Chapter 70

After wiping the history of the call and message she’d made from the tablet’s database, exactly as Scott had instructed her to, Sophia returned to watching the live stream of Neil’s court trial.

The weasel of a man was already preparing another witness that had come up to the stand. She’d missed what had been said with the previous witness, but it was a small sacrifice she needed to make so that she could get Scott to help. At least she had another chance now to find out what was going on from the next witness also about to be questioned about the same things as the first one had most likely, such as about what Neil had done and who he had been in the military.

She also realized that she never asked about Connor when she’d spoken to Scott just now, about what happened to him, but figured he was surely better off than Neil anyway, so she didn’t need to worry.

This witness’s name was Rudolph Miller, and again he looked like a soldier to Sophia, if only just by the way he carried himself was all the proof she needed to know that. He had blond wavy hair, with the tips hanging over his forehead and ears, curling up at the ends. He was broad-shouldered and clearly trained as hard as Neil and Scott did every day.

Without a doubt, this man that looked to be in his late twenties, seemed as much a honed and lethal weapon as Neil, Sophia had caught him giving Neil a quick glance, and saw how his eyes were filled with awe and something she could only describe as zeal. He was strikingly handsome, and even though Sophia couldn’t see his features all that clearly on the screen, she’d been able to gather all that, but what stood out the most to her was his gentle but deeply haunted eyes.

Those same eyes flicked to Neil and lighted up momentarily again when he saw that Neil was looking at him. Rudolph then bowed his head almost imperceptibly in respect to him. His Captain. Neil responded with a curt nod in acknowledgment that not many might have spotted if they hadn’t been scrutinizing his every minute movement as much as Sophia had.

“Lieutenant Miller,” the judge said, looking tired with the case already. “Can you please begin by confirming the military division and unit you served in, and then also say the full name of who you served under within this unit?”

Rudolph cleared his throat, not out of nervousness, Sophia could tell, but more out of lack of talking for a long time and just making sure he still had a voice. She knew that feeling very well, as there had been times when she hadn’t spoken a single word for days on end.

The Lieutenant leaned slightly forward toward the microphone, and said in a deep voice that suited him perfectly somehow, “I served as an officer in the Lucian Special Forces, within the Elite secret task force unit known as the Amaroks, which was under Captain Neil De Boule’s command, Your Honor.”

“Wait–Neil was in command of an entire task force?” Sophia wondered out loud to herself alone in her prison cell. Alone in the entire prison block, for that matter.

Sure, the fact that he was called ‘Captain’ should have been reason enough for her to not be so utterly shocked at hearing this, but Sophia didn’t expect that he was the commander of a whole group of soldiers either! No wonder this Rudolph guy had looked at Neil with such respect earlier. Neil used to be their leader.

“Amarok?” the judge asked with sudden interest. “Just to settle my curiosity – why choose that as the name of your unit?”

“According to Inuit folklore, Judge Omen,” the blond male suddenly stood even taller, prouder, as he explained, “the Amarok is a fierce and unstoppable wolf that stalks and hunts lone hunters at night.”

“Yes, yes,” the judge said impatiently. “But why did your unit call themselves the Amaroks then?”

Rudolph was looking at the judge as though he was thinking, isn’t it obvious? But said instead, “We were a team of wolves that spied on and hunted our enemies down with supernatural efficiency, some said. Our motto was: Hunters will become the Hunted. It meant that those that preyed on innocents would be preyed upon by us in return–Your Honor.”

He’d said the ‘Your Honor’ part at the end as though he had remembered to say it just in time. But even as Sophia noticed this, her mind was shifting to a memory. She recalled the fierce and roaring wolf face tattoo on the inside of Neil’s sinewy forearm, as well as on Connor’s that she’d seen. He’d told her when they had first met that day, that it was an emblem for their unit team.

“And who came up with this?” the judge pressed, and Sophia wondered why their unit’s name and meaning thereof was so important, and now who had thought of it?

“Judge Omen, I don’t see–”

“Just answer the question, Lieutenant Miller,” the judge interrupted his reasoning, which was the same thought she had just had as well.

