Once I finished talking, I realized everyone looked at me like I’d shown up for school naked. Realizing that my speech might have been considered rude to Adam and our leaders, I turned and apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your questioning about our scars, but it doesn’t feel like the right time for all of this.”

Wade smiled and nodded while the other leaders gave me stony glares.

“Anna is right,” Adam stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’m just really…well, I wanted share my excitement. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to find Eve. I’ve already divided search teams up and gave them locations to look.”

“Oh,” I whispered, embarrassed. I guess I should have thought about that since Elle and I arrived late. Still, I wished he wouldn’t have put his hand on display for everyone. Our scars weren’t magical in that we were hopelessly, mushy zombies.

Wade stepped forward. “We have her blood, which is the strongest scent. Each of you will smell this on your way out the door.” He held up Eve’s purse that was found along the woods and handed it to Melissa, one of the few females in our pack. She took a long sniff and then passed it to the next person. As each person caught Eve’s scent, their eyes glowed, looking eerily beautiful against their human faces.

One by one they headed outside, clothes shredding as they transformed into wolves. I was about to join them when Jeff stopped me.

“Anna, a minute,” the leader requested.

I should have known my murder trial wouldn’t be overlooked so easily. Now it was time to find out if my bond to Adam would save me.

Chapter Twenty

“Have a seat,” Jeff said as they sat around the kitchen table.

“Shouldn’t I be out helping track Eve?” I may have been stalling, but could I really be faulted for that? I was ready to die yesterday, but now that Adam and I were marked, I wanted to live—needed to.

“Your brothers and sisters are searching for Eve. I doubt one less wolf will make a difference,” Jeff replied, giving me a look that I shouldn’t argue the subject. Sitting down, I rested my folded arms on the table and tried to appear strong and confident. Adam stood behind me, his hand resting on my right shoulder. Whatever news I was about to hear could end badly. If they carried out my sentence, Adam would die right along with me. There was no way he’d stand by and watch his chante be murdered. Heaviness settled in my chest as I thought about him dying because of me.

“Did you kill Eve?” Michael asked. His blunt question threw me off guard, even though I’d expected it.

“Of course not,” I exclaimed. “Why would I want to look for her if I killed her?” I took a breath to calm myself down. I was really tired of being treated like a criminal. The sooner the leaders left the better.

“Does a murderer act guilty?” Nicolas asked. “It’s apparent you’ve wanted her mate all along. What’s the best way to ensure that happens? By killing her of course. You couldn’t defeat her by demanding a duel, so you took the easy road. Of course how you were able to get the drop on an alpha female is beyond me. Perhaps you had help?” He shifted his steely gaze from me and focused on Adam.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I snorted. Adam was the last person in the world who’d murder Eve. He took his responsibilities far too seriously.

“I find it funny that the one night we allow you your freedom, Eve goes missing,” Jeff added. “Where were you last night, Anna?”

“She was with me,” Adam answered.

“Like I said, a partner.” Nicholas smiled. “Perhaps since you two were so enamored with each other, and obviously each other’s chante’s, which we’ll discuss later, you cooked up a plan to get rid of the woman who was given to you as a peace offering. You knew that if you were to reject Eve and replace her with Anna, it’d start a war with her people.”

“That’s bullshit,” Adam snarled.

“Adam wouldn’t do that,” I said. “He takes being mated to Eve seriously.” I didn’t mention how annoying it was because that would only help their case against me. Hearing Adam tell me there was nothing he could do about his relationship with Eve had nearly driven me crazy, but not enough to kill which is what the leaders would assume.

“Besides,” I added. “We were together last night.”

“So you’re each other’s alibis. I guess we overreacted and everyone can go on their merry way,” Nicholas said with a sarcastic smile. If I knew I could get away with it, I would have reached across the table and smacked him.

“You know what I find funny?” I replied, gaining courage the madder I got. “That Adam and I are treated like criminals when you, a leader, are free to molest women and no one says anything to you. If anyone deserves to be punished, it’s you, Nicholas.”

The room got scary quiet, the leaders all traded looks. The air around the table was suffocating. Nicholas was emanating an overwhelming, angry power. He. Was. Pissed. He might have had some lusty juju, but that wasn’t an excuse to use it on whomever he wanted. Sure the women thought they wanted him, but once his seductive influence was withdrawn, the women were left feeling dirty and used. I couldn’t be the only one who had a problem with a man like that as one of our leaders.

