Chapter 188

Chapter 188:

She thinks I’d be better off.

The words echoed in the empty penthouse, bouncing off the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a city I ruled but suddenly felt no connection to. My hand trembled — not from the fever boiling my blood, but from a rage so ancient, so primal, it felt as though my bones were snapping all over again.

“Better off,” I rasped, the sound tearing at my raw throat.

I hurled the phone across the room. It smashed into the liquor cabinet, shattering a bottle of amber whiskey that rained down onto the marble floor like liquid fire.

р𝘰𝘱𝘂𝗅a𝗋 s𝗍𝗈𝗋𝘪eѕ 𝗈n

She wants him, Ragnar snarled in my head, pacing the cage of my mind. She chooses the coward. She chooses the weakling.

“No,” I growled, gripping the edge of the sofa until the leather groaned beneath my fingers. A violent cough seized me, bending me double. I hacked until I tasted copper, my chest burning as if I had swallowed broken glass. The pneumonia was setting in fast, my body fighting a war on two fronts — the infection ravaging my lungs and the severance tearing at my soul.

If she wouldn’t choose me — if she was too confused, too broken, or too blinded by some misplaced sense of loyalty to that Hyde trash — then I would choose for her.

I closed my eyes and reached through the mental static to find my Beta.

Duncan.

The connection snapped into place instantly. Alpha? I’m at the hospital. The doctors say—

I don’t care what the doctors say, I cut him off, my mental voice icy and stripped of the pain ravaging my body. Prepare Adella’s discharge papers. Now.

A pause stretched on the other end — a hesitation that would have cost a lesser wolf his rank. Sir, she’s still recovering. And you… you need medical attention yourself.

I want her out of that medical center and brought here, I commanded, pushing the Alpha tone through the link until I felt Duncan submit. To the Penthouse. Not Hyde Manor. Here. You have one hour.

Understood, Alpha, Duncan replied, his tone clipped and professional.

I severed the link and slumped back against the cushions, staring at the destruction around me. The whiskey mixed with shards of glass on the floor, glistening in the morning light like a war zone.

Good. It matched the ruin inside me.

By the time the sun began to dip below the skyline — painting the city in bruised purples and blood oranges — Duncan had driven me to the hospital. The journey was a blur of pain and purpose. And then I was standing outside her door.

Every breath was a labor. My skin felt too tight, fever-hot and raw to the touch. I had refused the IVs. Refused the healers. The only medicine I needed was on the other side of this door.

I didn’t knock. I had no patience for pleasantries.

I pushed it open.