Chapter Don't listen, Look
Mira's POV
We all are in another one of Liam’s offices; all the head-members, me, the girl, and that asshole ‘Eli’, as they call him. I don’t see Max though, he must still be in the infirmary. There is a huge table in the middle and we’re all sitting around it. This is probably like a conference room or something. Just how rich are these people?
Liam is sitting at the head of the table, Noah is on his right side, followed by Liz, Aiden, Mason and Eli. To his left is Theo, me, and the girl. Is this like a trial or something? Did they all pick sides. I’m annoyed because I can see the smirk on Eli’s face and I know the girl noticed it too. I grab a hold of her hand under the table and give it a quick and tight squeeze. Her hands are sweating. She must be very nervous.
Liam breaks the silence. “There seems to have been an incident today, and you seem to be part of it yet again, Mira.” He says looking at me.
Shit! The first time I actually hear him say my name and he’s disciplining me. And now I’m feeling guilty. Of what, feeling like a disappointment to him? But it’s not like I can say anything against that comment.
“Eli here tells us that you were wandering off alone in the woods, and when you saw him and Max you attacked them. Is this true.” Liam looks at me questioningly, like he’s hoping for me to say ‘no’.
Those two raping assholes do look too stupid to come up with an adequate lie, they probably just do it by omitting some of the truth.
I look around the table and see them all looking at me, Theo refuses to look at me and the girl just lowers her head. I can feel her hand trembling right before she lets go of mine.
“Is that all he told you?” I look at Liam.
“So, you’re admitting it? That you attacked our pack members when you were out alone, knowing that you shouldn’t be?!” Mason bangs his hand on the table as he says this.
“Don’t you dare make insinuations from my words, which you clearly aren’t bothered enough to actually listen to.” I try to be firm with my words, but I will definitely challenge his gaze. I can hear him release a growl, but Liam’s growl has him quiet again.
“Sarah, tell us what happened in the woods. Did she attack them?” Liam commands but his voice seems gentle. Probably due to her fragile state.
She looks at Liam, then at Eli and looks back down to her hands in her lap. She just nods her head in a yes.
What the f….? “What are you doing? Tell them what happened.” I touch her arm which has her looking at me. “Tell them, or I will tell them how that asshole over there tried to rape you.”
“No” She says too quickly. Everyone is looking her way now, I can even feel Theo’s gaze in our direction. “There is nothing to tell.” She squeezes my hand under the table again.
This girl is terrified. But why? She’s sitting in a room full of the very people that can help her. Unless…..
“Rape? That’s a very serious allegation to make. Do you have anything to back it up with?” Noah chimes in, all too seriously this time. This is probably him in his work mode.
I look around at the people sitting here. “It doesn’t help what you say, does it?” I look back at Sarah, before I look at them again.
I stand up pushing my chair backwards. “It’s obvious that they’ve done this before.” I point my hand in Eli’s direction. I close my eyes and release a deep shaky breath at the thought of them just allowing something like this. I shake my head a bit. “I’m not going to sit here and be told that I’m making false accusations on something as serious as rape. For goodness sake, Sarah is sitting here without any underwear on” I gesture to her, but she just looks down.
Mason just can’t keep quiet. “You can’t possibly expect us to just believe your accusations against members of our pack, rogue.” There it is again, that word, their constant reminder that I’m not one of them. They won’t believe anything I say.
I can’t help but chuckle as my mind is trying to make sense of all this. I mean seriously, how dare they ask for proof of rape so casually. “There is no way that none of you couldn’t have known.” The room is completely quiet now, even Noah and Liam are sitting up right. Probably realizing how serious I am about all this. “Eli is one of your best warriors, right? So, you must have known what he does on his time off.” I point to Mason. “And that asshole Max is one of your patrol ‘dogs’.” Liz growls at my choice of words. “That’s why he would know that no one would be in that area of the woods at that time. Telling her that she can scream all she wants to and no-one will hear her or come for her. A patrol maybe, but he’s the one in charge of that sector, isn’t he?” I look at Liz accusingly. “And you,” I point to Theo, pausing to make him look at me. “You were nowhere to be found. This whole house was empty. All I wanted was to go for a walk. You never leave my side though, yet today of all days you did. Why?” He looks at me confused. “You wanted me to leave, didn’t you?”
