Chapter 367
I followed the Blackwood warriors into the drawing room. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, choking out the morning sun. In the center of the room, seated on a high-backed armchair that resembled a throne built for a ghost, was Katherine.
She looked small. The vibrant, vicious girl who had tried to burn my skin with silver was gone. In her place sat a woman in a plain gray travel dress, her face scrubbed clean of makeup, dark circles bruising the skin beneath her eyes. Her scent — once a cloying mixture of expensive perfume and arrogance — had soured into something bitter, like burnt sugar.
“You came,” she said, her voice raspy. She didn’t stand.
“You said you had something of my mother’s,” I replied, keeping my distance. The two warriors flanked me, a silent wall of muscle and lethal intent.
Katherine’s lips curved into a humorless smile. She reached to the small table beside her and picked up a faded velvet box. With trembling fingers, she snapped it open.
Inside lay a silver brooch shaped like a crescent moon, embedded with a milky moonstone.
“The Hyde betrothal brooch,” she whispered, staring at it. “Braydon stole it from your mother’s things years ago. He kept it hidden in a safe in his bedroom. He told me it was a family heirloom he was saving for the right moment.”
A wave of nausea rolled through me. Braydon had been planning to pin that on me while he was in her bed.
“Why give it to me now?” I asked, my voice cold.
“Because I’m tired, Adella.” She looked up, and her eyes were hollow. “I hated you. I hated you with every fiber of my being because even when he was with me, he was thinking of you. I was just a placeholder. A warm body to pass the time until he could break you enough to force you into submission.”
She pushed the box across the table toward me. “Take it. It’s yours. It always was.”
I looked at the shimmering stone. It was beautiful, but it felt tainted — not like a piece of my mother, but like a shackle Braydon had forged.
“No,” I said softly.
Katherine blinked. “What?”
“I don’t want it. It has been in his hands. It carries his obsession.” I took a step back, feeling the bond with Dallas hum quietly at the back of my mind — a warm, golden tether anchoring me to reality. “Keep it, Katherine. Or throw it in the river. I have everything I need.”
She stared at me, confusion warring with a strange sort of awe. “You really don’t care about the status, do you? The Hyde legacy… it means nothing to you.”
“It means pain,” I corrected. “And I am done with pain.”
I turned to leave, signaling the warriors.
“Wait.” Katherine’s voice cracked. “What is it like? To be loved by a real Alpha? Does it… does it feel like a cage?”
I paused at the door and looked back at the woman who had once been my tormentor — now just a broken doll in a dead house.