Back and Stronger: Alpha's Daughter
Chapter 74

What the hell had that just been? It had the same hazy, unreal feeling her dreams had always felt and looked like. Those people she’d seen… It had just been so strange.

Who were they? They’d definitely not been the people already inside the courtroom at that moment.

Sophia knew her mind could get a bit creative sometimes, and completely run away with something, well, most times, but that had been something else entirely… sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ FɪndNøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

She was certain that her mind wouldn’t have been able to dream up those odd uniforms they’d worn, as well as the barrettes on their heads she’d never even seen before, and even less the almost sci-fi-looking weapons that she didn’t think Neil or Scott even had the likes of.

And then there was the little matter that it had technically not been a dream. She’d been awake, still sitting in the courtroom when it had happened, but she did slip into some kind of subconscious realm though – or that was the only way she could think to explain it. What it had felt like.

It couldn’t have been random. Just like the dream where Bella had spoken to her, pleading with Sophia to do something. To just take action and go and save them. That same sense of life-threatening urgency she’d felt then was exactly what had settled along her very bones again now. She was sure of it, and it terrified her shitless.

If she recalled correctly, however, acting on these ‘messages’, hadn’t exactly led them down the right paths, and was what had gotten them captured, imprisoned, and facing trials that would lead to death in the first place, so yeah – not exactly a fan of these emergent vision-slash-dreams compelling her to act on them. Even still now, it was pressing and poking and stabbing at her.

What do you want me to do about it now, huh?!

Feeling stupid and not entirely sure who she had just admonished, Sophia couldn’t help the frustration and terror spreading through her at the same time. Just imagining those men she’d ‘seen’ storming into the courtroom again made her want to run away, but suddenly she felt that familiar concern. Then anger. Livid anger. Then … nothing.

Wait… What? Was that her connection with Neil? Why was he so angry?

But before Sophia could come up with some excuse to return to her cell – maybe she should pretend that she was going to be sick? Or faint? – there was the announcement of a name to come to the stand that made her heart drop to her stomach.

Especially after the disaster of a testimony Matthew had given against her, she didn’t have any hope left for her case as she watched her father entering the courtroom. Asshole. But especially after she had those terrible flashing images, and feeling the worry and then the strange furious rage coming from Neil, she seriously didn’t need this.

“Our next witness, Thorin Tibald,” the attorney said, and it felt like he had just thrown Sophia with rocks, a hit squarely in her stomach with each drawled word.

The dream and Neil forgotten, her eyes remained glued to her father who had just entered through the mahogany double doors there, escorted by three armed guards. He had a wild, spiteful look in his eyes as they met Sophia’s, and she felt like she had just swallowed all those rocks thrown at her earlier when she saw despite this, despite him looking like he wanted to call her every dirty name in the book, he remained quiet and calm with what seemed like some sort of sinister certainty. And that was even scarier than him going off on her like the raving lunatic that he was.

He gave her a knowing smile as he saw her realizing what he was doing. He was pretending to be composed and sane, so they would take his word more seriously. If he’d been thrashing about and screaming his lungs out at her as he had in the prison cells, the people here wouldn’t give his words against her as much credence as he wanted.

No, he was behaving himself, so whatever he said would be taken seriously by the council and the judge. Sophia knew he was most likely just going to tell them the same story he’d been telling for six years, and it sickened her.

But what sickened her the most was that her only witnesses so far had been Matthew and now her father. Exactly the two most vile, lying males that had abused her for so long. Any freaking one else saying bad things about her would have been a hundred times better than a single one of them!

How was it possible that the two worst shifters in the entire Lucian pack were to determine her fate? She was going to get executed for sure…

“Thorin Tibald, Alpha of the Lucian pack, swear to the Goddess that you will speak the truth, and nothing but the truth here today or so help you?”

Thorin was giving the weasel-man his most serious look of sincerity, as he said the simple reply that was usually required for one to proceed as a witness in court, “I swear.”

How silly and insignificant such a vow had become. Why did they still even bother with it? It wasn’t like it was going to change the fact that her father had come in here with the intent to lie his ass off to get her killed.

