Chapter 566
Pack medics swarmed him like frantic ants. I watched in absolute horror as heavy trauma shears sliced through his black tactical gear. Dark smoke still rose from the wound on his back. As they rolled his massive, limp body onto the stretcher, I saw it — the second silver dagger, buried terrifyingly deep near his spine.
The world turned to ash before my eyes.
“Get the Luna to the second transport! She’s hemorrhaging!” a medic shouted.
Strong hands lifted me, pulling me away from my dying Mate. The heavy doors of the armored ambulance slammed shut, severing me from him, and the darkness finally dragged me under.
I woke to the blinding, merciless glare of fluorescent lights.
The room smelled of sterile alcohol and herbal sedatives. I was in Room 402 of the Blackwood Pack’s private maternity observation wing. Beside my narrow bed, a small black-and-white monitor flickered with a tiny, rapid pulse.
“The pup’s heartbeat is stable,” Dr. Evans said, his voice tight with exhaustion as he adjusted my IV. “But the trauma and shock have caused severe uterine stress. You are experiencing a threatened miscarriage, Adella. You are on strict, mandatory bed rest.”
“Dallas,” I gasped, ignoring the heavy pull of the sedatives in my veins. I reached for the IV in my hand, desperate to find him.
Before I could even sit up, a burly she-wolf nurse stepped forward and pressed my shoulders down with firm, gentle hands. “You cannot move, Luna. The Alpha King is in emergency surgery. He lost a catastrophic amount of blood. You must stay here for the pup.”
I fell back against the pillows, a prisoner in my own failing body. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and soaked into the sterile sheets.
As the high-dose herbal sedatives washed over my brain — slowing my frantic panic into a heavy, wading numbness — a memory pierced through the fog.
He’s ashamed of you! Ashamed of his crippled body, and ashamed of the pup you carry that he can never claim!
Mara’s manic, venomous words echoed in the quiet room. I closed my eyes, picturing Dallas’s face the moment I pulled off his tactical mask in the mist. The agonizing sorrow in his silver eyes. The way he had flinched when our skin touched.
The realization struck me with the force of a freight train, shattering every misconception I had harbored.
He wasn’t rejecting me. The Decree of Severance, the cruel words, hiding behind the mask of Kieran — none of it was because he didn’t love me. He was drowning in an ocean of self-hatred. He believed he was a broken, defective monster, and he was trying to hide his scars, terrified that if I saw the crippled shell he had become, I would look at him with the same disgust he felt for himself.
“You beautiful, tragic fool,” I whispered to the empty ceiling, my heart breaking for him all over again.
A muffled sob from the hallway pulled me from my thoughts. The heavy door to my room sat open just an inch.
“It’s my fault,” Azalea’s voice wailed, thick with absolute devastation.
“Breathe, Azalea,” Gamma Vance Decker’s deep, gravelly voice rumbled through the gap. “The surgeons are doing everything they can.”