Chapter 434
“I am not your prisoner!” I screamed. I turned on my heel, fled down the hall, and slammed the heavy wooden door of the guest bedroom behind me, throwing the lock. A second later, a deafening crack echoed through the walls. Dallas had put his fist through the drywall.
I woke the next morning shivering, the emotional chasm between us feeling like an open wound. Desperate for a distraction, I grabbed the remote and switched on the TV.
A RogueNet headline blazed in bold red letters: BLACKWOOD PACK INTERNAL WAR? HYDE HEIR CRIPPLED IN SUSPICIOUS ATTACK.
An anonymous insider was claiming the brake failure had been an assassination attempt on Alpha King Dallas — that I was merely bait, and Braydon the innocent collateral damage. Footage of Braydon looking pale and tragic in his hospital bed played on a loop.
My blood ran cold. Braydon had leaked this. He was spinning a web of lies to paint Dallas as a lethal threat, trying to frighten me into his so-called protective arms. The veil of my guilt tore away, revealing the manipulative serpent Dallas had warned me about all along. My anger toward my husband evaporated, replaced by a fierce, protective ache.
I threw open the bedroom door.
The penthouse was quiet, but the faint scent of rain and cedar led me to the balcony. Dallas stood by the glass railing, his broad shoulders slumped with exhaustion, staring out at the gray city skyline. A crushed cigarette lay beneath his boot.
I didn’t hesitate. I stepped into the biting morning wind and wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, pressing my cheek against his rigid back. He stiffened, a ragged breath escaping his lungs.
“I saw the news,” I whispered, feeling his heartbeat steadying beneath my arms. “I know he’s lying, Dallas. I see it now.”
I stepped around him, forcing him to look at me, and spoke with unwavering conviction.
“The blood-debt will be paid with gold, Dallas — not with my soul. I will hire the best doctors in all the territories for him. But I will not be his nurse. I will not be his emotional crutch. And I will not be his prize for getting himself crippled.”
The tension drained from Dallas’s face, leaving behind a profound, breathless relief. His bloodshot, gray-black eyes softened as he reached out and pulled me flush against his chest, resting his forehead against mine. The moment our skin touched, a violent rush of heat ignited between us, searing away the cold and stitching our fractured connection back together.
I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent, letting the warmth of his presence wash over me. Tomorrow, I would go to the hospital and end this twisted game with Braydon once and for all.
Adella POV
The warmth of Dallas’s embrace on the balcony faded the moment I stepped into the Blackwood Pack Medical Center that afternoon.
Braydon’s VIP trauma suite smelled of sterile bleach and the sour, decaying scent of a wounded Alpha. But beneath that, the air was suffocatingly heavy with the storm-cloud and cedar aura of a furious Lycan. Dallas was already here.