Chapter 24
Chapter 24:
Panic surged through me, white-hot and electric—but I was no longer the girl who had fled the Hyde estate in a wine-stained dress. I drove my knee upward with every ounce of strength I had, slamming it into his groin with savage precision.
Braydon howled. His grip loosened just enough for me to wrench myself free and scramble backward, chest heaving. He doubled over, gasping, his face darkening toward purple.
“I’m going to kill you,” he wheezed, straightening with one hand raised to strike.
A sound like a swarm of furious hornets split the air.
Before Braydon could move, a blinding column of white light dropped from the sky, pinning him to the pier like an insect beneath a lens. I shielded my eyes and looked up to find a sleek, matte-black military-grade drone hovering in near-perfect silence above us.
“Illegal trespass on the sovereign territory of Alpha King Marshall,” a synthetic voice boomed from the machine, reverberating across the water. “The consequences will be absolute. Stand down p>
Braydon squinted into the light, fear momentarily swallowed by something that looked disturbingly like madness. “I don’t take orders from a machine!” he screamed at the sky. “She is my mate! This is pack business p>
He turned back to me, eyes wild, ready to finish what he had started.
And then the forest went silent.
𝗝𝗼iո 𝘵𝗁𝘦 c𝗼𝘮mun𝗂𝘵𝘺 at
The crickets stopped. The wind died. Even the water seemed to cease its quiet lapping against the pilings, as though the lake itself held its breath.
A growl rolled out from the treeline—low, vibrating, so deep it rattled my ribs from the inside. It wasn’t the growl of a wolf. It was the sound of something far older, far more dangerous. The sound of a tectonic plate shifting. The sound of a monster that had long since devoured its fear of the dark.
The temperature on the pier plummeted. My exhale clouded white in front of me.
Braydon froze, his hand suspended mid-air. The color drained from his face until it was the grey of old ash. He recognized that sound. Every wolf born under any moon recognized that sound.
From the shadows of the path, a figure emerged.
Dallas.
But not the man who had guided my hand gently over the parchment only hours ago. This was something else entirely—a titan of barely leashed violence. His suit jacket was gone, his dress shirt straining across shoulders that seemed to have expanded beyond anything a man should possess. He moved with a predatory grace that was almost architectural in its precision, each step deliberate, each movement inevitable.
It was his eyes that made my breath stop.
They were no longer grey. They burned molten gold in the gathering twilight, glowing with a feral, ancient hunger that had nothing human left in it.
Ragnar. His Lycan had risen.