22. Chapter 22 #2
“Different packs. Different regions. Different cultures in some respects.”
“Yes.”
Grace nodded once, as if placing the answer carefully beside several others the room had not yet seen.
“Tell the Council when you first spoke with her in a personal capacity.”
Sloan drew in a breath. Her gaze moved once toward Maddie, then back to Grace.
“It was the night after a demonstration on the main stage,” she said.
A movement passed through those who knew Obsidian and a sharper curiosity through those who did not. Pleasure clubs produced many kinds of demonstrations. Most were irrelevant to law. This one was relevant because people had been careless with a young woman’s humiliation.
Grace’s tone did not change. “What happened that night?”
Sloan’s mouth tightened. “There had been an on-stage demonstration. It went well. The room liked it. Maddie was working the floor after.”
“And Prince Nikolay?”
Nikolay did not move.
I did not look at him immediately. I looked instead at Grace, because she had chosen this wound deliberately. She had warned him she would not hide his failures. Still, hearing family shame made into legal scaffolding stirred something old and defensive in me.
Blood wanted loyalty to mean concealment. Justice demanded better.
Sloan answered carefully. “He dressed her down publicly.”
Maddie’s chin dipped by a fraction.
Grace let no sympathy enter her face. “In what manner?”
“He was cold. Sharp. He made it sound like she had embarrassed the house. Or herself. I don’t remember every word.”
The truth spell hummed faintly, not in rebuke. More like confirmation.
“But you remember the effect,” Grace said.
“Yes.”
“What was the effect?”
Sloan looked down at her hands. “She was hurt.”
Grace did not ask whether Maddie had deserved it. She did not allow the prosecution an opening to turn discipline at Obsidian into a debate over workplace conduct. She stayed with the point.
“How could you tell?”
“I’m a wolf,” Sloan said. “We scent emotion. Especially distress. She kept her face together, but she smelled like shame and anger. And grief, maybe. I don’t know how else to say it.”
The words struck the room oddly. Vampires smelled blood and lies, and fear with exquisite accuracy, but wolf testimony about emotion carried its own blunt intimacy. Shame had a scent. Anger. Grief. All the hidden things a body betrayed before a mouth could edit them.
Grace inclined her head. “What did you do?”
“I went to her.”
“Why?”
Sloan’s fingers tightened. “Because nobody else did.”
Nikolay closed his eyes.
Only for a heartbeat.
Then he opened them and remained still.
Grace paused just long enough for that sentence to sit where it belonged.
“Did anyone tell you to go to her that first time?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did Sage Lynch tell you to speak to her that night?”
“No.”
“Did you comfort her?”
“I tried.”
“Was that comfort genuine?”
Ironwood’s counsel shifted, perhaps sensing danger in compassion.
Sloan looked directly at Grace. “Yes.”
Grace held her gaze. “You liked her.”
“Yes.”
“Immediately?”
A faint, broken humor touched Sloan’s mouth and vanished before it became a smile. “She was hard not to like.”
Maddie’s hands moved in her lap. She did not look up.
Grace let the admission stand without dressing it in sentiment.
“What happened after that?”
“Sage noticed.”
Grace turned slightly, giving the Council the line of her profile. “Noticed what?”
“That I could talk to her.”
“Because she trusted you?”
Sloan swallowed. “Because she was beginning to.”
“And what did Sage do with that knowledge?”
The prosecution counsel stood. “Objection. Calls for speculation as to the deceased Alpha’s motives.”
Grace turned her head toward the Magistrate, not annoyed, not impatient. Merely waiting for procedure to catch up with fact.
The Magistrate looked at Sloan. “Counsel will rephrase.”
Grace nodded. “Of course.”
Then she looked back to the witness. “Did Sage Lynch speak to you about your relationship with Madelyn after he observed the two of you together?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Sloan’s throat moved. “He told me to keep her close.”
The words were simple. They were also an opening in a wall.
Grace’s voice remained even. “How?”
“Be her friend. Ask her to spend time with me after shifts. Invite her into conversations when Ironwood wolves came to Obsidian. Make sure she didn’t feel alone.”
“That sounds kind,” Grace said.
Sloan’s eyes flicked up, startled.
Grace’s face did not soften. “Was it?”
“At first,” Sloan whispered.
“At first,” Grace repeated. “And after?”
“Sage said she was important.”
“Important why?”
“Because she was Bronc Baucaum's sister. He's an important Alpha. And that she was unmated by wolf standards.”
Nikolay’s head lifted a fraction.
“Explain what you mean by wolf standards.”
“She had a fated mate, but he hadn’t claimed her. He was a vampire. He was acting like he didn’t want her. Sage said that mattered.”
Grace’s eyes did not move to Nikolay. Mine did.
