Chapter 410
The moment my fingertips brushed the tense muscle of his shoulder, his Lycan survival instincts hijacked his unconscious mind. With a speed that defied his broken body, his hand shot upward. Massive, calloused fingers clamped around my right wrist like a steel vice.
A sharp cry tore from my lips as the fragile bones ground together under the crushing weight of a predator’s panic. Against his strength, my arm felt like a brittle dry twig.
His eyes flew open. For a terrifying second, there was no humanity in them — just bottomless pools of molten gold, staring right through me. He didn’t see his partner. He saw the phantom of his failures.
“You’re leaving me,” he roared, the vibration of his voice shaking the mattress. “Because I’m broken!”
“Dallas, it’s me! You’re hurting me!” I cried out, swallowing the blinding pain. Having no wolf, I couldn’t reach into his mind to soothe him. I had only my voice and my presence. I stepped closer, forcing him to focus on my face, hoping the familiar scent of my perfume — moonflowers and vanilla — would cut through his delirium.
He blinked. The feral emptiness in his gold eyes shattered, receding into the stormy, horrified gray of the man I loved. He looked down at his hand, still crushing my wrist, and snatched it back as if my skin were burning acid.
“Goddess,” he choked out, his chest heaving. He stared at the dark bruises already blooming across my pale flesh. The scent of his distress spiked — a suffocating wave of petrichor soured by intense self-loathing.
“I’m okay,” I lied, cradling my throbbing arm against my chest. “It was just a nightmare. But Dallas — we need to talk. Braydon called me.” I took a shaky breath, forcing myself to hold his evasive gaze. “He mentioned Project Nightingale.”
Dallas went completely rigid. The raw vulnerability in his eyes evaporated, instantly replaced by an impenetrable fortress of ice. He turned his head away, staring blankly at the storm battering the window.
“It’s just Braydon playing games,” he stated, his voice flat and deadened.
“Then look at me and tell me what it is,” I pleaded, stepping into his line of sight. “Please, Dallas. We built this on truth. No more walls.”
He slowly turned his head. The man looking back at me wasn’t the devoted partner who had jumped into a freezing river for me — he was the ruthless, isolated King of the Blackwood Pack.
“We signed a piece of paper, Adella.”
The glacial finality of his tone felt like a physical slap. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I am tired,” he said, each word delivered with cruel precision. He gestured to his suspended, ruined leg, then pointedly at my bruised wrist. “Look at what I just did to you. Look at what I’ve become — a Lycan who cannot control his own grip around a fragile human.”
I recoiled, the accusation piercing deeper than any claw. “You don’t mean that. The trauma is talking—”