Chapter 477
Footsteps echoed ahead. Panic spiked in my chest. I ducked into a small alcove, pressing myself behind a rack of hanging white lab coats just as two figures rounded the corner.
“You have to give him something else, Alistair!” Duncan Whitaker’s voice was raw, thick with a desperation I had never heard from the stoic Beta. “The painkillers aren’t working. He’s thrashing. Ragnar is howling for Adella so loudly that he’s hallucinating she’s in the room!”
“I can’t, Duncan,” Dr. Vance replied, his tone clinical but strained. “His Lycan heart is actively rejecting the LVAD. The artificial pump is the only thing keeping his blood moving. If I push any more heavy sedatives, his liver will completely fail. He will die.”
“He’s dying anyway!” Duncan hissed. “He’s letting the silver rot consume him because he thinks it’s the only way to keep her safe!”
“If his blood pressure drops another point, I am bypassing his Alpha’s Command and calling a human hospital,” Dr. Vance stated coldly.
Their footsteps faded down the hall, but I couldn’t move. The world tilted violently on its axis.
LVAD. Artificial heart. Silver rot.
The breath left my lungs in a silent, agonizing rush. He wasn’t cheating. He wasn’t parading Yara around because he wanted her. He was dying. Every cruel word, the public rejection, the frozen bank accounts, the threats — all of it was a meticulously crafted, suicidal stage play.
He had turned himself into a monster so I would run away. So I wouldn’t have to watch him wither and die.
The sheer, arrogant stupidity of his sacrifice crushed me. My resentment evaporated instantly, replaced by a tidal wave of devastating grief and guilt. I clamped both hands over my mouth and slid down the wall as silent, violent sobs wracked my body.
Suddenly, a massive shadow eclipsed the blue emergency light.
I flinched, looking up through my tears. Gamma Vance Decker stood over me like a ghost. He didn’t look angry that I had infiltrated the clinic. He looked utterly exhausted.
He crouched down, his massive frame filling the alcove. “He thinks hate is easier for you to carry than grief,” Vance whispered, his voice a rough, gravelly rasp.
I shook my head frantically, tears spilling down my cheeks. “He’s an idiot.”
“He is,” Vance agreed grimly. He glanced down the hall toward the heavy steel door at the far end of the corridor. “He’ll have my rank for this. He might even execute me for treason. But the side door to Suite 1 is unlocked.”
Vance looked back at me, his eyes burning with a desperate plea. “Go in there, Adella. Scream at him. Hit him. Do whatever it takes to make him realize he has a Mate worth fighting for. Because if you don’t, he won’t survive the night.”
I stared at the Gamma, the weight of his treason settling over me. He was risking his life to give me back mine.