe it hasn't been a full day, and she's gone on some kind of hunt for pack members. What did she think this place was anyway?" The guards discussed as they walked away.

"I didn't do it," I said. It was stupid to finally gain enough voice and courage when I was already locked down there.

"I didn't do this! I'm being framed! Something is very wrong!" I called out, walking toward the bars that closed the cell.

"Is someone there?!" I shouted, grabbing on to the cell bars and yelping as my hands sizzled and burned almost immediately.

I pulled my hands away and looked down at the blisters and burns that had formed rather quickly. The bars were made of silver. Of course.

I didn't know how long I sat on the cold floor, crying and pleading innocent. I knew it was long enough for Alpha Ryle to wrap everything up and come down to the dungeon.

"Are you ready to tell me the truth, now that it's just me and you?" His first words wounded me. He didn't believe me.

"The last time this happened, I was five years old. My parents were both dead, and I was sleeping in the middle of their dead bodies. I didn't do anything then. I didn't do anything now. You have to believe me," I explained, my voice hoarse and shaky.

"The evidence against you is too tight to slip you through, even if you didn't do it," he said. "I am the alpha of my pack. It's only right that I do something when the safety of my pack is threatened."

He was right, but that didn't mean I had to be sacrificed for his duty over something I didn't do.

"The last thing I am to your pack is a threat. You really have to believe me. There has to be something that can prove my innocence. I don't remember how that happened! I don't even recall how I fell asleep over there and..."

I broke down in tears again as I saw the look on his face. It was one I had seen one too many times. There was no hope for me.

"We will not let this go, Arya. You have found yourself in the middle of something you can't get away from," he said.

"Please," I begged futilely. "There has to be something..."

"Unfortunately, there isn't. There are two witnesses against you, and no one is on your side. The investigation was concluded and found to tie to you. And of course, there's the fact that this has happened before."

I looked at him in shock. He couldn't possibly be talking about my parents. Did he really believe I did that to them?

"Alpha Ryle-"

"When the sun rises tomorrow, I will call for a gathering of every pack member. The final verdict will be announced. Prepare however you can, Arya."

"For...what?" I wanted to bend over and vomit from the look of absolute helplessness he had on his face.

"You will be sentenced to death."