Chapter 539
Chelsi stared at the screen, her mind visibly racing. This changed everything. If the King was truly sterile, he was useless to her—a dead end. But the information itself was still valuable. Dosha would pay for it. Someone would pay for it.
She looked up at me, her expression hardening. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Take it to the Commission,” I said, my voice hollow. “Expose him. Destroy him.”
“And what do you get out of it?” Chelsi asked, her eyes narrowing.
My jaw clenched. “They have my daughter. Dosha’s people took her last night. If I don’t give them what they want, she dies.”
Chelsi studied me for a long moment—a father begging for his child’s life. She understood that kind of desperation, the clawing, frantic need to survive when everything else had been stripped away. She picked up the tablet and tucked it into her bag.
“I’ll do it,” she said flatly. “Not for you. Not for Dosha. Because if I don’t, someone else will. And at least this way, I control the narrative.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Thank you,” I whispered.
Chelsi didn’t answer. She turned and walked toward the door, her heels clicking against the polished floor.
Halfway there, she stopped. “What about the Queen?” she asked without turning around. “What happens to her when the King falls?”
My voice was barely audible. “Dosha wants her dead. She carries something Dosha will kill to destroy.”
Chelsi’s hand tightened on the tablet. Her sister had tried to destroy Adella and lost everything. She had thought this was her chance to win. But now, standing here with a dying King’s medical file pressed against her chest and a ruthless Alpha Female pulling the strings, she wasn’t sure there was any winning left.
She walked out into the rain, the tablet held against her chest like a bomb waiting to explode.
Adella
Miles away, the safe house apartment Gigi had arranged was sterile and anonymous. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the stainless-steel refrigerator. Inside sat a thick, bloody steak wrapped in plastic—a “nourishing” meal sent by one of the soldiers guarding my door. The heavy, metallic smell of raw meat seeped through the chill and hit my senses like a physical blow.
My stomach violently lurched. I slapped a hand over my mouth, sprinted to the bathroom, and dropped to my knees before the toilet as I dry-heaved.
When the nausea finally passed, I slumped against the marble vanity, chest heaving. I pressed my trembling fingers to my stomach. My period was weeks late. With the trauma, the silver poison, and the constant warfare, I had completely ignored the signs.
My mind flashed back to that one desperate night before Dallas’s condition had deteriorated—the only time we hadn’t used protection.
Panic seizing my throat, I tore open my emergency go-bag and pulled out a human pharmacy pregnancy test.
Three minutes felt like an agonizing century.
I sat on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the small plastic stick. Two bold, undeniable pink lines.
Positive.
.