Chapter 191
Chapter 191:
The word landed like a dagger wrapped in ice, designed to sever any hope I might have harbored. He was reducing the act of breathing life back into my lungs to a clause in a business agreement.
But I looked closer. I saw the way his jaw clenched, the way his knuckles turned white gripping the armrests. He wasn’t indifferent. He was terrified.
“Is that all it is to you?” I asked, taking a step closer. “A contract p>
“It’s what keeps you alive,” he countered, his voice hardening.
“I saw Braydon,” I said.
The air in the room grew instantly heavy, charged with the static of his Lycan aura. A low growl vibrated in his chest — involuntary, primal.
“I don’t want to hear his name,” Dallas snarled.
“You need to hear this,” I insisted, ignoring every instinct urging me to retreat. “He came to the hospital. He asked me to leave with him. He wanted to claim me p>
𝖳𝗿𝗲𝗇𝖽𝗶𝘯 oո.со𝗺
Dallas stood abruptly, his chair scraping violently against the floor. He looked ready to tear the world apart. “And I suppose you’re here to tell me you’re leaving? That you want the coward who stood on the bridge and watched you drown p>
“No,” I said firmly.
He froze.
“I rejected him, Dallas p>
The silence that followed was absolute. Dallas stared at me, his chest heaving with labored breaths, confusion warring with the anger in his eyes.
“I told him I could never be his Mate,” I whispered, my voice trembling with the weight of the truth. “Because when I fell… he didn’t jump. You did p>
For a single moment, the mask slipped. A flash of raw, agonizing hope crossed his face. He took a step toward me, his hand twitching at his side as though he wanted to reach out.
Then the walls slammed back up. He blinked, and the coldness returned — thicker than before. He didn’t believe me. Or perhaps he couldn’t afford to. He had convinced himself I was only here because I had nowhere else to go, because he had dragged me here himself.
“Your sentiment is noted,” he said, his voice flat, shutting down the conversation as cleanly as closing a file. He turned back to his screens, dismissing me like a subordinate. “Go to sleep, Adella. That is an Alpha command p>
I stood there a moment, watching his back. He was pushing me away with everything he had, hiding behind his title and his anger.
Then I turned and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar behind me.
He could build his walls as high as he wanted. But I had seen the cracks. And I wasn’t going anywhere.
The morning sun did nothing to warm the dining room of the penthouse. It only illuminated the stark, sterile luxury that Dallas called home. The shattered glass from the night before had been swept away, but the tension remained, hanging in the air like the static charge before a lightning strike.
I sat at the long marble table, staring at the thick folder Duncan had placed before me. The smell of strong coffee battled with the scent radiating from Dallas — a volatile mix of cedar, rain, and something metallic. Sickness.