Chapter 552
“You’re leaving me?” Panic spiked through my chest.
Gigi paused at the door, her eyes softening as she looked back at me. “Everything he does is out of love, Adella. A twisted, broken kind of love.” She held my gaze for a long moment. “Survive for him.”
The heavy steel door slammed shut behind her. The automated voice of the security system echoed through the halls: Level Two Lockdown Initiated.
Dallas POV
The unmarked Blackwood Pack military transport plane shuddered violently as it tore through high-altitude storm clouds. The cargo hold was pitch black, save for the cold blue glow of the tactical tablet resting on my lap.
Beneath my black tactical gear, the complex carbon-fiber brace locked around my left leg whirred softly as I shifted my weight on the freezing metal-grid floor. The air in the cabin was thick and charged, like a storm barely contained within walls of steel.
On the screen, encrypted thermal footage of the Rockies safe house played out in real time. I watched the violet flashes of the obsidian runes burn Dosha’s crows to ash. I watched Weston’s defensive formations hold.
“Adequate, but not perfect,” I murmured through the Mind-Link to the massive, dark presence lurking at the back of my consciousness. “She needs better.”
Ragnar — my Lycan, the beast Gigi and the rest of the world believed was dead — let out a low, blood-chilling rumble of agreement that vibrated through my very bones. I was not a broken shell. I was a weapon being reforged in the dark.
I reached into the chest pocket of my tactical vest and drew out a crumpled photograph: me in a tailored suit, seated at the head of the council table. The Alpha King. The dying billionaire.
With slow, deliberate movements, my tactical-gloved hands tore the photograph down the middle, then again, letting the pieces scatter across the metal floor.
Dallas Marshall was dead.
It was time for Kieran to hunt.
Adella POV
The heavy steel door had sealed me inside, leaving the kitchen of the Rockies safe house suffocatingly quiet. Rain lashed against the reinforced glass, blurring the endless expanse of cedar trees beyond. On the massive granite island sat a bulky, featureless satellite phone.
When it finally buzzed, I snatched it up.
“Adella?” Azalea Sterling’s voice crackled through the encrypted line, sounding a million miles away.
“I’m here, Azalea. Tell me what’s happening.”
A heavy sigh filtered through the static. “Braydon Hyde is running his mouth on RogueNet. He’s desperate to prove he isn’t out of the game. He’s spreading vicious rumors that the Alpha King permanently lost his Inner Wolf after the cardiac arrest — calling him an empty shell, worse than a wolfless.”
My breath hitched, my hand instinctively coming to rest on my stomach.
“He’s alive, Adella,” Azalea added quickly, her voice thick with worry. “But he’s locked himself in the penthouse of Marshall Tower and refuses to see anyone. He looks like a ghost preparing for his own funeral.”