Chapter 479
She didn’t run. She stayed on the floor, staring up at me with tear-filled eyes, her chest heaving. “You just kissed me!” she cried out, her voice trembling but fiercely defiant. “Vance told me everything, Dallas! I know about the machine! I don’t care!”
She was too brave. She was going to stay and watch me die, and when I did, the Silver Claws would slaughter her. I had to sever the last thread. I had to use a blade so poisoned she would never recover.
I gripped the metal bedrails and forced my storm-gray eyes into voids of absolute, freezing ice. I crushed Ragnar’s agonizing whimpers beneath a glacier of manufactured cruelty.
“I thought you were her,” I said, my voice dead and flat.
Adella’s breath hitched. The defiance in her eyes flickered, replaced by sudden, terrifying confusion.
I didn’t stop. I twisted the knife deep into her soul. “Yara. For a second, I felt strong again — because I thought I was with a Warrior.”
I let my gaze drop over her trembling form on the floor. I didn’t say the word wolfless. I didn’t have to. The implication hung in the toxic air, heavy and lethal. The light in her eyes shattered completely, leaving nothing but a dark, empty void.
The light in my eyes shattered completely, leaving nothing but a dark, empty void. That was what he wanted to see. He wanted me broken. But as the initial shock of his cruel words washed over me, the memory of his desperate kiss — and the name he had breathed just before it — ignited a spark of defiance in my chest.
I pushed myself off the cold linoleum, my hands trembling but my spine rigid. “You’re a liar,” I whispered, my voice gaining strength. “You said my name, Dallas. You knew exactly who I was.”
His jaw clenched. The storm-gray of his eyes hardened into impenetrable ice. “A slip of the tongue,” he rasped, his tone dripping with manufactured disdain. “The sedatives clouded my senses. But the moment you touched me, my Lycan recoiled. Your wolfless scent — it feels incomplete. Disgusting.”
The insult was designed to gut me, but I was done bleeding for his lies. “Stop playing the invincible Alpha King,” I snapped, stepping closer. “I know about the LVAD, Dallas. I know your heart is failing.”
A muscle feathered in his cheek, but he didn’t break character. “A temporary complication from the surgery. Nothing more.”
“Temporary?” I let out a harsh, bitter laugh. I looked at his pale, sweating face and the dark veins mapping his neck, and aimed for the one thing an Alpha valued above all else — his pride. “You look like you’re dying, Dallas.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. His eyes bled into pure, bottomless black. Ragnar surged to the surface, humiliated and enraged. “Get out!” he roared, the sheer force of his voice rattling the medical monitors. “Get out of my sight!”
“Gladly,” I spat, tears of pure fury burning my eyes. “Rot in hell, Dallas.”