Chapter 323
“I came to finish this, Braydon.” I didn’t sit. I stood ten feet away, keeping the distance of a stranger. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the wolf-tooth pendant he had given me for my sixteenth birthday. I tossed it. It landed on the gravel between us with a dull clink. “I am Dallas Marshall’s Mate. I belong to the Blackwood Pack now. You need to let me go.”
Braydon stared at the pendant, then laughed — a dry, humorless sound. He stood slowly, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
“Let you go? Adella, I’m the only one who ever truly held you.” He took a step forward, but I held my ground. “Do you know why your parents died? Do you know why the Rogues found your Pack that night?”
The air left my lungs. “What are you talking about?”
“I knew,” he whispered, a twisted smile playing on his lips. “I saw the scouts. I knew the attack was coming three days before it happened. And I didn’t tell my father. I didn’t sound the alarm.”
I stepped back, bile rising in my throat. “You let them die?”
“I did it for us!” he shouted, the madness flaring in his eyes. “You were too happy in your little world. I needed you to need me. I needed to be the one to pull you from the ashes. I made you an orphan so I could be your savior.”
“You’re a monster,” I choked out, tears of horror stinging my eyes. My hands shook uncontrollably. The boy I thought I knew was a murderer.
“We’re both monsters, Adella!” Braydon roared, pointing a trembling finger toward the city skyline, toward Marshall Tower. “You think your King is any different? You think it’s a coincidence he found you? That he just stumbled upon you in that bar?”
“Stop it,” I warned, though my voice wavered.
“He knew Elara Everett,” Braydon spat the words like a curse. “He knew your mother years ago. He’s been watching you, Adella. Since you were a child. He didn’t choose you because of fate. He chose you because of a debt.”
“Liar,” I whispered. But the denial felt hollow. Dallas’s intensity, his immediate obsession, the way he sometimes looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost.
Braydon stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. “Ask him. Ask him about the promise he made to a dying woman. His cage is just bigger than mine, little wolf. But it’s still a cage.”
I couldn’t breathe. The world was spinning, the sunlight too bright, the shadows too dark.
I didn’t wait for him to say another word. I turned and ran — ran until my lungs burned and the sour scent of Braydon Hyde was replaced by the exhaust fumes of the city. But I couldn’t outrun his words. They had already taken root in my heart, twisting around the bond I shared with Dallas, turning the golden thread of our connection into a noose.
I needed to get back to the tower. I needed to look Dallas in the eye.
And God help us both if Braydon was telling the truth.