Chapter 590
Ice flooded my veins. Anson’s words snapped into place like a key in a lock. Drown with your defective King.
“Vance, patch me through to the hydrotherapy wing security feed. Now.”
Vance tapped his tablet and held it out to me. The screen flickered to life: Blackwood’s private airfield, wind howling across the wet tarmac. A black Gulfstream G650 settled against the storm. Dosha emerged in a silent hover-chair, Sloane Corbin trailing pale-faced behind her. Dosha’s phone chimed; she glanced at it and sneered. “Useless. Fowler couldn’t sway a wolfless.” She waved off Sloane’s hushed plea about lawyers. “To The Sanctuary. Now.”
Vance switched the feed to the hydrotherapy wing.
The steam-choked room was thick with fog, the mirrors completely obscured. Dallas gripped the pool rails, his black rehab shorts clinging to him, every muscle straining against the silver scars mapping his body. The water churned around him as he fought the phantom fire burning through his veins.
The doors crashed open. Dosha’s hover-chair glided in smoothly, her Warriors sealing the Healer out behind them.
“Pathetic,” she sneered, surveying him with open contempt. “A rusted king splashing around like a pup.”
“Leave,” Dallas growled, his voice gravel, Ragnar’s echo vibrating faintly through our bond.
Dosha laughed. “The Elders back me tomorrow. Silver-tainted bloodline. No Marking. You’re dethroned, Dallas.” Her eyes gleamed with savage satisfaction. “Your pregnant wolfless pet? When I’m Blackwood’s queen, I’ll purify the Marshall line myself.”
Ragnar exploded.
Dallas’s roar shook through our bond with enough force to steal the breath from my lungs. “Touch her name again, and I’ll rip your throat out.”
Dosha flinched — just barely.
Then pain spiked through the bond, sharp and sudden. His leg was buckling.
I spun toward the door, the tablet still in my hand. “Vance — car. Now!”
I bolted into the raging storm, the thunder outside no match for what was building within.
Adella POV
Rain poured off me in sheets as I burst through the heavy double doors of the private hydrotherapy wing. Steam choked the air, thick with chlorine. The heavy, electric presence of Dallas’s pain hit me before I even saw him — his jaw clenched, his knuckles white around the metal rail. My bare feet slapped the wet tiles, my heart hammering through our mate-bond, his agony a jagged knife in my chest.
Dosha lounged in her silent hover-chair, smirking down at the rehab pool. Sloane Corbin stood behind her, her face a mask of cold calculation — though I caught the flicker of unease in her eyes. Dallas gripped the metal rails, the water lapping at his waist, every muscle corded in torment as he forced himself upright and refused to break.
“Pathetic,” Dosha purred. “Floundering like a dying fish.”
I stepped forward, my voice cutting through the steam. “You would know about drowning in your own lies, Dosha.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You dare—”
“Estevan Norton’s confession is already in the Elders’ hands,” I interrupted, projecting the evidence onto the fogged mirror. “The memory crystal doesn’t lie. The Siberia ambush. The silver. The plot to cripple an Alpha King.”