Chapter 341

I let out a shaky breath and closed the gap, wrapping my arms around his waist. The moment my body pressed against his, the tension drained out of him. He buried his face in the crook of my neck and inhaled deeply, grounding himself in my scent.

“I’m not a prisoner,” I murmured into his shirt.

“Never,” he vowed against my skin. “You are my Queen.”

We stood there for a long time, the city lights watching us like a million silent spectators. The anger and violence of the street below felt miles away. But as Dallas pulled back, his expression shifted. The raw vulnerability hardened into something sharper, more calculated.

“We need to be ready,” he said, his tone moving from lover to leader.

“Ready for what? Braydon?”

“Braydon is an insect. I crushed him today — he won’t return,” Dallas said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. He walked to the window and looked out at the dark horizon, his reflection in the glass grim. “I’m talking about the real threat. My grandmother. Gigi.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning ran down my spine. “Gigi Marshall?”

“She’s returning from Europe next week,” Dallas said without turning around. “She is old school. She believes in bloodlines, in power, in the purity of the Lycan strain. She will look at you and see a weakness — a stain on our history. She will try to break us, Adella.”

I walked up behind him and placed a hand on his rigid back. I could feel the muscles bunching beneath his shirt. He was already preparing for war, ready to shield me from his own family.

But I was done being the victim. I was done being the girl who needed saving from Alphas like Braydon or matriarchs like Gigi. If I was going to stand beside the Alpha King, I had to be strong enough to earn the ground beneath my feet.

Dallas turned, his eyes searching mine for fear.

I didn’t give him any.

“She can think what she wants,” I said, my voice steady — surprising even myself. I straightened my spine, channeling every ounce of dignity my mother had instilled in me. “I am your Mate. I am an Everett. Let her try.”

A slow, dark smile spread across Dallas’s face, pride warring with possessiveness. He pulled me close again, his kiss searing a promise onto my lips.

We were a united front now — a fortress no one could breach.

Or so we thought.

Adella

The morning sun filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, casting long, lazy beams of light across the tangled white sheets. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the knot of anxiety in my chest had loosened. The air in the master bedroom was thick with our mingled scents — my own soft notes of moonflowers and rain entwined with Dallas’s overpowering aroma of ozone, crushed pine, and the deep, earthy musk of a satisfied Alpha.