Chapter 4 A Husband's Impossible Choice

Corwin's POV

My brother's dead body lay across the altar, and I couldn't bring myself to look at his face. Marcus lay sleeping now, recovering from another night of too much wine. His color was off, his lips blue, and the scent of death hovered around him like a shroud.

"Alpha." Kane's voice sliced through my sorrow. "The pack awaits."

I glanced away from Marcus's lifeless form to behold the pack standing in our great hall. All the pack that could stand was there, their faces contorted in rage and hunger for revenge. They craved blood for blood. They craved vengeance on Selene.

My wife. My mate. The woman I had loved for three years with every part of my body.

The woman who'd murdered my brother.

"Tell me again," I said to Kane, my voice rough from hours of shocked grieving. "Tell me what you learned."

Kane's face was sympathetic, gentle. He'd been my friend since childhood, my closest friend. If there was anyone who could guide me through this nightmare, it was he.

"The poison was from her own supplies. Nightshade, pure enough to kill an adult wolf in minutes." He held up the empty vial once more, allowing me to inspect it. "Her fingerprints are on the wine cup of Marcus. Her scent is everywhere in the serving area, and she made a point to tell the servants not to assist with the wine tonight."

"But why?" The words tore from my throat like a yell. "Why would she do that?"

"Power. Succession." Kane's voice was gentle but firm. "With Marcus deceased, any offspring you produce with Selene would be the next in line. No competition."

I wanted to deny it, to remind myself that Kane Selene would never even think of such a thing. But doubt gnawed at me like cancer. She'd been remote, withdrawn in recent days. Frightened of something she wouldn't talk about with me.

"The pack demands justice," Kane continued. "Pack law is precise in terms of the penalty for the killing of an heir."

Death. Slow, public death to serve as an example. The old laws were brutal but clear.

"Raise her up," I finally said to him. "I have to hear her say it myself."

Kane nodded and motioned to the warriors. They descended to the dungeons below, and I braced myself to see my wife. The woman I had shared a bed with for three years. The woman whose laughter could always set everything right.

The woman who had killed my baby brother.

As they pulled Selene in front of them, she was smaller somehow. Her festival dress stained and shredded, red-brown hair knotted around her throat. But her green eyes smouldered with the same fire that I had fallen in love with, and my resolve faltered for a moment.

"Corwin," she panted as they shoved her to her knees in front of the altar. "Tell me you do not believe this."

I glared at her, this woman I'd thought I knew so well. "The evidence-"

"Overlook the evidence!" She shook her head, her voice shattering with desperation. "You know me. You know my heart. I loved Marcus like a brother."

"Did you?" The words were brusquer than I'd intended. "Because it seems to me of late that you've loved nothing but your own ambition."

She flinched as though I'd struck her. "That's not true."

"Is it not? The way in which you've been stirring up the pack changes. Questioning the council's rulings. Thinking you're smarter than the rest of us."

"I was attempting to make our pack stronger."

"Or position yourself for increased power." I approached her slowly, as I would hunt prey. "Tell me, Selene, when did you start plotting this?"

"I plotted nothing! I'm innocent!"

"Then tell me about the poison. Tell me why your scent is on Marcus's cup. Tell me why you sent the servants from the wine table."

"I don't know! Someone is lying. Someone staged evidence."

Who? I demanded. Who would do this?

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked at Kane, then back at me. "I. I don't know yet. But someone did this to me."

"Listen to yourself," Kane murmured. "A grand conspiracy to incriminate this on the Luna? Sounds like a desperate man trying to make a plea, Selene. Sounds like the howl of a man locked in his own cage."

The pack growled in assent. They'd liked Selene before, but murder didn't sit well with them. Now they looked at her as if she were a cancer that had to be excised.

"And motive?" Elder Morrison stepped closer, his face serious. "Why would our Luna kill the prince?"

"I wouldn't," Selene said stubbornly. "There's nothing. No reason."

"No reason?" Morrison unrolled a scroll. "These are the laws of succession, written in our pack's founding charter. When an Alpha dies without heirs, the throne defaults to his next nearest male relative. But if he's dead too."

"It goes to the Alpha's successors," Kane determined. "Even before they are born."

The epiphany hits me like a blow to the gut. Something had happened to me, and Marcus was deceased already; Selene's successors would rule. No one to stand against them.

"I did not want that," Selene breathed, but her words weren't sincere now.

"Weren't you?" I sat down beside him on the floor so that our eyes were on the same level. "When we have talked about having kids, you've always wanted to know what kind of leaders they would be. What kind of legacy we'd be leaving them."

"That's normal! Any mother or father would want to consider their kids' future."

"Not every mother or father kills their way there."

She gazed at me with those green eyes that I once loved, and something in her cracked. The tension on her shoulders just dissipated, and she was ten years older in an instant.

"You really believe I did it," she panted. "The man who promised to love me forever believes that I am a murderer."

"I don't know what to believe anymore." And that was reality. My heart still belonged to her, but my mind could not turn a blind eye to reality. "Help me understand, Selene. Make me believe you're innocent."

For a moment, hope lit in her eyes. Then faded as she understood she had nothing to give. No evidence. No explanation. Nothing save her word against mountains of proof.

"I can't," she whispered. "I don't know how to convince anyone I didn't do it."

