Chapter 523

Beg me. Crawl back to my side.

Dallas’s guttural demand echoed in the freezing air of the garage. He didn’t just want my submission; he wanted absolute, degrading ownership. He was holding my parents’ legacy hostage, and the only currency he seemed to accept was complete surrender.

I closed my eyes, a cold, hollow resolve settling over my heart. If my flesh was the only bargaining chip I had left to save the Everett Trust, then I would pay it. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, pulled a tube of red lipstick from my purse, and carefully reapplied it. I wasn’t a Luna anymore. I was a weapon about to be sacrificed.

I stepped out of the car and marched back to the private elevator.

Duncan Whitaker didn’t try to stop me when the brushed steel doors slid open at the penthouse. The Beta simply looked at me with exhausted, sorrowful eyes as I pushed past him and shoved the heavy oak doors of the study open.

Dallas was still in his wheelchair, his broad back to me as he stared out at the gray skyline. He stiffened instantly.

I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I walked straight toward him, shrugging off my coat and letting it fall to the thick carpet. My silk blouse clung to my skin as I stepped between his legs and straddled his lap. I gripped his broad shoulders and crashed my lips against his.

For one fleeting, agonizing second, he kissed me back. The frayed edges of our mate-bond ignited, sending violent sparks racing across my skin. He groaned, his large hands instinctively gripping my waist with a desperate, starving hunger.

But as I pressed myself flush against him, ready to surrender everything, the illusion shattered.

There was no physical surge. No burning Alpha heat pressing against me. The silver poison and the heavy cocktail of heart failure medications had completely ravaged his body. The invincible Lycan King was physically incapable of arousal.

The realization hit me like a bucket of ice water—but it hit him infinitely harder.

Dallas tore his mouth from mine, his chest heaving. With a sudden, violent shove, he pushed me off his lap. I stumbled backward, my heels catching on the rug, and crashed hard onto the floor.

He scrambled to adjust his dark cashmere sweater, his storm-gray eyes wide with raw, suffocating humiliation. The terrifying Alpha mask he wore had completely disintegrated.

“Did you really think I would stoop to taking your pity?” he snarled, his voice trembling as he desperately tried to rebuild his tyrannical walls. “I don’t want your wolfless charity, Adella. Get out.”

I sat on the floor, staring at the broken man in the wheelchair. The anger that had fueled me drained away entirely, replaced by a profound, heartbreaking pity.

“Is it that you don’t want to, Dallas?” I whispered, my voice cracking in the heavy silence. “Or is it that you can’t?”