Chapter 182
Chapter 182:
I stood in the center of my penthouse, a bottle of Macallan clutched in a hand that wouldn’t stop shaking. The city lights of New York bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows — indifferent and distant — but all I could see was the hospital room. The sterile white walls. The way her small, pale hand had gripped his.
“I love you p>
The words echoed in the cavern of my skull, louder than the storm raging outside. She hadn’t whispered them to me. She had looked at Braydon Hyde — that spineless, manipulative coward — and poured her soul out to him.
She chose him! Ragnar roared in my head, his voice a jagged tear through my psyche. After we pulled her from the dark! After we breathed life back into her lungs! She chose the weakling!
A guttural roar ripped from my throat. I hurled the bottle across the room.
It smashed against the far wall, amber liquid exploding like blood. It struck the framed photograph I had taken of her months ago — Adella, standing under the moonlight, looking at me with shy curiosity. The glass shattered, spiderwebbing across her face and distorting her beauty into something broken and jagged. Just like us.
“Why?” I choked out, the word scraping against a throat raw from river water and screaming silence.
I overturned the heavy oak coffee table with a single shove, sending books and crystal tumblers crashing to the marble floor. My chest heaved, every breath a struggle against what felt like fluid filling my lungs. I was burning up, my skin on fire, yet I couldn’t stop shivering.
𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘯
I stumbled toward the fireplace. Above it hung a massive, gilded mirror. I looked into it and saw a stranger — my hair plastered to my skull with river muck, my eyes wild and bloodshot, my expensive suit ruined beyond saving. I looked like a monster. A failed King who couldn’t even keep his own Mate.
Break it, Ragnar snarled. Destroy the weakness.
I grabbed a heavy crystal lamp and swung it with everything I had left.
The mirror exploded. Shards of silver rained down onto the mantle and floor, reflecting a thousand fractured versions of my misery. The exertion drained the last of my adrenaline. My knees buckled, and I collapsed onto the leather sofa, the room spinning violently.
Darkness clawed at the edges of my vision. The heat consuming my body was unbearable now, a fever eating me alive from the inside out.
Then the front door burst open.
“Dallas p>
The voice was sharp and commanding — not a question, but a summons.
I didn’t lift my head. I knew that tone. Augusta Marshall. My aunt. The Pack Elder.
Her heels clicked sharply on the marble, faltering only for a moment as she took in the devastation of my home. The smell of expensive scotch and river water hung heavy in the air.
“Goddess above,” she whispered, her presence looming over me. She placed a cool hand on my forehead, and I flinched — the touch agonizing against my fevered skin. “You’re burning up. The bond… Dallas, what happened p>
“She loves him,” I rasped, my eyes fixed on the ceiling, refusing to look at her. “I heard her, Aunt. I saw her holding his hand p>