Chapter 558
Adella POV
The crackling of pine logs was the only sound in the cavernous living room until the heavy wooden front door exploded inward.
I jolted up from the armchair, my hands flying instinctively to my stomach. The safe house alarms shrieked, but it was already too late. Braydon Hyde stepped through the splintered frame, flanked by two of his exiled Warriors. The air shifted immediately — heavy, oppressive, charged with violence.
“Look what we have here,” Braydon sneered, his eyes dropping to my swollen belly. “Dosha sends her regards. She told me exactly where to find you.” He stepped closer, his gaze raking over me with sick satisfaction. “The rejected breeder, hiding away with a crippled Lycan’s bastard.”
“Get out!” Azalea’s voice rang out as she sprinted from the hallway and placed herself between me and the intruders.
Braydon didn’t even slow down. He backhanded her with brutal force. Azalea flew backward, crashing into the heavy marble sculpture beside the fireplace. It shattered against the floor, and she crumpled among the pieces, groaning.
“Grab her,” Braydon ordered his men, his eyes locked on me with a sick, possessive gleam.
I backed against the brick wall. There was nowhere left to run.
Before the first Warrior could reach for me, a shadow detached itself from the dark corner near the firewood stack.
He moved with inhuman, terrifying speed. Dressed in black tactical gear and a featureless mask, the man didn’t simply fight — he executed. Every movement carried the unmistakable, lethal precision of the Dire Guard. He drove his elbow into the first Warrior’s jaw, and the sickening crunch of bone cut through the wailing alarms as the man dropped like a stone.
The second Warrior lunged. The masked man didn’t dodge. He absorbed the brutal punch to his left arm without flinching, using the momentum to seize the Warrior by the throat. With a violent surge of power, he slammed him into the brick wall.
Crack.
“Stay down,” a mechanical, heavily modulated voice warned. The Warrior went limp with terror.
Braydon stumbled backward, his arrogant smirk dissolving.
The masked man didn’t rush him. He walked forward slowly, and I caught the slight, heavy drag in his step — a limp. But the killing intent rolling off him was suffocating, filling the room like smoke.
“You touched her,” the robotic voice vibrated with a dark, primal fury.
“I am an Alpha of the Hyde Pack—” Braydon stammered, grasping at what remained of his authority.
The masked man grabbed him by the collar and lifted him entirely off his feet. “If you ever come near her again, I will not just kill you,” he growled, the mechanical distortion failing to conceal the absolute death beneath his tone. “I will hunt down every member of your bloodline and erase the name Hyde from the memory of the Goddess herself.”
He dropped Braydon to the floor like garbage. “Run.”
Braydon scrambled backward, his Alpha pride in ruins. He and his conscious Warrior hauled their fallen comrade toward the door and fled into the night.