Chapter 325

His voice sounded far away, as though he were shouting from underwater. The stress, the shock, the sheer agony of betrayal was too much for my body to hold. My legs gave way beneath me. I didn’t feel the impact of the floor. I only felt strong arms catching me before the darkness swallowed me whole.

Consciousness returned in waves, accompanied by the rhythmic, sterile beeping of a heart monitor.

I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to wake up. Waking up meant remembering. Waking up meant facing the King who had lied to me.

I was in the Pack’s medical center — I knew it by the smell of antiseptic and the hushed atmosphere. But I wasn’t alone. Voices drifted in from the corridor, muffled but audible through the thin veil of sleep.

“She’s stable, Alpha. It was just an acute stress reaction.” The doctor.

Then silence, followed by a voice I recognized. Duncan Whitaker — Dallas’s Beta and oldest friend, and the only person who didn’t fear Dallas’s wrath.

“You can’t keep doing this, Dallas,” Duncan’s voice was low and grim. “Look at her. You’re destroying her.”

“I was trying to protect her,” Dallas rasped. He sounded wrecked. Broken. “If she knows the truth about Elara — about what I did—”

“She already knows enough to hate you,” Duncan countered sharply. “Braydon filled in the blanks with poison. If you want to save this — if you want to keep your Mate — you have to lance the wound.” He paused, his tone leaving no room for argument. “You have to tell her the whole ugly truth, Dallas. About Elara. About the promise you made. About why you watched her for all those years. Everything. It’s the only way. Otherwise, you’ve already lost her.”

A heavy, shuddering sigh broke the silence. “I know,” Dallas whispered.

The darkness pulled at me again, dragging me back down. But this time I didn’t fight it. I let go, clutching onto one terrifying certainty: when I woke up, the secrets would finally end.

And I wasn’t sure if our love would survive the truth.

Dallas

The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor was a countdown to my execution.

I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair, elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly my knuckles turned white. The sterile scent of the Pack hospital — antiseptic, latex, and fear — clogged my senses, masking the one scent I desperately needed. Hers.

Adella lay in the hospital bed, her skin pale against the stark white sheets. She was awake. She had been for several minutes, her breathing shifting from the deep rhythm of sleep to the shallow, jagged cadence of panic. But she wouldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look at me.

“Fix this,” Ragnar growled in the back of my mind, pacing and clawing at the walls of my psyche, distressed by our Mate’s pain. “She thinks we are the enemy.”

“I know you’re awake, Adella,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended.

Her eyes fluttered open. The warmth that usually flooded her gaze when she looked at me was gone, replaced by a wall of ice.

“Duncan said you have to tell me the truth.” Her voice was weak, but the command in it was absolute.