Chapter 564
A feral roar tore through the modulator. Dallas threw his massive body between us. The blade plunged deep into his shoulder. The sickening sound of sizzling flesh filled the damp air, and a wisp of dark smoke curled from the wound.
With a guttural snarl of pure agony, Dallas swung his good arm. His fist connected with Mara’s jaw with the force of a battering ram. She crumpled to the wet grass and lay still.
Dallas dropped to his knees, clutching his smoking shoulder. He was suffocating, his chest heaving violently beneath the tactical gear as the silver poison raced through his veins.
I fell to the wet asphalt beside him, my hands trembling as I reached for his helmet. I unlatched the heavy visor and pulled it free.
The cold mist settled against his pale, sweat-drenched face. My husband. Dallas. His silver eyes were clouded with excruciating pain and the drugs I had fed him, but they locked onto mine with a desperate, shattered intensity that broke me open.
“Is he…” Dallas choked out, dark blood staining his lips. “Is he — mine?”
Tears spilled down my cheeks, washing away the anger and the doubt. “Yes. He’s yours, Dallas.”
A fractured breath escaped him — a sound caught somewhere between profound relief and absolute devotion. But our fragile moment was cut violently short.
Heavy boots pounded against the pavement. Weston and three Dire Guard Warriors materialized from the fog, weapons drawn.
“Boss!” Weston yelled, his eyes snapping to the smoking wound. He tapped his earpiece frantically. “Dosha’s trackers are two minutes out. They caught the scent of Lycan blood and silver. We need to move, now!”
“No!” I screamed as Weston seized Dallas by his uninjured arm and hauled his dead weight upright. “You can’t take him — he’s dying!”
“I have my orders to protect you both, Luna,” Weston said grimly. He pulled the pin on a smoke grenade and hurled it onto the path.
Thick gray smoke erupted around us, blinding me as Weston dragged my bleeding mate into the suffocating haze — leaving me kneeling alone in the mist, with a monster sleeping in the grass beside me.
Adella POV
The thick gray smoke from Weston’s grenade choked my lungs, but it couldn’t mask the sight of the dark, smoking wound on Dallas’s shoulder.
“Dallas!” I screamed, scrambling over the wet grass. Weston was hauling his massive, limp body toward the armored SUV, desperate to get the Alpha King to safety.
Before they could reach the doors, the roar of heavy engines tore through the mist. Headlights pierced the smoke from the north road. Dosha’s forces — the Crimson Paw Pack — had arrived.
Gunfire erupted instantly, shattering the SUV’s windows. Weston cursed, dropped low, and returned fire. The evacuation was dead. In that split second of chaotic crossfire, Dallas’s silver eyes snapped open. Driven by a primal, overwhelming instinct that defied the lethal silver burning through his veins, he violently shoved Weston aside. He staggered back through the gunfire, his massive frame becoming a living shield between my wolfless body and the deadly ambush.