Chapter 373
“Don’t I?” He gestured frantically between us. “Look at you. You’re different. Cold. Hard. That’s not the Adelia I loved. The Adelia I loved was sweet. She needed me. She looked at me like I was her whole world.”
“The Adelia you loved was a child,” I corrected him, feeling a pang of pity. “She was a wolfless girl who was terrified of her own shadow. You didn’t love me, Braydon. You loved that I was weak. You loved that I was a broken thing you could fix — a pet you could keep in a gilded cage.”
Braydon flinched as if I had slapped him. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” I said softly. “Dallas doesn’t need me to be weak to feel strong. He loves the wolf I am becoming. He stands beside me, not in front of me.”
The fight seemed to drain out of him all at once. His shoulders slumped, and a sob broke from his chest. Before I could step back, he surged forward and wrapped his arms around me.
It was a desperate, crushing embrace. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, inhaling deeply, searching for a girl who no longer existed.
I froze. My body went rigid. Every instinct screamed that this was wrong. His scent was suffocating, clashing violently with the cedar and rain that Dallas had left on my skin. I didn’t return the embrace. I stood with my arms at my sides, enduring his grief like a statue.
“Please,” he choked out against my neck. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me with nothing.”
“You have your life, Braydon,” I said, gently but firmly pushing him away. “You have a second chance. Don’t waste it.”
He stumbled back, his hands lingering on my arms a moment too long before dropping. Tears streamed down his face, but his eyes had changed. The sorrow was hardening into something brittle and dangerous, a manic hatred flickering in his gaze — directed not at me, but at the shadow of the man waiting inside.
“If he hurts you…” Braydon’s voice dropped to a whisper, trembling with a terrifying intensity. “I will kill him. I don’t care about the deal. I don’t care if his beast rips my throat out. I will kill him.”
A chill ran down my spine. He meant it. In his twisted, broken mind, he truly believed he could challenge a Lycan King.
I looked at him one last time — the boy I had once thought I would marry, now just a ghost haunting a dead garden.
“He won’t,” I said simply.
I turned my back on him and walked toward the manor without looking back, leaving him alone in the gathering dark.
Stepping back into the living room felt like surfacing for air. Dallas was standing exactly where I had left him, his back to the window. His dark eyes locked onto mine the moment I crossed the threshold.
“It’s done,” I exhaled, the weight of the past finally lifting from my shoulders.