Swearing an oath to the Goddess meant nothing anymore, especially not in court. Personal vows made to Her in silence were a hell of a lot stronger and more meaningful than these empty words sworn in front of council members and a judge. What a strange world they’d come to live in…

“Thorin Tibald,” the prosecution attorney addressed her father. “Do you confirm that the defendant, Sophia Tibald, is your daughter and that you were a direct witness to the murder of your wife, Seraphine Tibald, six years ago?”

Sophia saw her father feigning deep sadness, the kind she knew he wasn’t even capable of. Not even a little. “I–I,” he sniffled and even wiped a Goddess-damned tear from his cheek, “I confirm both claims.”

Sophia had to push down the urge to start shouting at him that he was a lying son of a bitch, that he hadn’t been a direct witness to the murder. Hell, she hadn’t even been a direct witness! She only arrived after the murder and found her mother dead with a dagger in her chest, and Thorin had only seen what happened after that.

But Sophia was suddenly overtaken by grief she’d thought she had been able to hide after all these years. It was like the moment they called her mother by name that it came out of hiding and assaulted her heart full force again. She hadn’t heard her name spoken in such a long time.

Her mother had been brutally taken from Sophia and Leo, and she had never gotten the justice that was still due her. The true killer was still out there somewhere, never having had paid for the crime, and that realization hit her indescribably hard as well.

“Give us an account of what happened,” the prosecutor said to a still fake-torn-looking Thorin.

As she looked around her at the council and the other pack members around the courtroom, she couldn’t believe that people were looking at him with sympathy. Had they completely lost their ability to tell when people were so clearly putting up a show?

“I remember coming down from my room when I heard my dear wife shouting, and then there was a crashing sound directly after that in the kitchen. I ran there as fast as I could to investigate–”

“You fucking liar,” Sophia said before she could stop herself. “I came down from my room after I heard shouting and a loud crash in the kitchen. You’re taking exactly the story I kept telling you over and over of what happened–”

“Order!” the judge commanded with two hits of his wooden hammer against the desk he was sitting at. “The defendant will be quiet.”

Sophia looked at the judge and then at her useless public defender not doing anything other than twiddling his thumbs nervously, probably having realized by now that there just wasn’t any use in fighting her case anymore. Not after Matthew, and definitely not after her father’s testimonies. She felt a flash of anger.

“But, Your Honor–”

“The defendant will be quiet,” he repeated, pinning her with a stern look with his hammer threateningly hanging in the air, ready to hit his desk again if she dared to say anything else.

All eyes were on her then, she saw as she looked at the people around the room for help, not knowing why she even bothered, as they were looking at her as though they thought she was the one that was crazy here.

When Sophia looked back at her father, that knowing malicious smile she’d come to hate so fucking much over the years, was directly staring back at her. The bastard knew exactly what he was doing. It was as though she only then became fully aware of the fact that her father was actually a full-on psycho, and that he knew exactly how to act and what to say to manipulate any person and situation the way he wanted, and got a sick joy from it.

And she’d just played right into his hands perfectly, by the way she had just gone off on him. She should have just kept her mouth shut. He was baiting her again and he wanted people to think that she was as unstable as they had already believed she was.

“Please continue, Thorin Tibald.”

“As I was saying – the moment I arrived in the kitchen where I’d heard the noises,” Thorin pressed his fingers into his eyes like he just couldn’t keep the tears and emotions back anymore, while Sophia was bristling like a volcano that was about to erupt. “I found my wife mutilated, stabbed, and dead on the kitchen floor there, lying in her own pool of blood with Sophia standing over her with a bloody knife in her hand…”

Thorin then broke down in over-exaggerated sobs and even wailed like a child, so clearly acting, but still, people believed him, giving Sophia disgusted looks of indignation.

All those years ago, everyone had just taken her father at his word of what she had ‘done’ to her mother – and they seemed to still believe him instead of reason. Nothing has changed, and she honestly didn’t know why she’d even bothered to hope that possibly things could have turned out any different this time around.

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