Some of the pack members were already scrambling away from the entrance, pushing over benches in their hurry. Others stayed rooted to their benches, eyes wide as dinner plates, whispering furiously behind their hands. "Is that...?" "No, she’s dead, isn’t she?"

The braver ones stayed where they were, ready to fight. But no one made to leave the hall, even those that hid themselves were all peeking out from behind their hiding places, necks craning, because apparently a ghost showing up to her own murderer’s trial was the best entertainment Dravengard had seen in years.

Every eyes in the hall watched the figure walking slowly down the centre aisle.

Lara Vaughn.

Alive. Walking. Looking back at the staring faces with the calm of a woman who had nothing left to be afraid of.

Connor and three gammas were already moving to intercept her when Kira strolled in right behind her.

"Hold your peace!" Kira said.

Connor and the three gammas halted and fell back, watching.

She came in with her guards trailing behind her, moving carefully on her cast but moving with purpose, and there was a small, satisfied smile on her face as her eyes found Ruby across the hall.

It was the kind of look that said, Surprise, darling. I’ve been waiting for this.

Derek shot up from his throne so fast the heavy wooden seat rocked behind him. His gaze remained fixed on Kira.

The entire hall went dead quiet for half a second, then erupted into astonished murmurs, as Lara and Kira walked together to the front of the room and stopped a few feet from the trial box where Ruby stood between her two gammas.

Kira glanced toward Nana. The old woman gave her a small, knowing smile and a quiet nod that clearly said, Go on, child. Finish this.

Ruby stared at Lara like she was looking at something that should not exist. She gripped the edge of the box, knuckles white.

"Lara is supposed to be dead," she blurted, looking around the room as if she expected anyone to confirm that this entire thing is not a sick nightmare.

Lara chuckled softly. "Yes. I am. Officially." She tilted her head. "But my ghost would never rest in peace if it let you walk away from yet another crime."

The presiding elder wolf cleared his throat loudly, trying to pull the room back into some kind of order. "Someone will explain this to me immediately. Is this woman truly alive? And does she carry evidence against the accused?"

Before Lara could answer, Ruby burst out laughing.

It was loud and high and entirely unhinged, and it bounced off the walls of the silent hall while pack members exchanged uneasy glances and shifted in their seats, some murmuring, "Has she finally lost it?"

Ruby laughed until she had to wipe her eyes, and when she finally settled, she spread her cuffed hands as wide as the chain allowed.

"Can none of you see what this is?" she asked the room. "This is a joke. A performance. Lara Vaughn died weeks ago. This is some clone, some trick, some lookalike they’ve dressed up to—"

"No, it’s not!"

Another voice rang out from the entrance, bright and smug.

Every head in the hall snapped toward it, and the room rippled again, not with the panic of before but with something closer to disbelief, as Sasha walked through the doors.

Alive. Upright. Healthy. A smug little smile was sitting on her face.

The whispers started immediately and spread fast. Wasn’t Sasha found dead this morning? Didn’t they wheel her body out of the medical centre?

Then more gammas came through the doors behind her, and between them they were dragging the young gamma. The one from Ruby’s confinement room. The one she had used and then instructed to silence Sasha.

Ruby’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. Her whole life flashed before her in that single moment, every careful plan, every whispered lie, every backstab unravelling like cheap thread. She whipped her head toward Kira, hate burning in her gaze.

"How," she hissed. "How the fuck did a wolfless runt like you pull this off?"

Kira crossed her arms over her chest and let the smirk settle fully onto her face.

"You really did think you were the cleverest person in every room, didn’t you?" she said.

"That was always your problem, Ruby." She tilted her head, smile widening. "It’s your audacity that amuses me most. Sitting in confinement, stripped of your titles, and still absolutely certain you could pull the strings from inside a locked room."

Ruby spun toward the elder wolf, voice rising. "This doesn’t mean anything! They have no evidence against me! None!"

Kira laughed softly. "You’re right that I’m a wolfless runt," Kira said. "I’ve never been able to best you in a spar. I can’t shift, I can’t fight you, I couldn’t win against you in a corridor."

She paused. "But you made one mistake, Ruby. You only ever measured me by what my body couldn’t do. You never once thought to measure my mind."

"That’s my girl!" Jessica yelled from the benches.

Every head in the hall whipped toward her. Jessica’s mouth snapped shut and she sank several inches lower in her seat.

Beside her Kai started laughing and bumped her shoulder with his. Kira caught Jessica’s eye, grinned at her best friend, and blew her a kiss.

Jessica mimed catching it and pressed it to her chest with great solemnity, which earned her another round of stares she pointedly ignored.

Kira turned back to Ruby.

"You fooled this entire pack for years," she said, and her voice was clear enough to carry to every corner of the hall.

"You wore a perfect face and you used something very ugly to do it. You used their fear of my kind. You used their suspicion of me as a shield for everything you did, because you knew that as long as people were busy hating the werewolf queen, nobody would look too closely at the loyal, beloved Ruby."

She shook her head slowly. "But a person’s true colours never stay hidden forever. They always surface. Yours just did."

Ruby’s head turned sharply toward Sasha.

"You." Her voice cracked with fury. "You traitor. You’re standing with the traitor’s daughter now? After everything I did for you? Fine." Her eyes were wild. "Fine. I’ll expose you. All of you."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"Sasha’s son is no true Lycan!" Ruby shouted, turning to face the hall. "That boy, Jerry, is a half-breed. Half lycan and half werewolf, because Sasha whored herself out to a werewolf while she was mated to a gamma of this pack!"

The whispers swelled into something louder. Pack members leaned into one another, hands over mouths, eyes darting between Sasha and the elder wolves.

Ruby felt the shift in the room and seized it.

"And there is more," she pressed on, her voice gaining strength. "Sasha killed her own husband. She killed Gamma Nolan, a loyal Lycan of Dravengard, because of her werewolf lover. And honestly, can any of us be surprised? Birds of a feather flock together."

She turned to the row of elder wolves. "I ask you. I ask this entire pack. Can you trust the word of a woman who has deceived every one of you for years? Can her testimony mean anything at all?"

Sasha looked at Ruby and slowly shook her head, almost pitying.

"That is what you will always be, Ruby," she said quietly. "A backstabber. A woman who throws everyone around her under the wheels to save her own skin."

Uncle Crane rose from his seat, his face grave. "Sasha." His voice was heavy. "Is it true? Have you deceived this pack all these years? Answer plainly."

Before Sasha could speak, Kira did.

"Well," she said lightly, "this is hardly news."

The hall turned to her.

"It is not deceit if more than one person knows," Kira continued, calm and unbothered. "I know about Sasha’s son. I, your Queen, have known. So if you intend to punish her for it, then you will need to punish me along with her."

Derek’s voice came next, low and absolute, from the front of the hall.

"I know of it as well."

The room stilled.

"And I," Nana said, rising slightly in her seat, her voice ringing clear and final. "I have known too. So let no one in this hall pretend this is some great hidden treason. It is not."

Ruby’s face drained completely.

She looked from Sasha, to Kira, to Derek, to Nana, and the realisation landed on her with full, crushing weight.

She had not exposed a secret. She had not gained the upper hand. Sasha had played her properly. She had shot herself clean through the foot.

Kira watched it land on Ruby’s face, and her smile turned quiet and triumphant.

And her mind drifted back, just for a moment, to how all of it had actually played out.