Chapter 464

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to drive to Anson Fowler’s clinic. Ragnar was clawing at my ribs, howling to rip Anson’s throat out, to scoop Adella into my arms, and to bury my face in her neck until her scent healed my fractured soul.

But I couldn’t.

I stared at my bloodstained hands. I was a walking dead man, fueled by silver poison and wrath. If I brought Adella back now, I would be bringing her straight into Seraphina’s crosshairs. My presence — my very protection — was the thing getting her killed.

Until I cleared the board and eradicated every threat, I had to be the villain. I had to let her hate me.

I closed my eyes, letting the rain hide my tears, and chose silence.

Adella POV

The door clicked shut behind Anson, and the silence he left behind was suffocating.

I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, my mind a battlefield of fractured memories. The coldness in his eyes at Moonpetal Lake. The way he handed me the necklace as though I were nothing. The finality of my signature on that paper.

He wanted me to break.

The thought crystallized in my chest, sharp and cold. Every move he had made — the public Rejection, Yara, the contract trap — was designed to destroy me. To make me small. To make me disappear into the shadows where he didn’t have to look at me anymore.

I sat up slowly, my hands no longer trembling. The movement sent a dull ache through my bruised ribs, but I welcomed the pain. It was real. It was mine.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and walked to the bathroom. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, harsh and unforgiving. I gripped the edge of the sink and forced myself to look at my reflection.

Pale. Hollow-eyed. The face of a woman who had been gutted and left to bleed out.

But I was still breathing.

I turned on the faucet and let the cold water run over my wrists. The shock of it grounded me, pulled me back from the edge of the void that had been trying to swallow me whole.

He doesn’t get to win.

The thought rose from somewhere deep — from the part of me that had survived ten years in the Hyde household, that had walked away from Braydon’s cage, that had learned to stand on my own feet long before Dallas Marshall ever entered my life.

I looked at my reflection again. The woman staring back at me was still here. Bruised, bleeding, shattered — but here.

I let the water run until it turned warm, then cold again, watching the steam curl toward the ceiling. When I finally turned it off, the silence in the room felt different. Not hollow anymore. Waiting.