Chapter 533
All my hatred, all my wounded pride, evaporated in a single heartbeat—replaced by a blinding, suffocating terror.
“I have to go back.” I scrambled to my feet, my heels slipping on the wet pavement. “I have to get back to him right now.”
Vance
The heavy bass of the club’s music did nothing to drown out the suffocating despair radiating from the booth.
I sat across from Dallas Marshall, watching my Alpha King stare blankly at the crystal glass of ice water Adella had thrown in his face. The droplets still traced slow paths down his jaw, but he didn’t move. He looked like a hollow shell—a warrior whose spirit had finally been broken by the agonizing pull of a severed mate-bond.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I reached into the inner pocket of my jacket and pulled out a small amber vial. It was a military-grade sedative from my days in the Dire Guard, strong enough to drop a rogue Lycan in seconds.
Beside me, Dr. Alistair Vance stiffened. His eyes darted to the vial, his face draining of color.
“What are you doing, Vance?” the doctor hissed, leaning in close. “Put that away.”
“I’m giving him peace,” I muttered, unscrewing the cap. “Your treatments are just prolonging his torture. Look at him, Alistair. The bond is tearing his mind apart while the silver eats his body. He needs to rest.”
“Are you insane?” Dr. Vance grabbed my wrist, his fingers digging in frantically. “His Lycan heart is rejecting the LVAD. His body is at its absolute limit. Any uncalculated sedative will cause respiratory arrest. It’s murder, Vance!”
I glared at the doctor. He was a healer, a man of science. He didn’t understand the mercy of the battlefield.
Using my superior strength as a Gamma, I shoved Dr. Vance hard. He tumbled backward into the deep crimson velvet cushions of the booth, temporarily stunned.
Without hesitation, I tipped the vial over Dallas’s untouched shot glass of tequila. A single drop of the amber liquid dissolved silently into the alcohol. I slid the glass across the mahogany table until it touched Dallas’s hand.
“For a moment’s peace, my King,” I said, my voice thick with rough loyalty.
Dallas blinked slowly, his storm-gray eyes shifting from the spilled water to the shot glass. He didn’t ask what was in it. He didn’t care. He simply stared at the amber-tinted liquor with the desperate exhaustion of a man who had fought far too long.
“To forget,” Dallas murmured, his voice barely a rasp.
His large, trembling hand wrapped around the glass, and he raised it to his lips.
My lungs burned as I burst through the heavy mahogany doors of The Onyx Club. The deep bass of the music still vibrated through the floorboards, but the atmosphere inside the VIP booth had shattered into pure chaos.
I froze, the breath knocked out of me.