Nicholas shot up and stalked around the table, his angry gaze trained on me. I knew what was coming and couldn’t do anything about it. If I struck him back, the leaders would bring the hammer down on my ass.

Adam stepped around my chair, blocking Nicholas’ path. “You can’t get mad at her for telling the truth. If she has said something that’s not true, by all means, prove her wrong.”

“How dare you stand against me, alpha,” Nicholas said, his voice dripping with venom. “Move!”

Adam held his ground, squaring his shoulders and curling his hands into tight fist. As much as I would’ve loved to see Adam take Nicholas down a notch, it wouldn’t have ended well. Adam would be punished for assaulting a leader. Luckily, the remaining leaders took care of the situation before anything uglier happened.

“Nicholas, take a walk,” Jeff advised, rising from his chair with Wade and Michael following suit. Nicolas looked over at his brethren, and then turned his icy glare to me.

“The day will come when they won’t be here to protect you. I look forward to that day,” he threatened, stalking out of the room.

“Seriously, what’s up with him being a leader?” I asked, turning towards the men around the table.

“It was his birthright,” Wade answered. “His father was leader before him, his grandfather before that.”

“And did they also have the influence to take away a woman’s willpower?”

“From what I understand, his grandfather was a ladies man, but I don’t think he had any special power. His father had a little bit, but it seems to have gotten stronger with Nicolas. I’d hate to see what his son will be like.” Wade stared in the direction Nicholas had stormed out, a look of disgust on his face.

At least I wasn’t the only one who thought Nicholas was a sleezeball. “Do a lot of werewolves have special powers?” I sat back down, anxious to learn more about my kind. Adam took the chair Nicolas had been sitting in, and the energy in the room settled to a comfortable level, well as comfortable as it could being in the presence of three leaders and an alpha.

“It’s rare, but it’s not so uncommon that it’s a big deal, ya know?”

I nodded and was about to ask another question when Michael spoke up.

“You’re very good at distraction, Ms. Avery. We’re here to talk about you, not the history of our kind or how loathsome Nicholas may be.”

The relaxed look on Wade’s face disappeared and was replaced with seriousness. I glanced at Adam. He’d calmed down now that Nicholas was gone, but I could still tell he was revved up.

“You want to know if I killed, Eve,” I said, tired of the questioning. “I did not. If I wanted to kill her simply to be with Adam, I would’ve done it months ago. Matter of fact, I turned Adam down countless times because I didn’t think we should be together while he was mated to her,” I explained.

“Yet you didn’t hold those same worries last night,” Jeff noted.

“Do you deny your stomach when you’re hungry?” I asked, and I heard a soft laugh escape from Wade. “I was supposed to be sentenced to death tonight. I didn’t hold any worries last night. If I was going to die, then I was going to end my life on a happy note.”

“So you could’ve killed Eve, since as you said, you had no worries. What would be the point of worrying about being caught for murder when you would be dead within the day?” Michael questioned.

“For crying out loud! I’m talking about sleeping with a man that I’ve refused myself, not murdering his mate! I don’t care enough about Eve to go through the trouble of killing her out of spite. I know you want to pile all the guilt onto my shoulders, that’d be the easiest path, but by killing me for the crime, you’d become the very thing you’re accusing me of—a murderer. I am innocent in this matter.”

When I was a kid I hated the merry-go-round. I didn’t see the point of climbing onto a metal circle and being spun until I was so dizzy I couldn’t see straight. Tonight I was of a figurative merry-go-round. The questions went around and around, but never went anywhere. Asking the same questions a different way kept the problem at a standstill and me dizzy with fury.

“If you don’t believe, Anna, then believe me,” Adam said, reaching a hand under the table, his fingers gently squeezing my knee. “All of you have known me for a long time. I was with Anna last night and at no point did she leave my side, nor I hers. We spent the entire time in the cabin until Joe came this morning.”

The leaders looked at each other as if they were having a mental conversation that our ears couldn’t hear. Hell, maybe they were. Their eyebrows would arch, dip, and scrunch as if debating their argument to each other. This went on for at least five minutes. I reached my hand under the table and gripped Adam’s. Life was so much easier before becoming a werewolf. I’d never seen the inside of a police station, and now I felt like I was on trial every day of my life. I’d gladly go back to doing my chores and not complaining if it meant the leaders would leave and never come back. I had a soft spot for Wade. He was like a moody older brother. Still, he was a leader first and foremost and wasn’t the type to let a friendship get in the way of his duties. As I watched him, I wished Elle batted for his team—they’d make a great couple.