“Captain De Boule, Your Honor,” Rudolph answered, stealing a quick guilty glance at Neil, thinking that he’d betrayed him somehow, but if Neil had thought so too, he didn’t show it.

“Interesting,” was all the judge said as he seemed to be mulling all of what had just been revealed over and over in his head.

For Sophia, what had been revealed about Neil was that he was even more powerful and important than she’d ever expected, and that he put credence into and honored a meaningful code.

Hunters will become the Hunted… Sophia liked the sound of that, and the meaning it portrayed, that anyone who goes about hurting people would bring that same hurt upon themselves via an avenging team of Elite warriors.

Sophia smiled proudly. That was Neil, alright. And Scott, Connor, and Victoria too. She could tell that even this Rudolph guy lived and fought by this code.

“How many of you were in this task force unit?” The judge’s voice brought Sophia’s attention back to the tablet and the trial on full display there.

“There were twelve of us, Your Honor,” the blond male said, sounding sadder on the word ‘were’ Sophia thought, and she knew that he was thinking about fellow Amaroks that weren’t with them anymore – those that had either died or disappeared.

“Now, to the best of your knowledge Lieutenant Miller, explain to us the type of tasks that were expected of you and your unit? What orders did you typically receive?”

“We were mostly tasked with specialized infiltration and eradication of target areas and enemy threats to the Lucian pack and its territory.” Sophia saw the dejection in Neil’s expression and by the way his shoulders sagged ever so slightly. It was definitely not something he was proud of. “Or that was what we thought, Your Honor.”

“Explain,” he demanded simply.

There was a hint of despondency in Rudolph’s expression as well now. “We had later come to the realization that it wasn’t dangerous spies and pack enemies that we had been ordered to eradicate, but a rare – and now almost extinct – subspecies of the werewolf breed. The moment this had become clear to us, that we hadn’t been protecting our pack at all, but that we had been committing genocide all along, our whole team revolted and had to go into hiding to avoid prosecution for desertion, and disobeying direct orders from the Alpha, Thorin Tibald.”

Sophia remembered that Scott had pretty much summed up the same to her when she’d called him a few minutes ago, but when she looked at Neil, it appeared as though he wanted to be sick right then and there at what the blond male had just said about what they had been ordered to do.

She felt her heart ache for him, feeling the overwhelming urge to walk over there and hug him, but obviously, she couldn’t, so instead, she just felt her frustration climb a notch or two.

“So Captain De Boule was the one who issued the orders to your unit, and acted with you?” the judge asked, eyeing Neil calculatingly for a moment.

“He always went in ahead of us,” the blond warrior said, smiling almost at the memory. “And yes, he relayed direct orders from Thorin to us, Your Honor.”

“So, Captain De Boule had been aware the whole time that he had been ordering you to commit acts that pertained to the performance of an ethnic cleansing of these innocent werewolves?”

What? No! That simply couldn’t be true…

Rudolph seemed to be thinking the same thing as Sophia by the look of outrage on his face. “No, Judge Omen, Captain De Boule was the first one who realized that what we had been ordered to do and led to believe had been barbaric and wrong…”

Everyone was dead silent in the courtroom. Clearly, all of them had believed up to this point that Neil had been guilty of all the crimes they had accused him of, and she could see the absolute puzzlement in every expression there.

“Your Honor,” Rudolph said, pinning the judge with a stare. “If it hadn’t been for Captain De Boule, we would still have been out there following Thorin’s orders and murdering innocents. If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have been able to defect and go into hiding without being caught either. Without him,” Rudolph said, looking at Neil with veneration in his striking blue eyes, “the whole unit, as well as others, and not to mention an entire subspecies of werewolves, would have been dead by now…”

Sophia let out a long breath of blissful relief when she saw that everyone in the courtroom was clearly convinced of Neil’s innocence then.

Oh, she could kiss this Rudolph Miller right now! She even vowed that she would if she ever saw him without a tablet screen in front of her. He’d saved Neil, and Sophia felt her heart soar in the pure elation of the moment--the realization that he wasn’t going to be executed anymore.

Because it was as clear as day. Black and white. Neil was the hero, and her father the villain in this story. And everyone could see that now.