All Chapters of The moon goddess chose wrong: twice: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

MaxI was standing against the wall behind Enzo’s chair doing the job I always did in formal settings as the Alpha, which was being present and attentive and apparently decorative while actually reading the room with the full attention of someone whose job was to see what the Alpha needed to see and could not always watch directly.I watched Crane and Maris through the next hour of documentation review.Crane was disciplined. What he was managing was managed well and the only tells were the ones Enzo had already identified, the absence of genuine reaction in places where genuine reaction was the appropriate response.Maris was less disciplined.Three times during the review she made notes in her folder rather than on the blank paper provided for the purpose. Notes that went back into the folder rather than onto the official record. Small gestures, practiced, the kind of thing you did automatically when you had been in rooms like this for years and had developed habits around protectin

MaxThe confession session began at nine in the morning.I had been in interrogation rooms, testimony chambers, and formal hearings of various kinds over years of Beta duty and I had developed a reasonable calibration for how these things went. There was usually a shape to them, an opening posture of managed disclosure, a middle section of careful navigation, and an end that arrived somewhere between what was hoped for and what was feared.Anthony’s confession was short and simple, he kept the secret like a door that had been sealed so long that when it finally opened it took the entire frame with it.He sat at the center table in Silver Fang’s formal testimony chamber with his hands folded in front of him and his silver hair loose around his shoulders and the particular composure of a man who had made his decision in the holding cell over three weeks and was now simply delivering on it.Elder Rowan led the questioning on behalf of the council.She was good at this. Direct without agg

EnzoThe break lasted forty minutes.Forty minutes during which the five honest council members huddled in the east corridor with Rowan at the center and voices low and urgent, they sounded like they were going through all that had been revealed, all the shocking accusations.Forty minutes during which Crane and Maris disappeared into the guest wing and did not emerge until it was time to start again.I spent forty minutes in the formal chamber with Max and Nina and Thomas, reviewing the implications of what Anthony had just said, and what my dad's records would contain, and what it meant to help us proceed going forward. I didn't feel upset, it was my dad, a trafficker that was all I could think about.Thomas was calm in the way of someone who had expected this and was simply watching it end. He wasn't surprised or pissed. At some point, I started to mirror his expression so no one would know what I was thinking.“Crane will move to seal the testimony,” he said. “Before the afternoo

MaxThe morning began like every other morning of the proceedings.I was in the war room at six reviewing the overnight reports from the border patrols and the council security log and the holding level check-ins that happened every four hours through the night. The holding level log showed nothing unusual. The four hour checks had been completed at midnight, four in the morning, and eight in the morning with no incidents recorded.I set the log down and moved to the next report.It was the healer’s morning rounds that found him.She came to me directly, which told me she had assessed the situation quickly enough to understand that this required a specific chain of communication rather than the general alarm that would have brought the entire pack house into the corridor.Her name was Freya. She was twenty six, careful, and had been Silver Fang’s junior healer for two years. She stood in my doorway at eight forty seven with the expression of someone who had found something and was man

AnonymousThe morning session started at eleven.The chamber filled with the usual complement of council members, observers, and the person in charge of documents, and the Alpha of Silver Fang at the head of the table with the composed authority that he carried into every room.Elder Crane was present, and so was Elder Maris,Both of them had received the recusal review findings that morning, a recommendation that they step back from voting rights for the duration of the proceedings while their pack connections were investigated. Both of them had accepted this with the experienced composure of people who understood that refusing would have been considerably worse.The session started with Rowan’s formal announcement of the morning’s agenda.He noted that Dexter’s scheduled testimony had been postponed due to health complications.Crane’s expression showed appropriate concern.Maris nodded sympathetically.The session continued.Nobody in the chamber knew that the most important witnes