The pack shifted uneasily behind us. They were getting impatient, and I could sense the anger rising like steam in a kettle. If I didn't intervene soon, they would have to take the law into their own hands.

"The law is simple," Elder Morrison said. "Killing an heir calls for death. But as Alpha, you may stipulate the means."

The antiquated means of execution would be arduous and public. A lesson to any other who would so much as consider betraying the pack. And then there was the alternative – instantaneous death, mercy out of respect for what we'd once had between us.

I stared at my wife, this stranger who bore Selene's face, and my heart broke all over again.

"I need time to think."

"Corwin," Kane stepped closer, his tone a low growl. "The pack won't give much more time. They've already been talking about taking matters into their own hands."

He was right. I saw it in their eyes – the anger just simmering beneath the surface, the need for immediate vengeance. If I was weak here, if I were seen as a favourite because of my past with Selene, I'd never gain their respect again.

An Alpha who couldn't control his own mate was an Alpha who couldn't protect his pack.

"An hour," I said to the pack. "I'll give my ruling in an hour."

The pack snarled but agreed to this. They began to disperse, but a few of them hung around nearby, not wanting to be out of eyesight of their Luna. Kane posted guards around Selene and motioned for me to follow him to a secret room.

"This is hard," he said to them in private. "But you know what you have to do."

"Do I?" I sat down in a chair, feeling old all of a sudden. "Three years, Kane. For three years, I've loved this woman. Three years, I've trusted her with everything."

"And she destroyed that trust in the worst possible manner."

"Mmmhmm."

I massaged my face with my hands. "But what if she is telling the truth? What if someone set her up?"

"Who? And why?"

Kane leaned across from me, his blue eyes serious. "Use your head, Corwin. Who else had access to her caches of poison? Who else knew Marcus's schedule well enough to target him specifically?"

"Yes, she did behave differently recently," I reluctantly admitted. "More secretive. More. starved of something I couldn't quite place my finger on."

"Power corrupts, even good people. And Selene was always ambitious, even when you first knew her."

That was true. Selene had been so determined to rise above her commoner roots, to show she was worthy to be Luna. Maybe that ambition had perverted.

"The pack needs to know strength from you now," Kane continued. "They have to know that justice is for all, even your wife. Especially your wife."

"And what if I'm mistaken? What if she's actually innocent?"

There was a silence from Kane for a while. "Then we'll accept that responsibility together. But as it is, with what we have, can you really say that you believe she's innocent?"

### I wanted to say yes. All of me who loved Selene wanted to declare her innocent and curse the consequences. But I was Alpha first, then husband. My duty was to the pack, not my heart.

"No," I whispered. "I cannot."

Kane nodded gravely. "Then you know what has to be done."

We were interrupted by a knock at the door. One of the guards entered, his expression serious.

"Alpha, we have a problem. The pack is restless. There's a rumor going around that you're going to let the Luna out. They're threatening to storm the dungeons."

My blood ran cold. "How long do we have?"

"Corwin, minutes, possibly less. Elder Morrison's trying to calm them down, but."

Kane stood up. "We have to do something, Corwin. Before it turns into a riot."

I could hear them now beyond the window – angry voices, the clashing metal of weapons being prepared. My pack, my people, on the verge of chaos because they thought that I would sacrifice justice for love.

"Bring her up," I said, my voice dry in my throat. "Bring her up now."

As the guard sprinted away to retrieve Selene, Kane put a hand on my shoulder. "You're doing the right thing. History will justify you as the Alpha who chose duty over personal feelings."

"Will it?" I stared at my oldest friend, this man who'd seen me through every disaster. "Because right now I feel like I'm going to murder the woman I love."

"Bad choices sometimes accompany leadership," Kane stated softly. "That's what makes you a harder man than other men."

The door creaked open, and they pushed Selene inside. She looked at my face and saw her death in it. Her shoulders squared, and for a moment, she was the proud Luna I'd married.

"So you've come to a decision," she said softly.

"The evidence-"

"The evidence lies." Her voice was now stern, resigned but not defeated. "But I see you've made up your mind to believe them anyway."

"Selene."

"No." She raised her chained hands to halt me. "Don't make this worse than it has to be. Don't even attempt to pretend that this hurts you when you've already made up your mind."

But it wasn't easy. It was squeezing me dry from the inside out. I ached to reach out and take her and run, to somewhere that we could start anew. But the weight of leadership, of responsibility to my pack, hung around my shoulders like shackles.

"I sentence you to death," I whispered. "For the murder of Prince Marcus."

She nodded as if she'd expected no other result. "When?"

"Dawn. It will be. swift."

"Thank you for that much." She looked at me once more, and I realized something I hadn't expected in her green eyes. Not hate or betrayal, but pity. "I hope one day you find the truth, Corwin. I hope you'll be able to live with what you've done when you realize how wrong you are."

As they pulled her back, Kane hit me on the back. "It's done. The pack will honor you for this."

I didn't feel, however, like a honoured pack leader. I felt like a man who'd signed his own death warrant and his wife's.

Because somewhere in my heart, in an area I didn't want to explore, I was starting to believe that Selene was telling the truth.

And if she was, I'd just murdered an innocent woman for my brother's death.

The real killer still roamed free, and I'd never even know who they were.