Chapter 148: The Leash
FLASHBACK
"He is a hybrid."
Kira’s eyes narrowed. "A hybrid? What do you mean by that?"
Sasha blew her nose into the napkin and sniffled. She had nothing left to lose now. If Kira could show her mercy in the lowest moment of her life, then there was no harm in telling her the rest.
She was going to prison regardless. And if there was a single person in this pack with enough compassion to look after her son once she was gone, it would be the woman sitting across from her.
"My parents forced me into a loveless marriage at twenty," Sasha said. "Even though I was already bound to someone else."
Kira’s eyes widened, just slightly. This sounded far too much like her own story.
"My husband was a promising gamma. Good family, plenty of money, the right fit on paper. But I never loved him, and he knew it. So he hit me. Then he blamed me for making him do it."
"He used to tell me I was nothing, that I should be grateful, that he was the one who saved me from being nothing."
Sasha tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay.
"So I started seeing my soulbond again. In secret."
"Why wouldn’t your parents accept your soulbond?" Kira asked gently. "Was he poor? Low ranking?" She knew all too well how seriously shifter society took hierarchy and status.
Sasha let out a bitter little laugh. "I wish it had been something that simple. That would not have been a problem at all." She paused. "My soulbond was a werewolf."
Kira worked very hard to keep her jaw where it was. "A werewolf?"
Sasha nodded. "The kindest man I have ever known. But with the blood feud between our kinds, there was no world where we could be together openly. So I had a secret affair with him. I am not proud of it. But it was the only thing keeping me sane in that marriage."
She wiped her eyes again.
"No one would have cared if I tried to confide in them. King Derek was too consumed by rage and revenge back then to think straight about anything. He wanted to drag every werewolf alive through hell. That was him at his worst. He was a killing machine in those years. I couldn’t come forward, and I was far too frightened to elope."
Kira said nothing. She only watched her.
"When Nolan, my husband, found out about the affair, he said he would kill me and the child I was carrying. I fell apart. I couldn’t think. So I went to Ruby and I confided in her, and I asked her for a poison. Something to stop Nolan."
Sasha’s voice was flat now, hollowed out. "She gave me something. Nolan dropped dead in the middle of a raid. They called it a heart attack."
She drew in a shaking breath.
"A few months after Nolan died, the border patrol caught my soulbond near our borders. King Derek tore him apart on the spot. No questions. No pause."
Her shoulders were trembling with quiet sobs now. "He had only come because he was worried about me. That was all. He just wanted to know I was safe."
Kira exhaled slowly, letting the full, terrible shape of the story settle over her. And finally she understood. She understood exactly why Sasha had been Ruby’s puppet for so long. Ruby had been holding all of this over her head the entire time.
"Three months after Jerry was born, he developed this rare blood condition," Sasha continued. "I think it is my punishment from the goddess. But if she wanted to punish someone, it should have been me. Not him. He never did anything to anyone."
"We could start an outreach," Kira said. "I will champion it myself. There must be hybrids across Aethelwulf Centralis who would be willing to donate blood."
Sasha shook her head.
"Listen to me." Kira leaned forward. "If you genuinely want to be free of all of this, then you need to come to the tribunal tomorrow and tell your story yourself. Out loud. In front of everyone. Once it is spoken, no one can ever use it to control you again."
Sasha didn’t reply; she only kept sobbing.
Kira sat back a little. "So you held a grudge against the King," she said carefully after a moment’s pause. "And you decided to stop him from having an heir of his own."
Sasha’s head came up, her brows drawn together. "No. I never held it against him. I tried to. Goddess knows I tried. But I couldn’t, because I understood him."
"Then why did you try to poison me through Ishita? And when she wanted to tell the King about it, why did you try to silence her?"
Sasha’s face moved through several expressions at once, confusion, shock, and then something that looked like the ground opening up beneath her.
"What? That was not me. That was Ruby. All of it was Ruby. She—" Sasha stopped. Her hand came up to her mouth. "Goddess. She played me. She has thrown me under the bus."
Kira already knew it was Ruby who did it. Connor had told her the King never believed Ruby’s story, but she wanted Sasha to be aware of what Ruby had done and say more of what she knew.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Ruby was the one who told me to do it. She told me to inject Ishita with potassium chloride, and threatened to expose my secret to the King and the pack if I don’t. That secret is the leash she has kept around my neck for years."
Sasha shook her head slowly. "Honestly, if it were only me, I would have let her say whatever she wanted a long time ago. But it was never about me. It was always Jerry. I couldn’t let him suffer for what I did."
Kira laughed, though there was nothing warm in it.
"That is the saddest part of all of this," she said. "Ruby has already told the King every single one of your secrets." She leaned forward again. "If you want my help, Sasha, I need everything. Every detail. Do not leave a single stone unturned."
Sasha, betrayed by Ruby and with nothing left to protect, told her everything.
She told her how it had all happened. She told her that Ruby had pushed the car she used to hit Ishita into a river to drown the evidence.
As she spoke, Kira quietly turned on the voice recorder on her phone and let it capture every word.
"Ruby has something on nearly everyone in this pack," Sasha said. "Especially the elite women. That is the real reason so many of them are desperate to stay on her good side. I never had anything on her, and I needed something. I needed a way to bring her down too. So I started collecting evidence against her wherever I could."
She looked at Kira.
Then she told her about Derek’s first relationship. About Sandra. About how Ruby had broken it apart so cleanly that nobody had ever suspected her hand in it. Ruby had noticed Brian’s interest in Sandra, and she had fed Sandra an aphrodisiac to make her crave a mate.
With Derek unavailable and distant, Sandra had turned to the next man giving her attention. And the day Derek discovered Sandra and Brian together, it was Ruby who had deliberately led him to the library to find them.
The maid Ruby had used to administer the aphrodisiac to Sandra died the very next day.
"She uses you," Sasha said in a small voice. "And then she spits you out."
"If you knew this much," Kira said, "why did you never tell anyone? Why not the King?"
Sasha shook her head. "I was scared. Mostly for my son. He has been ill since he was a baby. If Ruby exposed me, there would be no one to care for him."
Kira sat back in her chair. "It must have been an unbearable thing to carry. And there was truly no other woman you could confide in?"
Sasha gave a small, humourless laugh. "We do not care about each other in that circle, Your Highness. Most of them are snitches. They listen to you and then they run straight to Ruby with it. She had too much power in Dravengard. Speaking was never safe."
Kira sighed. "Do you have evidence of any of the recent events? Ishita’s accident?"
Sasha shook her head. "She started hiding things from me near the end. But I have something better." She met Kira’s eyes. "Lara Vaughn is not dead. We faked her death so she could escape punishment. She is the easiest thread we have. Pull her, and the whole thing comes apart."
Kira’s face slowly broke into a smile, and then she was laughing properly. "That is genuinely brilliant. Where is she?"
Sasha shook her head. "She may not want to come out of hiding. All she wants is a way to get her son back from the special care centre."
"Oh, come on." Kira was already smiling. "I set her soulbond free only the other day. She owes me an enormous favour."
She rose to her feet.
"Thank you, Sasha. For trusting me. But I am going to need you to trust me all the way to the end of this."
Sasha nodded.
Kira smiled and dialled Nana. The old woman picked up on the second ring.
"Hello, Nana," Kira said. "I need your help."
