Chapter 146

Chapter 146:

I had only left him once, briefly, before he came for me at the Manor. Or did he mean when I went to my room just now? But the raw agony in his voice suggested a wound far older and far deeper than a few hours of separation.

“I’m here,” I whispered, unsure if he could even hear me. “Dallas, let go. You’re hurting me p>

He didn’t let go. If anything, his grip tightened, pulling me down until I was forced to crawl onto the bed to ease the tension on my arm.

“Stay,” he grunted — the command stripped entirely of its Alpha authority, leaving only a naked plea.

I looked at his face. The dark lashes against his cheekbones. The slight tremor in the hand that held me captive. The terrifying Lycan King was gone. In his place was a man haunted by a ghost I couldn’t see.

My heart, traitorous and soft, ached for him.

𝘍𝗈𝗅l𝗈𝗐 us on.сom

I stopped fighting. The exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours — the assault, the storm, the revelation in the attic — crashed over me all at once.

“Okay,” I breathed, barely audible. “I’m staying p>

I lay down on top of the covers beside him, careful to keep a sliver of distance between our bodies, though his hand remained shackled around my wrist like a lifeline. The heat radiating from him was immense — a furnace that chased away the chill of the storm beyond the glass.

Dallas let out a long, shuddering breath, his features finally relaxing, as though my proximity was the only sedative that worked.

I stared up at the grey ceiling, listening to the rain lash against the windows, trapped in the grip of a monster who dreamed of loss. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like prey.

I felt like the only thing keeping the darkness at bay.

Adella’s POV

Waking up felt like surfacing from the bottom of a deep, warm ocean. For the first time in years, my body didn’t ache with the tension of sleeping with one eye open. There was no cold draft, no fear of a locked door being kicked in. There was only heat — solid, encompassing heat.

I shifted, blinking against the pale grey light filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and realized with a jolt that the heat wasn’t coming from a blanket.

It was a man.

Dallas was wrapped around me like a vice. My back was pressed flush against his chest, his arm a heavy bar of iron across my waist, pinning me to the mattress. His breathing was slow and deep, the rhythm vibrating against my spine — but the moment I tried to inch away, that rhythm shattered.

His grip tightened instantly, not enough to bruise, but enough to make escape impossible.

“No,” he rumbled, the sound resonating through my bones. It wasn’t the word of a man waking from sleep; it was a growl torn from the throat of a beast.