Chapter 540
A breathless gasp escaped me. Dr. Vance had just declared Dallas permanently, irreversibly sterile to the world. Yet here, growing inside my womb, was the impossible. I was carrying the heir of a dying King.
The sharp ring of the encrypted black phone in the living room made me jump.
I shoved the test into my pocket and hurried out, picking up the receiver. “Hello?”
“You sound breathless, Adella,” Eleanor Gigi Marshall’s aristocratic voice clipped through the line, sharp and suspicious.
“I’m fine, Gigi,” I lied, willing my racing heart to slow. “Just a flu from standing in the freezing rain last night.”
“I do not take chances with the Queen’s health,” the Matriarch snapped. Her tone shifted, settling into the heavy, unquestionable weight of authority. “A car is waiting downstairs. You are going to Dr. Evans’s private clinic for a full medical workup. Immediately.”
My blood ran cold. If Gigi found out about the baby, she would lock me in a gilded cage to protect the bloodline. And Dallas—Dallas was so consumed by his own self-destruction that he might see this child as a fatal weakness he couldn’t afford to protect.
“I’ll be right down,” I forced myself to say.
I hung up the phone and rushed back to the bathroom. I knelt on the cold tiles and shoved the crushed cardboard box and the plastic test deep into the darkest corner of the cabinet beneath the sink, hiding them behind a row of bleach bottles. I had to protect this secret at all costs—even if it meant lying to the doctor who was about to examine me.
Dallas
The secret treatment suite in Dr. Evans’s private clinic felt less like a hospital room and more like a steel-and-glass tomb. The heavy dialysis machine beside my bed hummed a relentless, grating rhythm, pumping my blood through thick tubes to scrub the lethal silver from my veins.
“Give me the encrypted tablet, Duncan,” I rasped, my voice sounding like crushed gravel.
“No, Alpha,” Duncan replied, his tone unyielding as he stood at the foot of my bed. “Dr. Vance was explicitly clear. You must remain absolutely still. Your Lycan heart is barely functioning on the LVAD. Any spike in your heart rate could kill you instantly.”
I gritted my teeth and tried to push myself up against the pillows. My muscles screamed in protest. “I need to dismantle Braydon Hyde’s empire today. I need to sever every tie he has to Adella before my heart gives out completely. It’s the only way to ensure she’s safe when I’m gone.”
Duncan stepped forward, pressing a hand gently but firmly to my shoulder to keep me down. “You can’t protect her if you’re dead, Dallas.”
Deep within my mind, Ragnar let out a furious, caged snarl. The frustration of being a broken King—unable to even Mark or claim my Mate—was a poison far worse than the silver. I cursed under my breath and fell back against the mattress, staring at the sterile ceiling.