The Demon and His Plaything

20| The execution

Like watching a funeral procession, they watched as the demon contingent left, waiting until the large cars were out of eyeline before picking up the unconscious Tyler. Derek was the one to put him in the back seat of the car. He looked at Samantha once done. The horror she saw in Derek's eyes settled in her chest. She held her lips tight together.

"I'll walk back," Samantha said and turned on her heel not waiting for anything from her father. Derek said nothing to the two older men and followed her.

They walked in silence. The weight of their actions dragging them down.

"Is this the right thing to do?"

Samantha looked over at him. "What is the alternative? We tell everyone the truth and the pack is torn apart?"

Derek shook his head. The impact of the Alpha and Beta doing something like this. If his mother found out, if she didn't already know...

When they got back to the packhouse Samantha continued on to her room, not saying bye.

Derek stood on the ground floor looking lost. He looked around at the pack members as they walked around oblivious to what had happened. The buzz of the execution that was going to happen that night permeated through the place. It was set at the same time as the attack was believed to have started.

It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

~*~

Her parents were in the suite when Samantha arrived.

"Samantha," her mother stood motioning for Samantha to have a seat.

She sat and waited for what they were going to say.

Her parents glanced at each other first. Her father started, "There are decisions you have to make sometimes, for the benefit of the pack that you aren't always going to like."

She snorted, forcing the derivative reaction specifically to irk her parents. She hadn't been a bratty teen but she knew the moves.

Alpha Andrew pursed his lips and her mother took over. "Our pack is very prosperous and we have been expanding more than our lands can bear. This was a necessary evil."

"And if Tracy hadn't gotten caught up in it, justice wouldn't have mattered."

"We had the rogues to pin it on," Alpha Andrew explained. "There would have been justice for the survivors."

"False justice," Samantha stated plainly.

"You'll understand when you are Luna," Rachel said gently. "Of course, you know you can't speak of this ever again. After tonight, it's done."

"And Derek? He getting this pep talk too?"

"Ben will speak with him, yes." Her father confirmed.

"I'm moving into my own apartment. I'll wait until the refugees are resettled–I'm going to be coming and going from the pack as I like." Her parents started to object, shocked by the two swift demands. She stood. "I will put the pack first, and I hope I can find more palatable solutions than the two of you when I take over."

She walked into her room and gently closed the door. She walked to her window and looked down. The hill where they were setting up to execute Tyler loomed up from her vantage point. They also had two rogues they had found that they were claiming had organised it with him. There would be no trial. No recorded testimonies.

~*~

Samantha and Derek stood together with his parents. He had his arm around his mother, who was crying softly. There were lanterns lit, but it was dark and the crowd was sombre.