My brother sat beneath the testimony like a man under sentence. No flinch now. No visible defense. He accepted every word because denial would have been cowardice, and he had already had his full portion of that.
Grace continued, “What did Sage direct you to learn?”
“How serious the bond was. Whether she loved Nikolay. Whether he loved her. Whether she might reject him if she had somewhere safe to land.”
“And you asked those questions.”
“Yes.”
“Directly?”
“Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I’d just let her talk.”
“Did she?”
Sloan’s face tightened with pain. “Yes.”
“What did she say about Nikolay?”
“She said he made her crazy.” Sloan’s mouth trembled. “She said he was arrogant and beautiful and mean sometimes when he was fighting the bond, though I don’t think she understood that last part at first.”
Grace did not comment.
“She said he looked at her like she was something he wanted and wished he didn’t,” Sloan continued. “She said he could make her feel like she was too much and not enough at the same damn time.”
Maddie’s face remained lowered, but color rose beneath her skin.
Nikolay’s hands folded tighter.
“And what did you say in response?” Grace asked.
“I said maybe wolves understood wolves better.”
“Did Sage tell you to say that?”
“Yes.”
“Those words specifically?”
“Not always those words. But that idea.”
“Wolves with wolves.”
“Yes.”
The chamber listened with a different kind of attention now. Earlier, Ironwood’s counsel had dressed those words as culture. Grace had begun to undress them one answer at a time.
“Did you believe it?” she asked.
Sloan lifted her chin. Her voice did not strengthen, but it steadied. “Yes.”
There was no evasion in it.
Grace respected truth too much to punish it merely because it was ugly.
“You believed Madelyn would be better with her own kind.”
“Yes.”
“You believed Sage Lynch could offer her something Nikolay could not.”
“Yes.”
“You believed that even though the Goddess had already chosen Nikolay as her mate.”
Sloan looked down. “I told myself maybe the Goddess had shown her one path, not the only one.”
The truth spell pressed against the room. I felt several wolves shift in their seats.
Grace stepped closer to the lectern. “And what did Madelyn say when you raised the idea that wolves belonged with wolves?”
Sloan’s eyes filled then, though no tears fell yet.
“She didn’t agree.”
“How many times did you raise it?”
“A lot.”
“How many times did she agree?”
“Never.”
The answer moved through the chamber cleanly.
Grace let it breathe.
“Tell the Council what she said.”
Ironwood’s counsel rose again. “Objection. Hearsay.”
Grace did not turn this time. “Statement of the alleged victim’s then-existing state of mind regarding consent to the bond, consent to replacement, and intent toward Sage Lynch. It is also directly responsive to Ironwood’s theory that Madelyn was open to a wolf mate.”
A faint silence followed.
The Magistrate’s gaze lingered on Grace for one long second. Then he said, “Overruled. The witness will answer.”
Grace looked back at Sloan.
Sloan’s first tear slipped down her face. “She said people should be with who they love. That species didn’t get to decide that for them.”
The words entered the record and stayed.
“She said Iron Valor had all kinds. Wolves, hybrids, people who didn’t fit neat boxes. She said family was who bled for you and showed up when it mattered.” Sloan wiped at her cheek with one hand, then gripped the stand again. “And she said she trusted the Goddess’s choice.”
Grace’s voice softened only by a shade. “Did she ever qualify that?”
Sloan nodded once. “She said as long as the other person didn’t reject it.”
Nikolay’s face changed.
Not much. A tightening around the mouth. A flicker across the eyes. But I had known him too long not to see it. There were words that entered a man like a blade and only found their hilt later.
Grace asked, “Did she say Nikolay had rejected it?”
“No.”
“Did she fear he might?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say that fear made Sage Lynch her mate?”
“No.”
“Did she say that fear made her willing to participate in a ritual to break the bond?”
“No.”
“Did she ever, to your knowledge, consent to replacing Nikolay with Sage?”
“No.”
The prosecution half-rose again, then seemed to reconsider. Their table had begun to resemble a ship taking on water while its captain insisted the deck remained dry.
Grace shifted one page on her legal pad.
The movement was almost gentle.
“Let us discuss Madelyn’s phone.”
Sloan’s face went still in a new way.
There was another door.
“When Madelyn was at Ironwood, did she have uninterrupted possession of her phone?”
“No.”
“Who took it?”
“I don’t know who physically took it first.”
“Did you later return it to her?”
“Yes.”
“Who gave it to you?”
Sloan hesitated.
The truth spell hummed, warning not punishing.
“One of Sage’s tech department heads,” she said.
No name. Good. We did not need one yet. Roles could be subpoenaed. Names could be extracted. Grace knew when not to clutter clean testimony.
“What did that person say when the phone was handed to you?”
“That Maddie had left it somewhere and I should give it back.”