Chapter 321

I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her. For the first time in decades, the constant, low-level rage that fueled my Lycan was quiet. I had my Queen. The war was over.

Buzz.

The sound was faint, but in the silence of the room, it hit like a gunshot.

I frowned, glancing at the nightstand. It wasn’t my personal phone, nor my business line. It was the ghost phone — a secure, encrypted device I used only for the darkest corners of my work. Only a handful of people had this number.

I picked it up. The screen’s blue light cut through the darkness.

Unknown Number: A King’s love, or a soldier’s debt? Tell her the truth about her mother, Marshall. Or I will. Let’s see if your Fated Mate still wants you when she learns your bond was built on a lie.

A low growl ripped from my throat before I could stop it. Ragnar surged forward, his vision bleeding into mine, turning the room red.

Braydon.

The rat was cornered, and now he was trying to bite.

My grip on the phone tightened until the casing creaked. He knew. He knew about Elara Everett. He knew that my obsession with the Everett bloodline hadn’t started with Adella — it had started years ago, with a woman who had saved a young, dying soldier in the mud, and the debt I had sworn to repay.

I looked back at Adella, sleeping so soundly. If she knew I had watched her for years — if she knew the history I had buried —

Destroy him, Ragnar snarled.

“I will,” I whispered to the darkness.

I pressed delete, erasing the message from the screen. I wouldn’t let his poison touch her tonight. She deserved one night of peace.

I would tell her. I would tell her everything tomorrow, in the light of day, on my own terms. I would make her understand that the debt might have brought me to her — but it was the bond that made me stay.

I set the phone back down, face down.

Then I slid under the covers and pulled Adella against my chest, burying my face in the crook of her neck. She stirred, murmuring my name in her sleep, and the sound was a balm to my frayed nerves.

But as I closed my eyes, the silence of the room felt different. It was no longer the silence of peace. It was the silence of a held breath before the plunge.

Adella

The silence of the penthouse was usually a comfort — a heavy velvet blanket that kept the world at bay. But as the first grey light of dawn bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, that silence felt fragile, like glass waiting to shatter.

I was awake before the vibration came. Lying in the circle of Dallas’s arms, listening to the steady, powerful rhythm of his heart, I should have felt safe. He was the Alpha King. He was my Mate. But happiness, I was learning, was terrifying. It felt like something stolen — something the universe would eventually demand back with interest.

Buzz.