I look at Noah and Liam starting to get more angry. “Did you two plan this?”
“What did you just say?” Liam is standing up as well followed by Noah.
“You two made it clear that you don’t like me nor want me here.” I turn to Liam and say, “Is this what you meant when you said you would make my life a living hell? God! If I wasn’t this angry I would probably try to kill myself as well”
Liam releases another loud growl vibrating through the whole room, which gets Liz standing up as well. “How dare you accuse our Alpha of something so cruel.”
I look at Liz, trying to stare daggers at her for defending these raping assholes in the first place.
“Are you really bringing Katy’s death into this?” Aiden is standing up too, with a serious face of his own.
“Oh please Aiden. If you did do your job properly, you would have realized that Katy wasn’t even wearing any underwear when you brought her body in.” He looks taken aback by my statement. “Why do you think she would hang herself all the way there, the very spot these assholes took Sarah as well?”
Slowly and one-by-one their heads are turning to look at Eli sitting there with eyes wide.
He stands up too with a bang on the table. “Are we really going to listen to this rogue talk such nonsense? She’s the reason my head has this gash, she’s the reason Max almost died as she tried to rip his throat out. Sarah and I came running to get help from you guys. You know that. She probably just scared Sarah, which is why she doesn’t want to say anything”
The room is quiet and I’m not surprised that they don’t want to listen to me. But Liam? I look at him clenching his fists and jaw as he looks between me and Eli. It really hurts that he thinks I would lie to him, lie about something like this.
I look down at the table knowing that there’s a chance he’ll call me a liar and then most likely throw me in the dungeons so that he can torture me. We all know how he wants to really do that. I look at my hands and realize, I probably have to degrade myself a bit more if I want to help Sarah, if I want them to see the truth, if I want him to trust me.
“If you don’t want to listen, then look.” I grab the bottom of my dress and pull it off over my head. I hear gasps fill the room, and I’m not sure if it’s because of me just standing there in nothing but my black lace underwear, or because of the bruises on me. I’m hoping for the latter. I don’t like attention, in fact, I despise it. But they have to see them with their own eyes, - the hand marks on my wrists, on my waist and my thigh. I pull my hair back so they can see the small nips he left on my neck. “You see, the thing about having a dormant wolf, is that I don’t heal as quickly as the rest of you.” I look at Eli who is staring at my bruises almost shocked. “Does it look like I could have done this to myself?” I look at the rest of them, trying to get their attention to my face and away from my body.
Liam growls so loudly, I swear it couldn’t have come from his human form. “Aiden, take Sarah and Mira to the infirmary and have them checked. Noah, you accompany them. Theo, escort Eli and Max to the cells for questioning,” I can hear a whisper of a ‘what’ coming from Eli. “Mason and Liz, you two stay behind.”
Suddenly you can hear movement all around. Theo is gone from my side and Liam closes the gap left between us. He picks up the dress on the floor and hands it to me, “Get dressed.”
You don’t have to ask me twice. I try to take the dress from his hands, but he grabs a hold of my wrist and looks a bit closely, as I’m trying to pull it away. He’s clenching his jaw again before he let’s go of my hand and walks back to his seat.
I don’t know what’s happening exactly. Did they really not know about all this? Are they ‘arresting’ those two rapists? What’s going to happen to Sarah and me?
I put the dress on and turn to look at Sarah. She seems confused too. “What’s going on?” She whispers to me.
“Don’t worry. Whatever happens, I got your back.” I whisper back as I link our arms together.