Chapter 480
As I spun around, I caught a fleeting glimpse of his face. The mask slipped for a fraction of a second, revealing an agony so profound it made my own chest ache. He bit down on his lower lip until a bead of dark blood welled up, punishing himself for every word he had just spoken.
I marched to the heavy steel door and grabbed the handle, yanking it down. It didn’t budge. A heavy, metallic clunk echoed from inside the frame. The deadbolts had been engaged from the outside.
I slammed my fists against the steel. “Open this door!”
The intercom above the frame crackled to life. Gamma Vance Decker’s stoic, emotionless voice filtered through the speaker. “No one leaves until morning. Doctor’s orders — sort of.”
“Vance, open this door right now!” I screamed, hitting the metal again. “He’s insane! Let me out!”
“He loves you, Luna!” Vance shouted back, his voice cracking with desperate loyalty. The intercom clicked off, severing the connection.I spun around, ready to demand Dallas order his Gamma to release me. But the words died in my throat.
A heavy thud shook the floorboards. Dallas had slipped from the edge of the mattress and collapsed onto the cold tiles. The heart monitor erupted into a frantic, high-pitched shriek.
“Dallas!” My anger vanished, instantly overridden by the primal, undeniable pull of our fractured bond. I rushed to his side and dropped to my knees.
“Stay away,” he gasped, chest heaving as he clutched the bandages over his heart. His skin was ashen, slick with a freezing sweat. “It’s just a muscle spasm.”
Even dying, he refused to surrender. I stared at the man who had systematically destroyed my life, my hatred warring with the deeply ingrained instinct to help. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced my voice into a mask of absolute, clinical ice.
“Where are your meds?” I demanded.
He couldn’t answer, his eyes squeezed shut in agony. I scrambled up and tore through the prescription bottles on the nightstand. Amidst the heavy painkillers, I found a bottle of potent immunosuppressants — drugs designed to stop a Lycan’s aggressive cellular regeneration from rejecting foreign objects. His condition was catastrophic.
I shook two pills into my palm and knelt back down beside him. “Take them.”
Dallas opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto mine. He hesitated, his pride warring with the excruciating pain. Then, slowly, he leaned forward. Instead of taking the pills with his trembling fingers, his dry, feverish lips brushed against the center of my palm and took the medication directly from my skin. He swallowed them dry.
The fleeting, agonizing intimacy of the gesture sent a violent shockwave through me. I snatched my hand back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“I am only staying because your Gamma made me a prisoner,” I stated coldly, standing and backing away.
I walked to the farthest corner of the room and sank into the solitary visitor’s chair. On the floor, Dallas’s breathing slowly leveled out, and the monitor’s shrieks faded back into a steady, rhythmic beep.