Chapter 366
Hemmings didn’t flinch. He bowed slightly, his eyes fixed on me. “Miss Everett. I come with a message from Miss Katherine.”
“Get out,” Azalea snapped.
“She is leaving,” Hemmings continued, ignoring her. “She is to be sent to the rehabilitation colonies in the north by sunset. She requests a brief audience with you before she departs.”
“Absolutely not,” Azalea said, her hands curling into fists. “She’s a lunatic who tried to burn Adella with silver. Tell her to rot.”
“She wishes to return something,” the butler said, his voice devoid of emotion. “An item she claims belonged to your mother. She says it is time it went back to its rightful bloodline.”
The air left my lungs. My mother.
“It’s a trap,” Azalea hissed, turning to grab my arm. “Adella, don’t listen to him. She wants to hurt you one last time.”
“I have to go,” I whispered, the decision forming before I had even processed the danger. “I need to see it, AZ. I need to see her finished.” I looked at Hemmings. “Tell her I’ll be there in an hour.”
Twenty minutes later, I stood in the black-and-white marble foyer. Two massive Blackwood warriors in dark suits — the kind that barely concealed their lethal nature — flanked the elevator.
Azalea was pacing behind me, muttering curses, but she had stopped trying to physically restrain me once I promised to bring the guards.
I pulled out my phone and typed a quick message to Dallas.
Me: Heading to the Parrish townhouse. Katherine wants to return something of my mother’s. I have two warriors with me.
The reply came instantly.
Dallas: I saw your location ping. Heart rate elevated. Explain.
Me: She’s leaving today. Sent to the colonies. I need to do this. To close the book.
A moment of silence. Then three dots appeared, disappeared, and appeared again.
Dallas: I’m tracking your location. You have forty minutes. Not a second more. If you’re not out of that house by then, I’m coming in. And if she so much as looks at you wrong, there won’t be a colony for her to go to. Understood?
I stared at the screen. It wasn’t a request — it was an Alpha’s command, wrapped in the terrifying, beautiful intensity of a mate’s protection. It didn’t feel like a cage. It felt like a warm, heavy blanket draped over my shoulders.
Me: Forty minutes. I’ll be safe.
Dallas: You’d better be.
I locked the screen and slipped the phone into my pocket. Even without the bond, I could feel him there — watching through the tracker in my necklace, monitoring my every move. A silent sentinel, miles away but never absent.
I looked at the warriors and nodded. The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped inside, ready to face the ghost of my past.
The interior of the Parrish townhouse smelled of stale lilies and old dust — a sharp contrast to the crisp, ozone-charged air outside. It was the scent of a house that had already died, even if the people inside were still breathing.