Chapter 506
Gigi finally turned to me, and for the first time, the iron-willed matriarch looked ancient. Her hands trembled slightly in her lap. “When Dallas was sixteen, his first Shift was… violent. Kaelen’s mistress, Seraphina, convinced me the boy was a feral abomination. I believed her lies.” Gigi’s voice cracked, a sound like breaking ice. “I exiled my own grandson to a Siberian re-education camp for Alpha heirs. A slaughterhouse.”
My breath hitched. The mate bond inside me flared with a phantom, agonizing ache.
“He survived,” Gigi whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “But he came back with a soul shattered into pieces and a body branded by silver. I broke him, Adella. I turned him into the ruthless Lycan he is today. And I will not let my mistake destroy the only light he has ever found. I am protecting you because you are his anchor.”
The revelation hit me like a physical blow. Dallas’s suffocating possessiveness, his desperate need to control everything around him—it wasn’t just Alpha dominance. It was the terror of a broken boy who had had everything ripped away from him.
“I understand,” I murmured, the fear I held for Dallas melting into a profound, aching sorrow. A fragile, unspoken alliance settled between us in the quiet car.
Gigi took a deep breath, her mask of cold authority snapping back into place. “Good. Because we are out of time. While Dallas is bedridden, Dosha, the Alpha Female of the Crimson Paw Pack, is making her move. She is orchestrating a Marking ceremony between her daughter, Sloane Corbin, and Anson Fowler, the Alpha of the Silver Creek Pack.”
“Anson?” I frowned.
“Anson is dangerous,” Gigi warned, her eyes narrowing. “He is using a Rogue-controlled underground network called the ‘Shadow Ledger’ to stockpile silver weapons. If this alliance forms, they will crush the Blackwood Pack. You, the rejected, wolfless Luna, will be their first target to destabilize Dallas.”
She paused, her expression darkening with a cold, ancient fury. “But Anson is just a pawn. The real threat is Dosha.”
I leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
Gigi’s aged eyes met mine, and for a moment, I saw something I hadn’t expected—fear. Not of me, but of the hatred she was about to describe.
“Thirty years ago, during the last Pack War, Dosha’s fated mate was killed,” Gigi said, her voice dropping to a chilling whisper. “By Kaelen Marshall. Dallas’s father. It wasn’t a fair fight—Kaelen ambushed them, used silver-coated blades. Dosha watched her mate bleed out on frozen ground, clutching her hand, begging her to run.”
My blood ran cold. “She’s been waiting for revenge all this time?”
“She’s been waiting for an opportunity,” Gigi corrected. “The Marshall bloodline was too strong to challenge directly. Kaelen was ruthless, and Dallas… Dallas became even more powerful than his father. But now Dallas is dying. The Pack is fractured. And you—”
She looked at me, her gaze sharp and calculating. “You carry Everett blood. White Wolf blood. It’s rare, ancient—some say blessed by the Goddess herself. Dosha’s mate was killed before they could have children. The idea that you carry a child with both White Wolf and Marshall Lycan blood? It’s everything she fears. Everything she hates.”
“That’s why she’s moving now,” I breathed, the pieces clicking into place.