Chapter 340
I spun around to face him before he could retreat to his office or pour a drink. I needed the wound cauterized now, or it would bleed me dry.
“Tell me,” I demanded, my voice trembling but loud in the silent room. “Was Braydon lying? Did your father order a massacre? Did my mother sell our land to buy your silence?”
Dallas stood in the center of the room and shrugged off his suit jacket. His movements were stiff and controlled — the movements of a man trying not to shatter everything he touched. He tossed the jacket onto a leather armchair and turned to face me, his eyes still swirling with that terrifying abyssal black of his Lycan.
“My father was a tyrant, Adella,” Dallas said, his voice low and rough, like gravel grinding together. “He wanted territory. He took it. Your mother — the White Wolf — did what she had to do to save the rest of her Pack. She signed the deed. That part is true.”
The air left my lungs. “So I am a receipt,” I whispered, backing away until my legs hit the edge of the sofa. “I’m just a loose end you’re tying up. A political prisoner to keep the Everetts in line.”
“No!”
The roar shook the glass walls. Dallas crossed the distance between us in a blur, stopping inches from my face. The heat radiating off him was intense, smelling of ozone and crushed pine needles — the scent of a storm about to break.
“Think, Adella!” he growled, his hands hovering near my shoulders as if he wanted to shake me or hold me, but didn’t dare do either. “If I wanted a political alliance, would I choose a wolfless girl from a fractured Pack? If I wanted power, I would have mated with an Alpha female from the Council. Choosing you — claiming you — weakens my standing with the traditionalists. It puts a target on my back.”
He reached out, his large, calloused hand cupping my jaw and forcing me to look into his eyes. The black was receding, revealing the stormy grey of the man beneath — raw with a desperation I had never seen before.
“There was no calculation, Adella. No deal. No debt.” His thumb brushed my cheekbone, wiping away a tear I hadn’t realized had fallen. “Only instinct. My wolf screamed the moment I saw you. You are not a liability — you are the only thing that keeps the monster inside me from burning this world to the ground.”
The confession hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
I looked at him — really looked at him. I saw the tension in his jaw, the fear hiding behind the rage. He wasn’t an Alpha King managing an asset. He was a man terrified of losing his other half. Braydon’s poisonous words dissolved, washed away by the undeniable pull of the bond humming between us.
“You didn’t have to break his wrist,” I whispered, my voice catching.
“I wanted to rip his head off,” Dallas admitted, his forehead coming to rest against mine. “He touched what belongs to me.”