Chapter 390
Before Ragnar could even surface to brace for impact, the truck slammed into my rear quarter panel. The force was catastrophic. My heavy armored SUV spun out of control on the slick road, smashing through the steel guardrail as if it were paper.
Weightlessness consumed me for a terrifying second before the world became a violent centrifuge of shattering glass and crushing metal. We tumbled down the steep ravine, the roof caving in, airbags deploying in a cloud of suffocating white dust.
When the vehicle finally slammed into the base of a massive oak tree, the silence that followed was deafening — broken only by the hiss of the crushed radiator and the relentless rain.
Agony radiated through my body. Shattered ribs pierced my lungs, and my legs were hopelessly pinned beneath the mangled dashboard. My Lycan healing was sluggish, suppressed by the sheer trauma and the toxic amount of alcohol in my blood. I was bleeding out.
Then, in the fog between consciousness and oblivion, I heard her voice. Dallas. The echo of her pleading words from the gallery haunted me through the dark. Even now, even after what I had witnessed, my mind refused to let her go.
The betrayal was a venom far deadlier than my physical wounds. I gathered the last shred of my fading consciousness and forced myself back to the image — her in Braydon’s arms, her legs wrapped around him. I used it like a wall, a barricade against the part of me that still wanted to believe.
“Liar,” I rasped into the ruined cabin, and let the darkness take me.
Adelia POV
I had been calling Dallas for twenty minutes. Straight to voicemail, every single time. The knot in my stomach tightened with each unanswered ring.
I tried Duncan next. The phone rang four times before he picked up. The background noise was chaos — rain hammering against metal, shouted orders, the screech of twisting wreckage.
“Duncan!” I gasped. “Where is Dallas? Is he okay?”
A pause. Then Duncan’s voice came through, cold and clipped. “He’s fine. Just drunk. Needs space.”
“I can hear the sirens,” I said, my grip tightening on the phone. “That’s not ‘needs space.’ That’s an accident. Tell me where he is.”
“Don’t come looking for him, Adelia.” The venom in his tone was unmistakable — cold, deliberate, laced with accusation. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
The line went dead.
I stood frozen in the center of the living room, my breathing shallow and erratic. Duncan was lying. The hostility in his voice, the chaos in the background, Dallas not answering — none of it added up.
Trembling, I crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows. The storm was raging over the city, but my eyes were drawn to the distant coastline. There, cutting through the pitch-black night, was a cluster of flashing red and blue emergency lights.
My blood ran cold. That was the coastal road. The road leading away from Hyde territory.
I grabbed my keys and ran for the door.
Braydon
Three days. It had been three days since Dallas Marshall’s armored SUV was reduced to twisted metal on the coastal road.