Chapter 599
Before I could issue my next order, a violent, frantic wave of consciousness slammed into my mind. It was a forced Mind-Link, bypassing my standard mental shields through the fresh blood-oath of my engagement to Sloane.
“Anson!” Sloane’s voice shrieked in my head, raw with absolute, paralyzing terror.
I stiffened, my whiskey glass halting halfway to my mouth. “Speak, Sloane. What is it?”
“She knows!” Sloane sobbed through the link, her panic flooding my own thoughts. “Dosha found out I took the crystal. Her Warriors intercepted me before I could reach the safe house.”
My jaw clenched. Dosha was faster than I had anticipated.
“They’re holding me at the Crimson Paw border,” Sloane’s mental voice cracked. “She says if you don’t bring the crystal within the hour, she’ll send me back in pieces.”
I severed the link. The silence of my office rushed back in. I set the whiskey glass down on the obsidian desk with deliberate calm.
The quiet game of chess I had planned was over. Dosha had just flipped the board.
Adella POV
The moment Dallas told me about Anson’s call, my blood ran cold. He had tried to shield me from it, but I saw the calculation in his eyes. A Memory Crystal. Dosha’s treason. And Anson holding the only key.
Gigi arrived minutes later, her expression grim.
“Fowler is making his move,” Gigi stated, leaning heavily on her ebony cane. “He has the Memory Crystal — the definitive proof of Dosha’s treason. Are we prepared to take it from him?”
Dallas shifted against his hospital pillows, a low, warning growl vibrating deep in his chest. “Anson is a snake. He won’t hand over his ultimate leverage cheaply, especially not to us.”
“He won’t hand it to you,” I corrected, stepping forward from the edge of the bed. “But he will hand it to me.”
Dallas’s storm-gray eyes snapped to me, instantly bleeding into Ragnar’s molten, predatory gold. “No.”
“Dallas, listen—”
“I said absolutely not, Adella!” he roared, his protective instincts flaring violently through our mate-bond. “You are my pregnant, wolfless Mate. I will not send you into a hostile Alpha’s territory to beg for scraps!”
“I won’t be begging,” I said, keeping my voice dead calm against his rising panic. “Anson’s greatest weakness is his ego. He wants to prove he is a stronger, more generous Alpha than you. If I go to offer my congratulations on his engagement, I can manipulate that arrogance. I’ll ask for the crystal as a wedding gift to the Blackwood Pack.”
Gigi’s eyes gleamed with profound respect. She struck her cane against the floor. “It is a brilliant strategy. Perfect Luna diplomacy. Fowler won’t be able to resist showing off his power to the woman who rejected him.”
Dallas looked between us, completely isolated in his fear. His broad chest heaved, torn between his Lycan’s desperate need to keep me safely locked away and the undeniable logic of my plan.
“Fine,” Dallas finally rasped, his voice thick with reluctant surrender. “But you do not go alone. Azalea goes with you as your personal guard. If Fowler so much as breathes wrong in your direction, she has my direct order to tear his throat out.”