Chapter 559
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by Azalea’s ragged breathing as she pushed herself up from the floor.
The masked man stood with his back to me, his broad shoulders rising and falling steadily as he surveyed the broken door. He had positioned himself between me and the room — a subconscious, protective stance that made my heart hammer against my ribs for an entirely different reason.
“Who are you?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
He didn’t turn around. “Security.”
I stared at the way he held himself — the specific, controlled rage that still radiated from his frame, the particular set of his shoulders, the deliberate stillness of someone fighting not to move. My mind raced, piecing together the impossible.
I took a step closer. “You fight like him. You fight like my Mate.”
The man’s entire body went rigid. For a moment, he stopped breathing. He neither denied it nor confirmed it. Instead, he kept his back to me, his modulated voice clipped and tight.
“This location is compromised, ma’am. We need to prepare for immediate transport.”
Adella POV
“This location is compromised, ma’am. We need to prepare for immediate transport.”
His modulated voice was cold and mechanical, but the broad shoulders facing away from me were rigid with an entirely different kind of tension. Before I could demand he remove that featureless mask, Weston — the head of security — stepped into the ruined living room.
“Ma’am,” Weston said, his eyes scanning the splintered doorframe before settling on me. “Azalea is transferring a secure comms link to you. It’s urgent.”
Azalea limped in a moment later, clutching her bruised ribs. She looked furious, but she handed me a secure tablet. “It’s Chelsi Parrish. She bypassed three firewalls to get this through.”
I took the tablet, my eyes never leaving the masked man who had retreated to the shadows by the window. I tapped the screen.
“Adella, thank the Goddess I reached you,” Chelsi’s voice filtered through — sickly sweet, but laced with a frantic, nervous edge. Ever since Dallas had publicly exiled her sister and forced her into a marriage of convenience with Braydon, she had been desperate to claw her way back into relevance.
“What do you want, Chelsi?” I asked coldly.
“I need a favor. Your expertise in restoring ancient anatomical diagrams,” she rushed out. “I have some highly classified medical scans that were severely corrupted in a data transfer accident. I need you to reconstruct them.”
I frowned, my gaze drifting back to the masked guard. “Is this about Dallas?”
A sharp, telling pause hung on the line. “No,” Chelsi said smoothly. “It’s a distant cousin from my mother’s Pack. He suffered severe nerve damage from silver toxins — it’s heavily affecting his lower body. I just need to know if the damage is permanent.”
My blood ran cold. Silver toxins. Nerve damage. Lower body. She was fishing for confirmation of the rumors. She wanted proof that the Alpha King was broken.
“Send the files,” I whispered, and ended the call before she could say another word.