Chapter 379

Me: Dallas, I’m sorry. I have to go. Victoria is dying. I’m going to St. Jude’s.

I hit send before I could second-guess myself, then stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the garage.

The reply came before the doors had even closed.

Dallas: STAY THERE. NOW.

The all-caps screamed off the screen. I could almost hear the fury behind it — could picture him slamming his fist on his desk, the wood splintering under the force. Before I could respond, my phone rang. I glanced at the screen. Dallas. I answered, my voice already trembling.

“Dallas, please—”

“Get back in that elevator.” His voice was ice, sharp enough to cut. “Do not get in that car. Do not go to that hospital. This is exactly what he wants.”

“She’s dying, Dallas. Victoria—”

“She has been dying for months, Adella. Every time he needs you, she has another crisis. This is a pattern. A manipulation. Can’t you see that?”

I gripped the phone, tears stinging my eyes. “What if it’s real this time? What if she’s actually dying and I don’t go? I couldn’t live with that, Dallas. I couldn’t.”

Silence on the other end. Heavy, crackling with barely restrained violence.

Then a sound I had never heard from him before — a ragged, frustrated breath. Not a growl. Something more human. More desperate.

“Then go.” His voice was rough and strained. “But you’re not going alone.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone, confused. Then, from the garage below, I heard it — the roar of an engine, tires screeching against concrete. Dallas’s SUV. He was already coming.

I stepped out of the elevator just as the black vehicle skidded to a halt in front of me. The window rolled down. Dallas’s eyes were wild, his jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack.

“Get in.”

I didn’t argue. I climbed into the passenger seat, and before my door was fully closed he was accelerating, tearing out of the garage and into the city streets.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t look at me. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles had gone white. But he was here. He had come.

For a moment, despite everything, I felt safe.

I had no idea we were driving straight into a trap.

Adelia POV

I sat on a cheap plastic bench, my fingers limply caught in Braydon’s desperate grip. The ICU hallway was a purgatory of beeping monitors and stale air.

Then the atmosphere shattered.

A suffocating wave of petrichor and cedar crashed over me, laced with a violent, crackling ozone that tasted like blood.

I ripped my hand from Braydon’s as if his skin had caught fire and shot to my feet. At the end of the corridor stood the Alpha King. His massive frame seemed to swallow the fluorescent light whole. His usually stormy eyes were pitch black — Ragnar was at the surface, staring at the exact space where my hand had just been.