Chapter 532
“I hate you,” I whispered, pouring every ounce of my shattered soul into those three words.
I grabbed my purse and turned on my heel. Ignoring the shocked gasps from Serena and the dark, unreadable stare of Vance, I pushed my way through the crowded club without looking back—back to the booth where the Alpha King sat in silence, reaching slowly for the untouched glass of tequila I had left behind.
The freezing concrete of the curb bit through my thin dress, but it was nothing compared to the ice encasing my heart. The neon lights of the city flickered in the puddles around my feet, casting long, distorted shadows as I sat outside The Onyx Club, trembling uncontrollably.
“He’s a monster,” I sobbed, burying my face in my hands. “He looked right at me, Azalea, and told me to go to Julian. Like I was just some broken merchandise he could trade away.”
Azalea Sterling sat beside me on the damp curb. She didn’t offer empty platitudes or rub my back. Instead, her posture was rigid, her brow furrowed in deep, agonizing thought.
“He’s a bastard,” I choked out, the tears burning my cold cheeks. “I hate him.”
“You’re not seeing it, Adella,” Azalea said, her voice dropping to a serious, urgent whisper that made me look up. “You’re too blinded by the mate-bond’s rejection to see what’s right in front of us.”
I wiped my eyes, confused by the intensity in her gaze. “What are you talking about?”
“He smells like a hospital, Adella.” She grabbed my arm, her grip urgent. “Like silver and chemicals—not like our King. There’s something rotting under all that cologne.”
I froze. The memory of the stairwell hit me at once—beneath the faint trace of cedar and rain, there had been something sterile. Something deeply wrong.
“Silver?” I whispered, the word tasting like ash. Silver was a death sentence for our kind.
“I found medical gauze in his bedroom trash yesterday,” Azalea continued, her words coming faster now, desperate to make me understand. “It was soaked in black blood. Wolf blood that’s dying. And last week, I walked in on him while he was hooked up to a humming machine. It was pulling the blood from his body and pumping it back in.”
The air vanished from my lungs. The puzzle pieces I had been too hurt to examine suddenly slammed together with terrifying clarity.
His unnatural pallor. The way his massive body had leaned so heavily against the wall in the stairwell. The way he had yanked his hand back from the sparks of our bond—not out of disgust, but out of sheer physical agony.
He’s a whole Alpha. I am not.
“Goddess,” I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth as a wave of nausea crashed over me. He wasn’t rejecting me because I was unworthy. He was dying. The silver poison was killing him, and he was pushing me away to spare me the agony of watching my Mate wither to nothing.