Page 102 of Her Second-Hand Mate

I tried tugging it out of her hand but she was petrified.

“None of your business, Erik,” Dominic growled, and the other male just shrugged before turning and pulling Agnes away from us a little too aggressively for my taste.

“I don’t like him,” I admitted quietly.

“Smart,” Dominic nodded darkly.

“The Crown calls Luna Penelope Hedge to the stand.”

I took a deep breath as I stood up. Ignoring all the eyes on me, I made my way to the stand.

“Tell the truth,” the King commanded me and I sucked in a breath.

It hurt like heck. I remembered Queen Regina’s testimony and the multiple commands she’d suffered through so I straightened my spine and looked him in the eye instead of keeling over like I wanted to. He gave me an approving nod.

“Luna Penelope, can you please tell us about your relationship with Miss Heather Taylor?”

“She was a pack member who I did not particularly care for,” I admitted. “If she wasn’t interrupting my time with my mate in our home, she was monopolizing his time by insisting that he be her driver to and from her physical therapy appointments. It was a source of great stress for me in the beginning of my mating.”

Dominic looked ashamed, and rightfully so.

“What are some examples of her visits to your home?”

“She’d show up unannounced to drop off food for my mate, which I’d immediately throw in the trash,” I started listing, but David interrupted me.

“Why did you throw it away?”

“My Nana, my late grandmother, taught me never to eat food prepared by wolves I didn’t trust.”

“Why didn’t you trust Miss Taylor?”

“It was a gut feeling. She was always trying to talk to my mate about his first mate, Cassandra, or she'd insinuate that he wasn’t being appreciated the way he deserved to be; it all rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Did you ever confront her about it?”

“No,” I admitted, the familiar shame coursing through me. “I was never one for confrontation, but especially now, as Luna, I always strive to be fair and kind to pack members, and not to project my insecurities onto the things they may say.”

“I see. What happened on January 7?”

“Heather came to the house to say goodbye to me, since she was moving back to California, and as Dominic already explained, after they left I drank the tea that she must have laced with wolfsbane.

Maybe two, two and a half hours later, she surprised me by entering the nursery as I was folding Gabriel’s clothes. I never heard her coming, that should’ve been my first clue that something was wrong with me. She had a silver knife and she told me she had my driver Hank tied up downstairs.”

“Did she explain her motivation for the attack?”

“She did, although at the time I struggled to understand all of it. She seemed unstable and confused. What was clear was that she wanted me out of the way so she could be with Dominic. She told me about something called the Clearheart legend,” I told David and he frowned. “She basically believed that she could become Dominic’s mate through sheer willpower.”

“I heard of this,” king David glanced at his mate who was sitting in the first row. “There is a legend that says that pure, true love between non-mates can break a bad mate bond.”

“I honestly thought it was something she made up. She didn’t exactly seem coherent. She seemed very distraught, and the last time I’d seen her before that I’d noted how pale she looked and how sick she smelled.”

“What happened then?”

I blew out a breath. I was about to utter an accusation against a sitting Alpha so I straightened in my seat.

“I tried reasoning with Heather by telling her that my bond with Dominic wasn’t bad, and that, even if she killed me, he wouldn’t become her mate. She then told me how she killed Cassandra, his first mate, because Cassandra had cheated on Dominic that night.”

No one in the courtroom moved. I think even Larson was speechless. I tuned into the bond to see how Dominic wasfeeling, but all I felt was his determination to get to the bottom of this.

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