Chapter 251
Chapter 251:
I stood up, the heavy obsidian chair scraping against the floor behind me like a tombstone being dragged across stone. My office, usually a sanctuary of silence high above the city, suddenly felt too small to contain the storm brewing beneath my skin. I was halfway to the door, ready to tear the elevator shaft apart with my bare hands if it meant reaching her faster, when the double doors swung open.
Eleanor Marshall marched in, her cane tapping a rhythm that had once made grown men weak in the knees. Not me. Not today.
“You look like you’re about to murder someone, Dallas,” she observed, entirely unbothered, adjusting her tweed jacket. “Good. Use that energy. You need a wife, not a business merger p>
“Not now, Grandmother,” I snarled, my voice dropping an octave. The air around me vibrated with the force of my aura.
“Yes, now,” she countered, blocking my path with surprising agility for a woman of eighty. “I just met the most delightful creature downstairs. A little wolfless thing, but she had eyes like flint. She stood up to me. Do you know how rare that is? Everyone else in this building licks my boots p>
I paused. The beast in my head went quiet for a fraction of a second.
Adella.
Gigi sniffed disdainfully. “She’s wasting herself on some accountant in Financial. Ben, or Bob. Pathetic. She needs a wolf. She needs a King.” She poked my chest with one manicured finger. “If you had half the fire your grandfather did, you’d go down there and take what you want instead of brooding in this glass tower p>
A dark, twisted amusement curled in my gut, warring with my rage. Gigi was trying to set me up with my own Mate—completely unaware that the wolfless nobody she admired was the woman I had already claimed in every way but the public marking.
“You think I should go take her?” I asked, my voice dangerously soft.
“I think stability is boring,” Gigi said, her grey eyes gleaming. “Go cause a scene, Dallas. Remind this Pack who you are p>
𝘐𝘯𝘀𝘵a𝗇𝘵 𝘢сс𝖾ѕs o𝘯
“As you wish p>
I brushed past her and hit the elevator button. The doors slid open, and I stepped inside. As the numbers descended, I let the leash on Ragnar loosen—just enough to terrify.
When the doors opened on the sixth floor, the silence was absolute.
The open-plan office of the Financial Division usually hummed with the sound of keyboards and low conversation. Now it was a graveyard. My scent—ozone, crushed cedar, and impending violence—rolled out of the elevator like a physical wave. Heads bowed. The acrid tang of fear spiked from dozens of employees at once.
“Alpha King.” A man in a cheap suit stumbled toward me. Marcus Thorne, the division head. He was sweating. “We weren’t expecting p>
I walked straight past him without a glance, my eyes scanning the room.
Where is she?
There.
Faint, sweet, and terrified. The scent of Moonflower drifted from behind a large potted ficus near the restrooms, mingled with the smell of cheap cologne and anxiety.
I stalked toward the cubicle labeled Ben Carter.
The young man sitting there looked as though he might faint on the spot. He was human, trembling so violently that his glasses were sliding down his nose.