A Tale of Three Lunas-Completed

Chapter 9

Zinnia's POV

Shawn immediately flies into a rage when he sees me in his room.

"What the hell are you doing in here?"

I can see that Shawn is fighting his wolf for control, so I shrink away from the scene, but then I gasp at the sight as I sense my salvation. "Is she your mate?"

"She is." he says as he lays her down on his bed, still trying to gain full control. The girl looks badly beaten, one eye is swollen shut and she has a busted lip and bruises all over her body.

"Thank the Moon Goddess." I feel relief all over my body. If Shawn has his mate, he doesn't need me. The mate bond will put him in the right state of mind. I'm off the hook! "Congratulations."

Shawn looks shocked by this, but the sentiment seems to calm his wolf down. He strokes the girl's hair as she remains unconscious. "I'll kill whoever did this to her." he seethes.

"You should."

As I continue to look at the poor girl, I notice that she is grasping something in her hand, a piece of jewelry, nearly identical to a necklace my mother used to wear. There is a fragment of a black, marbled sphere in the center, surrounded by small, full black stones. The only reason I know it isn't my mother's is because mom's was connected by dark blue twine and this girls was made with yellow, nearly goldish-brown colored twine.

It immediately gave me another reason to like this girl. She was the cause for my freedom and she brought me back a memory of my mother that I had up until now forgotten.

"Can I go get her some water?" I ask him. He stares at me then nods. I rush out of the open door and to the kitchen where I grab a glass of warm water, a glass of cold water, and some bananas. I place the items on the table next to his bed and Shawn thanks me. I grab a washcloth that I dip in warm water and hand it to him.

"To clean her face."

"Thank you so much, Zinnia. I won't forget this."

"Of course. I'm glad you found her. Do you want me to do anything else?"

"No, that's okay."

"Can I go?"

"Yea, why were you here anyway?" he asks.

"Umm, you probably need to have a talk with your dad."

I try to leave the packhouse and although I have the green light to leave from Shawn, because Alpha El has left the packhouse for an unknown period of time, I am not allowed to leave. Rather, I am dragged to the attic of the packhouse, a tiny, janitors closet with a mattress on the floor. The lock turns and it never unlocks.

'KJ?'

Knowing that I won't be able to get in contact with anyone with this bracelet made especially to weaken werewolves doesn't stop me from trying.

Yes, I tried for four days to find out why I had been forgotten in the attic. I don't sleep and I am not fed at all.

After a while, I guess they remember me. A guard comes and opens my door. I am about to ask if I can go home when I see the silver handcuffs in his gloved hand.

"Where are you taking me?" I say, more like whisper, since its been a while since I've spoken.

"Your trial."

"My what?"

My legs refuse to move and the guard has to practically drag me from where I have been staying to get me to move.

Once again, I am back in the Alpha's section of the packhouse where I had been chastised by the Alpha just days earlier, only this time we go to the courtroom.

The courtroom is packed with people. The guard continues to pull me because practically everyone there is yelling obscenities and throwing objects at me.

What could I have done to make all of these people so upset?

"She tried to kill the Luna!"

"She is a fraud and a liar!"

I soon get my answer once my head starts spinning and my brain is able to zero in on what is being said about me.

None of it makes any sense.

After a while, Alpha El presides as judge with a smirk that no one else in the place seems to notice. The guard sits me in a chair up front before leaving my side. The Alpha raises his hand, making all in attendance silent.

"You have been accused of trying to seduce my son to gain a high position in the pack and conspiring to harm this pack's future Luna. What do you have to say for yourself?"

What?

"I didn't try to seduce Shawn. We both thought we were mates. It was just a misunderstanding. I'm okay with not being his mate and I apologize if anyone feels I was given preferential treatment because we thought I was. I was there when Shawn brought his mate into the packhouse and I helped to clean her up once she got here. You can ask him, he even thanked me. I told him I was happy for him. I have been locked away for the last few days. I did not try to harm the future Luna." I plead to the now silent room.

"We will not be asking my son anything. He is currently in a hospital in the human world with the mate that you tried to kill." he glares at me. "She went for a walk and got caught in one of your little traps."

Shit. Those traps are specifically designed not to be detectable be humans. But that is what he requested.

"My traps?"

"Yes, everyone knows that you designed those traps and that you are the one who checks them."

I swallow the lump in my throat. He's right. Everyone associates the traps with me.

"So it was an accident?"

"If we didn't have a witness stating something to the contrary, perhaps that could have been believed."

Suddenly, Nala appears and makes her way toward the front of the room, crying with tissue balled up by her face. Before she sits on the witness stand, she locks eyes with me and raises a quick eyebrow as she gives a slight smirk. I follow her eyes to her sister who is already staring at me smiling.

"Now, Nala, are you ready to talk to us about what you witnessed?"

"I am." Nala starts, fake blowing her nose. It didn't matter what she said, I was ready to defend myself no matter what.

"I heard Zinnia talking to someone I couldn't identify a few days ago while she was setting her traps. It was after she had rejected Shawn. She had said that she didn't want to be with him, but once she found out about his mate, she lost it. When the person told her they had had dreams about her and Shawn being together, she said that she was going to kill Shawn's mate."

Unbelievable.

"So, Zinnia. Do you have anything to say here to defend yourself?" the Alpha asks.

The only thing that could be worse than me being in this situation right now would be if something happened to KJ because of me. I know Nala says she doesn't know who I was talking to, but she is just jealous that KJ and I are close. She knows I would never put him in harms way. She screwed me.

"I deny these allegations." is all I can say.

"Well," he says, "then I guess if you want to clear things up, you would have to give us the name of the person you were talking to that day."