Chapter 538
A cold shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the sleet. I was wolfless—I couldn’t sense if he was lying. But the way Dr. Vance had looked at her—the fear in his eyes, the barely concealed desperation—wasn’t the look of a healer comforting a Pack member. It was the look of a man who had no choice.
Dr. Alistair Vance
My private clinic was a sanctuary of sharp angles, glass, and absolute control. I stood behind the marble counter, swirling a glass of scotch, letting the silence stretch between us.
Across the room, Chelsi paced like a caged animal, her wet clothes dripping onto my pristine hardwood floors. She had spent the last thirty minutes screaming and demanding answers until her voice gave out.
“Tell me,” she finally rasped, leaning against the wall.
I took a slow sip of the amber liquid. The room was quiet save for the ticking of the clock. “He’s alive,” I said smoothly. “But Vance Decker’s little sedative stunt stopped his heart. The hypoxia did its work.”
Chelsi gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.
“The nerve endings in his pelvic region are completely dead,” I continued, the words tasting like ash on my tongue. They had given me a script to read. My daughter’s life depended on me reading it. “He is permanently sterile. He will never sire an heir, and he is physically incapable of completing the Marking ritual.”
I waited for the disgust. I waited for her to realize that Dallas Marshall was no longer a prize worth fighting for.
Instead, her eyes filled with tears. “Goddess—Dallas,” she whispered, her voice breaking with pure, unadulterated pity.
Rage flared hot and fast in my chest—not at her, but at the situation, at the people who had put me here. I slammed my glass down on the marble counter, the sharp crack making her flinch.
“They have my daughter,” I snarled, closing the distance between us, my voice cracking as the mask slipped. “Dosha’s people took her last night. If I don’t give them what they want, they’ll kill her. I don’t have a choice, Chelsi. Neither do you.”
She trembled, her eyes wide with sudden terror as the full weight of the trap closed around her. I stepped back and ran a hand over my face, utterly exhausted.
“Read the file,” I said flatly. “Then decide if you want to help me or run.”
Dr. Alistair Vance
I tossed the Pack-encrypted medical tablet onto the glass coffee table. It clattered sharply against the surface, breaking the heavy silence of my office.
“Read it,” I commanded, watching Chelsi flinch.
She approached the table as if the device were a loaded gun. Her trembling fingers swiped across the screen, unlocking the file with her high-ranking clearance. The harsh blue light illuminated her tear-streaked face as her eyes darted across the clinical text.
I watched her closely, waiting for the exact moment the illusion of her perfect Alpha King shattered—waiting for the disgust to curl her lips when she read the words: Permanent nerve damage. Zero pup survival rate. Incapable of Marking.
She stopped breathing. The tablet slipped from her hands, hitting the rug with a soft thud.