Chapter 27
Chapter 27:
Rain lashed the windows like gravel, and thunder shook the foundations of the manor. I sat on the bottom step of the grand staircase, the diamond bracelet clutched in my fist until the metal bit into my palm. I felt hollowed out—a fool for thinking a fairytale could exist for a girl without a wolf.
No Pack. No home. No one to take you in again.
For ten years I had believed that was true. For ten years I had been grateful for scraps. Now, sitting alone in a house that wasn’t mine, waiting for a man who might never return, I wondered whether anything had changed at all.
The heavy oak front doors burst open with a violence that made me flinch backward.
Wind and rain swirled into the foyer, soaking the expensive rugs. A figure stood in the threshold, silhouetted by a fork of lightning that tore the sky open behind him.
He was drenched. His suit was ruined, plastered to his frame, water streaming from his hair onto his broad shoulders. But it was his energy that stole my breath. The cold, distant King had vanished. In his place stood something rawer—a creature of pure, volatile instinct barely contained within a human shape.
He stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him with a boom that shook the walls.
𝗝оіn о𝗎𝗋 𝗰𝗼m𝗆𝘂ո𝘪𝗍𝗒 𝗈𝘯
He didn’t survey the room. He didn’t glance at the storm still visible through the windows. His eyes—glowing molten gold in the low light—found me instantly and locked on. They weren’t filled with the indifference I had feared.
They were burning.
He hadn’t left to attend to business. He hadn’t left because he didn’t care. He had been out there in the storm, fighting something—or fighting himself.
And now he was back.
I looked down at the bracelet in my hand, then back at him. Maybe Braydon was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t just a signature to this man.
But what was I to him? A contract? A possession? Or something more?
For the first time, I realized I didn’t know. And for the first time, I found that I desperately wanted to.
Dallas
The storm outside was nothing compared to the inferno raging inside my chest.
I kicked the heavy oak door shut behind me, the boom reverberating through the silent foyer like a gunshot. Rain dripped from my hair and soaked into the collar of my ruined suit, but I couldn’t feel the cold. I could only feel the fire.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Ragnar was throwing himself against the bars of his cage with a violence that blurred my vision. He didn’t want reason. He didn’t want explanations. He wanted blood—specifically the blood of the cur who had dared to put his hands on what belonged to us.
I strode past Adelia without looking at her. If I looked at her now, I would lose the last shred of control I was clinging to. I needed to drown the beast before I did something irreversible.
I stormed into the study, snatched the crystal decanter from the desk, and poured the whiskey straight down my throat without bothering with a glass. It burned, but it wasn’t enough. It was like throwing a cup of water onto a forest fire.
“Dallas p>