Chapter 17

Chapter 17:

I could still feel the phantom pressure of Dallas’s body caging me against the bookshelf. I could still smell him—ozone, cedar, and that terrifyingly addictive current of raw power. For a moment back there, when his eyes had darkened to pools of obsidian, I had been certain he was going to bite me. Not as a contractual gesture, but as something else entirely.

Something primal.

I shifted in the leather seat, my hands trembling in my lap. Dallas sat beside me, staring straight ahead, one hand resting with practiced ease on the steering wheel. He looked composed—the perfect image of the billionaire Alpha—but the air around him crackled with a residual charge that raised the hair along my arms.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “You said ‘home,’ but I don’t have a home p>

Dallas didn’t look at me immediately. He signaled a turn and guided the car onto a private, winding road that cut deep into the mountains. The trees here were ancient, their branches weaving together overhead into a canopy that swallowed the afternoon sun whole.

“Moonstone Creek,” he said.

The name hit me like a fist to the chest. All the air left my lungs in a sharp, involuntary gasp.

“No,” I choked out, panic clawing at my throat. “That’s impossible. Moonstone Creek was destroyed. The Rogues—the Hyde family absorbed the territory years ago. There’s nothing there but ruins p>

Memories I had kept locked away for a decade surged forward all at once—smoke, screams, the smell of burning timber, and the lifeless eyes of my mother. Moonstone Creek wasn’t a place on a map anymore. It was a graveyard.

𝘋𝗂scоve𝗿 𝘯e𝘄 𝘴𝘁о𝗿і𝘦ѕ 𝗈𝗇

“It was destroyed,” Dallas said, his voice low and steady as distant thunder. “But I bought the land six years ago. I rebuilt it p>

I stared at his profile, genuinely stunned. “You? Why would Dallas Marshall want a decimated territory in the middle of nowhere p>

“Because it is secure,” he said simply, finally glancing at me. His gaze was intent, unhurried, stripping away my defenses one layer at a time. “And because no one—especially Braydon Hyde—would dare set foot on my private soil p>

He reached across the center console. I flinched instinctively, but he didn’t pull back. His large, warm hand closed over my icy ones, engulfing them completely. The heat from his skin seeped into my bones, quieting the screaming panic in my head with an ease that should have frightened me.

“You are safe with me, Adelia,” he said. “I will burn the world before I let anything hurt you again p>

I wanted to pull away—to remind myself that promises were pretty lies men told before they broke you. But looking into his eyes, I couldn’t find the deception I was searching for.

Twenty minutes later, the trees broke open and the estate came into view.

It was nothing like the rustic pack house I remembered from childhood. This was a fortress of glass, dark stone, and heavy timber, cantilevered over the edge of a cliff like a predator surveying its territory. It overlooked the valley where my parents’ village once stood—now lush and deeply green, the land quietly reclaiming the scars the fire had left behind.