Chapter 354
Beside me, Dallas was a statue carved from tension. The air in the car was thick, saturated with the scent of ozone and cedar — the smell of a storm about to break. His Lycan aura bled out, uncontrolled and raw. He stared out the window, his jaw clenched so tight I worried his teeth might shatter.
I didn’t speak. Instead, I reached across the center console and covered his fist with my hand.
The reaction was instantaneous. The sparks of the mate bond danced across my skin, a comforting electric hum that seemed to ground him. His hand turned over, gripping mine with a desperation that made my heart ache.
“It isn’t over, Adella,” he said, his voice rough, like gravel grinding together. “The lie about the stairs — that was just the beginning.”
I squeezed his hand. “What do you mean?”
He turned to look at me, his eyes swirling with a mixture of gold and black. “Kaelen didn’t just pay Seraphina to leave. He set up a trust — a blind trust that I only found traces of last week.” He paused, swallowing hard. “She was pregnant when she left, Adella. Not with the baby she claimed I killed, but with another. A year later.”
My breath hitched. “A child?”
“A daughter,” Dallas confirmed, the word heavy with disgust. “Her name is Cassia. And she isn’t just out there in the world somewhere — Kaelen moved her into the Marshall Group three years ago. She works in the Treasury Department under a falsified identity. She is a ghost in my own company.”
The implication hit me like a physical blow. Kaelen hadn’t just wanted to banish Dallas — he had planted a seed of destruction to ensure that even from the grave, he could challenge his son’s reign. A half-sister, hidden in the financial heart of the Pack, waiting to strike.
“We have to remove her,” I said, my voice steady despite the racing of my heart.
“I will tear her out root and stem,” Dallas growled, his canines lengthening slightly. “But doing so publicly will raise questions. The Board, the Council — they will demand proof of her lineage. It will be a scandal that could fracture the Pack.”
I looked at him, and suddenly the pieces clicked into place. We needed a shield — someone whose authority was so absolute that no one would dare question the purge.
“Call Gigi,” I said.
Dallas recoiled as if I had slapped him. “What? Adella, you saw her. She is the reason I was tortured for ten years. She is—”
“She is a weapon, Dallas,” I interrupted, leaning closer, my eyes locking with his. “Think about it. For twenty years, she mourned a lie. She protected Kaelen’s memory because she believed he was a man of honor. Now she knows he played her for a fool. She knows he made her the villain in her own grandson’s life.”
I tightened my grip on his hand. “She doesn’t want peace right now. She wants blood. She wants to destroy Kaelen’s legacy just as much as you do. Use that.”
Dallas stared at me for a long moment, the rage in his eyes cooling into calculation. He saw it — the strategic brilliance of turning the matriarch’s grief into our sword.