Chapter 338
“And you think he’ll give you the truth?” Braydon scoffed, his hand shooting out to clamp around my upper arm. His grip was tight, bruising. “He’ll spin you a fairy tale about destiny and moonbeams. But look at the facts, Adella. The land transfer. The dead Rogues. You are a receipt for a debt paid in blood.”
“Let go of me!” I yanked my arm, but he was an Alpha and I was wolfless. My strength was a joke compared to his.
“I’m taking you home,” Braydon growled, his patience snapping. He began to drag me back toward his car. “Before you get swallowed whole by this family’s darkness.”
“I said let go!” I screamed, digging my heels into the pavement. “I belong with my Mate!”
The air pressure dropped instantly — not gradually, but like the vacuum before a thunderclap. The hairs on my arms stood up, and a scent slammed into me: heavy, suffocating, and intoxicating. Ozone. Crushed pine needles. The metallic tang of an approaching hurricane.
The glass doors of the private lobby didn’t simply open — they seemed to vibrate as a figure stormed through them.
Braydon froze. I felt his muscles lock up, his wolf sensing a predator far higher on the food chain before his human mind could catch up.
Dallas didn’t run. He moved with a terrifying, fluid speed that blurred the edges of my vision. One second he was at the doors; the next, he was a wall of heat and fury standing right beside us. He didn’t speak. He didn’t posture. He simply reached out and wrapped his hand around Braydon’s wrist — the one holding me.
The sound was wet and sickeningly loud, like a dry branch snapping underfoot.
“Argh!” Braydon shrieked, his knees buckling as Dallas crushed the bones in his wrist to powder. His grip on me vanished instantly.
Dallas shoved him back, sending Braydon sprawling onto the hood of his own sports car. Then Dallas was in front of me, shielding me from view — a living fortress of muscle and rage. A low, vibrating growl emanated from his chest, a sound so deep I felt it in my own teeth. Ragnar, his Lycan beast, was surfacing.
“Touch my Mate again,” Dallas said, his voice a jagged whisper that carried more violence than a scream, “and you lose the hand. Permanently.”
Braydon cradled his shattered wrist against his chest, his face pale and beaded with sweat. But even in pain, the serpent in him was alive. He looked past Dallas’s shoulder, locking eyes with me.
“Ask him!” Braydon shouted, his voice cracking with pain and malice. “Go ahead, King! Tell her! Tell her why her mother — the saintly White Wolf — signed over our territory! Tell her about the massacre your father ordered!”
Dallas stiffened. The muscles in his back turned to stone beneath his suit jacket.
“Is it a mate bond, Dallas?” Braydon spat blood onto the pavement, laughing deliriously. “Or is she just a political prisoner you’re keeping close to ensure the Council never finds the bodies? Does the great Alpha King really want a wolfless girl, or does he just need to silence the Everetts?”
The words hit me like physical blows. Political prisoner. Silence the Everetts.