Chapter 614
“I said no, Adella,” he growled. The air in the room grew suddenly dense, vibrating with the oppressive, undeniable weight of an Alpha’s Command.
I forced myself to stand and meet his storm-gray eyes. “Why? What are you so afraid of?”
“I am not afraid of dying!” Dallas roared, his hands gripping the armrests of his wheelchair so hard the metal groaned. “I am afraid of the fifty percent chance that the surgery will permanently sever my connection to Ragnar. Do you understand what that means? To be a wolfless Lycan? To be a deaf, blind shell, unable to hear the other half of my own soul? I would rather rot in this chair than become a true cripple.”
His words hit me like a physical blow, but my exhaustion swiftly morphed into blinding anger.
“So you’ll just give up?” I yelled, tears spilling over my lashes. “You’ll sit here and wait for the silver to finish you off? You’re acting like a coward, Dallas. I fell in love with an Alpha King who would tear the world apart for his Pack—not a coward hiding in his estate, waiting for his soul to die.”
The word coward hung in the air like a poisoned silver blade. Dallas flinched. The raw vulnerability in his eyes was instantly swallowed by a glacial, terrifying fury. He looked at me no longer as his Mate, but as someone who had finally confirmed every broken thing he believed about himself.
A sob tore from my throat. Unable to bear the icy hatred in his stare, I turned and fled the room, slamming the door behind me.
I practically ran down the stairs, desperate to reach Dr. Vance, but collided with Azalea in the foyer. She was pale, her hands trembling.
“Adella,” she gasped, her Inner Wolf whining in distress. “He just used a secure Mind-Link. He gave Beta Duncan Whitaker a direct order to withdraw all applications to the neutral Pack clinic in Switzerland.”
“No,” I whispered.
“There’s more,” Azalea said, her voice breaking. “Dr. Vance sent an emergency warning. The silver toxicity is crystallizing around his spine. If he doesn’t get the surgery within a month, his physical connection to Ragnar will be permanently severed anyway.”
My knees buckled. I slid down the cold wall of the foyer and buried my face in my hands as the last shred of hope shattered around me.
For the next three days, the Marshall Estate felt like a tomb. Dallas locked himself in his private study, refusing all physical therapy. When I tried to bring him dinner, Gamma Vance Decker stood like a stone wall in the hallway.
“I’m sorry, Luna,” Vance said, his jaw tight. “The Alpha’s orders are absolute. No one enters. Especially you.”
Dallas was punishing me. He was pushing me away before I could reject him.
By the third afternoon, I was numb with despair. That was when a magical raven tapped on the parlor window, dropping an untraceable, encrypted scroll onto the sill.
Anson Fowler.
.
.
.