Chapter 432
I squeezed her fingers weakly, masking the triumphant, possessive roar of my inner wolf. The cage was built, the lock was secured, and she had just handed me the key.
Dallas
The War Room at Marshall Tower hummed with the low vibration of high-end servers, but it was nothing compared to the deafening roar of Ragnar in my skull. My Lycan beast was pacing, clawing at the edges of my sanity. Someone had tried to murder my wife.
“Play it again,” I growled, my bad leg propped stiffly on a chair.
Leo, my lead tech specialist, tapped his keyboard. “It’s a five-minute ghost loop on the main feed, Alpha. Flawless. But they didn’t account for the pit lane’s thermal backup.”
The screen shifted to a grainy heat signature. Facial recognition locked on.
Estevan Parrish.
Vance Decker stepped out of the shadows. “Estevan and his rogue associates have been meeting with an unidentified patron all week.”
Ragnar snarled. The Parrish family were blunt instruments — they didn’t have the brains for ghost loops or the immediate media spin blaming my Pack. But Braydon Hyde did. The realization twisted in my gut like a silver blade. Braydon hadn’t just known about the sabotage. He had weaponized it. He was using his own crippled body to forge an unbreakable blood debt, chaining Adella to his side in broad daylight.
I stood, ignoring the sharp agony in my leg. “Get the car.”
Twenty minutes later, I shoved the heavy double doors of Braydon’s VIP trauma suite open with the silver head of my cane. They slammed against the wall with a gunshot crack.
The sight before me made Ragnar see red. Adella sat perched on the edge of his bed, gently blowing on a spoonful of healing bone broth before lifting it to Braydon’s lips. Braydon’s eyes flicked to me, gleaming with a sickening, triumphant possessiveness. His Alpha scent — pine and arrogance — was actively trying to smother the moonflower and rain that belonged to me.
“Adella,” I barked, my voice vibrating with the heavy, suffocating weight of an Alpha’s Command. “You are my wife, not his nurse. We are leaving.”
She flinched, dropping the spoon into the bowl. “Dallas, stop! He is hurt —”
“She’s paying a debt, Marshall,” Braydon rasped, his voice weak but laced with venomous mockery. “One you could never afford.”
I didn’t give her time to argue. I crossed the room in three long strides, my hand clamping around her arm. I ignored her startled gasp and dragged her out of the suffocating den of his deceit.
I shoved her into the private elevator and hit the lobby button. The brushed steel doors slid shut, trapping us in a suffocating silence. Her scent, usually my only solace, burned my lungs like acid.
“What is wrong with you?!” Adella screamed, shoving at my chest. “He saved my life, Dallas! He might never shift again because of me!”
“He played you!” I roared back, pinning her against the cold metal wall. “He is using his broken bones as a cage, and you just walked right in and locked the door!”