Chapter 429
She looked at me, but she wasn’t seeing me. The worry, the desperation, the absolute focus in her beautiful eyes — none of it was for me. All of it was pouring toward another man.
Ragnar howled in pure, unadulterated agony, the pain of abandonment tearing my soul to shreds.
I wanted to pull her into my arms. I wanted to command her to stay. But the debt Braydon had just purchased with his life was too heavy to contest.
I looked at her and buried my shattered heart beneath a mask of absolute, freezing indifference. I didn’t reach out to steady her. I pulled my hand back and gripped the head of my cane.
“Go,” I said, my voice devoid of any emotion.
She didn’t hesitate. She turned and ran toward the ambulance, disappearing through the back doors just as they slammed shut.
I stood alone in the smoke and the wreckage. Then I turned my back on the sirens and dragged my crippled leg — and the ashes of my heart — into the dark.
The sterile, bleach-soaked air of the Blackwood Pack Medical Center’s VIP trauma wing couldn’t mask the metallic tang of Braydon’s blood drying on my skin. I sat frozen on the edge of a hard plastic chair, staring at the red light above the heavy double doors of the surgical suite.
Dallas stood a few feet away, leaning heavily on his cane, his massive frame rigid. A wall of ice had risen between us, built brick by brick with every tear I had shed for Braydon.
The waiting room doors suddenly flew open, shattering the heavy silence.
Victoria Hyde stormed in. The usually immaculate former Luna looked utterly unhinged. The scent of her expensive jasmine perfume was completely overpowered by the sharp, aggressive stench of a grieving she-wolf. Her eyes flashed a dangerous, feral gold as they locked onto me.
“You!” she shrieked. Her claws extended, slicing through the air as she lunged directly at my face.
I didn’t even have time to flinch. Dallas moved with terrifying, blinding speed. He eclipsed me entirely, his large hand snapping out like a steel vice to catch Victoria’s wrist mid-strike. A low, vibrating growl tore from deep within his chest — a pure, dominant Lycan warning that instantly dropped the temperature in the room.
Marcus Hyde rushed in a second later, grabbing his wife’s shoulders and hauling her back. “Enough, Victoria,” he barked, though his former Alpha gaze was fixed on me with cold, piercing accusation.
“It wasn’t an accident,” I choked out, my whole body trembling as I looked at Marcus. “The brakes were tampered with. They gave out completely on the straightaway.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed, his strategic mind instantly processing the implication.
Dallas didn’t let him speak. “The target was my wife,” Dallas stated, his voice a sheet of absolute, emotionless ice. “Your son was collateral damage.”
Victoria gasped, her face twisting in fresh outrage, but before she could scream again, the red light above the surgical wing clicked off.