Chapter 604

“Silver! They’re coming!” Dallas roared, his voice a raw, gravelly tear. His storm-gray eyes were wide and completely unseeing. He wasn’t in The Sanctuary — his mind had been dragged back to the frozen hell of the Siberian Dire Guard black site. Through our muted mate-bond, I felt his Inner Wolf, Ragnar, howling in absolute agony, reliving the phantom fire of Dosha’s poisoned blades.

I dropped the damp cloth I was holding and rushed to his side. “Dallas, look at me!”

I seized his thrashing, ice-cold hands and pressed them flat against my chest. I held his gaze and refused to let him slip back into the nightmare.

He gasped, his chest heaving as the illusion of the Siberian snowstorm slowly dissolved from his eyes. He blinked, his gaze finally locking onto my face. The sheer terror morphed into a crushing, suffocating guilt.

“I woke you,” he rasped, his massive shoulders slumping against the pillows.

“No,” I said firmly. “The storm woke me. I was already here.”

I sat on the edge of the mattress, keeping my hands over his. “Feel him,” I whispered softly, guiding his right hand toward the swell of my maternity dress.

Dallas’s breath hitched. He yanked his hand back as though my skin were made of silver.

“I can’t,” he choked out, staring at his own trembling fingers. The self-loathing radiating from him was a physical weight in the room. “My hands are too cold, Adella. I’m tainted. The poison — the blood. I’m too dirty to touch something so pure.”

My heart shattered at the depth of his shame, but I refused to accept his retreat.

“You are not dirty,” I said fiercely. I took his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “You are not broken. You are healing. And I am not leaving.” I pressed my forehead against his. “We have survived silver, war, and betrayal. We will survive this too. Together.”

The tension in his body slowly eased. He didn’t need a kick from the pup to believe me. He just needed to hear me say it.

“I will live,” Dallas vowed, his voice a lethal, vibrating rumble. He reached up and cupped my tear-stained cheek. “I will stand up, Adella. And I will burn Dosha’s world to ash.”

He pulled me down and sealed the vow with a desperate, bruising kiss.

But the emotional purge and the sudden surge of adrenaline came at a devastating cost. The moment he released me, his body betrayed him. The torn sutures in his back and the active silver toxins flared with a vengeance. Dallas let out a choked groan, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed against the pillows and slipped into a tortured, feverish semi-coma.

I stood beside the bed, listening to his ragged breathing and the relentless thunder outside.

Dr. Alistair Vance’s warning echoed in my mind: The toxins are accelerating. We are in completely unknown territory.

Dallas’s spirit was finally healed. But his body was rapidly failing. Love and vows were not enough to stop the silver from consuming his nervous system. If I wanted him to survive long enough to fulfill his promise, I had to make an unthinkable choice.

I looked at the emergency medical lockbox on the counter, knowing that saving my King meant forcing him into the one darkness he feared most.