Chapter 267

Chapter 267:

He lunged—not at me, but at the door. He seized the handle and slammed it shut, plunging the room back into near-total darkness.

“Braydon!” I threw my weight against the wood, but it didn’t move.

I heard the scrape of heavy objects being dragged across the wet grass outside. He was barricading the door.

“Think about it, Adella!” he shouted through the thick wood, his voice muffled but perfectly clear. “Think about who really holds the key to your life. When you’re ready to beg, maybe I’ll come back p>

𝘛𝗿𝘦𝗻d𝗶n o𝗇 ѕ.𝗰𝗼m

“Let me out!” I pounded on the door until my fists ached. “You can’t do this p>

The only answer was the roar of a car engine turning over. I slid down the length of the door to the cold dusty floor, listening as the sound of tires on gravel dissolved into the storm, until there was nothing left but the howling wind and the silence of my tomb.

The roar of Braydon’s engine faded into the storm, leaving behind a silence heavier than the stone walls enclosing me. The darkness was absolute, pressing against my eyes, thick with the smell of old turpentine and the damp chill of the ocean. I curled my knees to my chest and shivered on the dusty floorboards, my heartbeat a lonely, frantic drum in the quiet.

Dallas. Please. Find me.

The thought was a prayer, not a projection. I had no wolf to send it through, no bond to carry it. Just desperate hope, bouncing around the hollow of my skull, going nowhere.

If I had a wolf, I could have summoned him. I could have felt him. But I was human in all the ways that made me vulnerable, and broken in all the ways that mattered to their world.

Braydon was right, in the worst possible sense. He had bought me—traded Silas’s debt for my freedom, only to lock me in a different cage. The realization sent bile rising in my throat. I wasn’t a person to any of them. I was currency.

Crash.

The sound of tearing metal shattered the silence, coming from high on the wall.

I scrambled back into the corner as the heavy blackout curtains were ripped down, rod and all. Moonlight flooded the room, illuminating a shower of glass shards raining onto the floor.

A massive silhouette crouched on the windowsill, framed by the jagged lightning outside.

Before I could scream, the figure dropped to the floor with a heavy, predatory thud that shook the floorboards. The air in the room shifted at once. The stale scent of dust was obliterated by a powerful, intoxicating wave of ozone, rain, and cedar.

“Adella p>

His voice was raw, vibrating with a terrifying mixture of relief and fury. He crossed the room in a blur and dropped to his knees in front of me.

“I’m here,” I choked out, my hands finding the lapels of his soaked jacket. “I’m here p>