Chapter 516
A dark, humorless smirk twisted Dallas’s pale lips. “Is it?” He coughed, a harsh sound that rattled in his chest. “My legal team filed an injunction with the Elders weeks ago. I claimed severe mental trauma from my overseas deployment. The final severance decree was suspended.” Dallas’s eyes pierced through me, stripping away my defenses. “By Pack law, Adella, you are still my legal Mate.”
The world tilted. “You pushed me away!” I screamed, the betrayal tearing open fresh wounds. “You humiliated me! You threw me out!”
“I was saving you!” Dallas roared back, gripping the armrests of his chair. The effort cost him dearly. He suddenly doubled over, hacking violently into a white linen handkerchief. When he pulled it away, the fabric was stained with bright, wet blood.
My anger faltered, instantly hijacked by a sickening surge of panic. He looked like he was dying.
Dallas wiped his mouth, his chest heaving as he forced himself to sit upright. He didn’t look at Braydon; his burning gaze remained entirely on me. He unleashed the full, crushing weight of his Alpha’s Command.
“Get in the car, Adella.”
I couldn’t move, my feet rooted to the stone patio as my mind spun in chaos.
Seeing my hesitation, Dallas shifted his lethal glare to Braydon. The air around the Lycan seemed to crackle with dark, violent energy. “Before he lays another hand on what belongs to me,” Dallas promised, his voice dropping to a deadly, quiet vow, “I will tear down this entire manor, stone by stone, and salt the earth where it stood.”
Dallas’s deadly vow hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. The twelve Dire Guard Warriors shifted their stances, their hands resting on their weapons, ready to execute his command.
Braydon stepped forward, puffing out his chest to project the righteous authority of an Alpha. “This is an armed invasion of Pack territory, Marshall! An act of war. The Elders will hear of this.”
Dallas didn’t even look at him. His storm-gray eyes remained locked on me, his gaze burning with something wild and desperate.
“You reek of him,” Dallas rasped, his voice vibrating with barely contained fury. “Did you share his bed?”
The sheer audacity of the insult hit me like a physical blow. “I was nursing him!” I fired back, my hands balling into fists. “He was delirious with a fever and an infected wound!”
Right on cue, Braydon let out a ragged groan. He stumbled back, collapsing heavily into his own wheelchair. A fresh, bright stain of crimson rapidly bloomed across the bandage on his arm, soaking through the sleeve of his robe.
“Braydon!” I gasped, my humanitarian instincts overriding my anger. I took a step toward him, but a massive, freezing hand clamped around my wrist.
Dallas’s grip was iron, his eyes a chaotic storm of desperation and rage. “It’s a trick, Adella!” he hissed, leaning in so close I could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his pale skin. “Can’t you see it on his face?”
I stared at Dallas, then at the spreading blood. I am wolfless. I have no Inner Wolf to decipher the subtle shifts of a lie, no heightened instincts to warn me of a predator’s game. All I saw was a man bleeding out because of a wound he had sustained while protecting me.