Chapter 568
“If he wants to play the martyr, he can do it to my face,” I gritted out, my bare feet hitting the cold linoleum floor.
I took a wobbly step toward the door, but Azalea caught my arm. Her grip was gentle but firm. “Wait. Before you go up there, you need to know something. Duncan told me this morning.”
I paused, leaning heavily against the wall as a wave of dizziness rolled through me. “What is it?”
Azalea swallowed hard, her gaze locking onto mine. “The Decree of Severance. The one you signed.”
My heart stuttered. “What about it?”
“He never submitted it to the Elders,” she whispered, the revelation dropping like a bomb into the quiet room. “He locked the original document in his private safe in New York. Duncan said Dallas’s orders were clear: if he died from the silver poisoning, the Pack was to recognize you as his legal Luna widow. You would inherit everything and remain under the highest Pack protection.”
I sank back onto the edge of the mattress, the breath knocked from my lungs.
He never severed the bond.
All this time, I had believed he’d thrown me away — that the ancient magic had been cut, that I had been discarded. But in the eyes of the Moon Goddess and Pack law, I was still Luna Adella Marshall. He had given me the illusion of freedom while secretly tethering himself to me, ensuring my ultimate protection while he endured the agony of our distance alone.
“That beautiful, selfless, arrogant liar,” I breathed, tears finally spilling over my lashes.
The anger didn’t fade. It crystallized into something unbreakable. I wiped my face, pushed past the ache in my abdomen, and walked out the door.
The rooftop healing garden was swallowed by heavy, damp gray mist. The chill in the air cut through my thin hospital gown, but I barely felt it. The faint, ethereal glow of the Moonpetals illuminated the winding stone path ahead.
And then I saw him.
He sat on a stone bench near the edge of the roof, facing the sprawling cedar forests of the Pack lands. He wore a dark sweater, but his massive shoulders were hunched and curled inward, as though bracing against an invisible, excruciating agony. A discarded cane lay on the wet grass near his boots. The air around him was heavy, weighted with despair.
I stepped onto the wet stones, my bare feet making a soft sound against the slick surface.
“The air is too cold for the pup,” I said, my voice cutting through the thick fog.
Dallas went completely rigid. He didn’t turn around. The muscles in his back coiled tight, and when he finally spoke, his voice was a low, gravelly rasp wound through with forced coldness.
“Go back inside, Adella.”
Adella POV
“Go back inside, Adella.”
His voice was a gravelly rasp, devoid of the warmth that usually wrapped around my soul. But I didn’t move. The damp fog clung to my skin, yet the fire burning in my chest kept the chill at bay.