Chapter 629
“Before we leave for the airport this afternoon,” I said softly, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes, “we have one last stop to make. There is some paperwork we need to file at the High Council Archives.”
I felt the immediate, rigid stiffening of his muscles beneath my hands. The scent of violent storms spiked with a sudden, unnatural panic — but I couldn’t tell him about the Pact of Unsevered Bond yet. It had to be a surprise.
Dallas POV
The heavy doors of the armored SUV sealed shut, locking us inside a suffocating, magically shielded cabin. The dark tinted windows blocked out the afternoon sun as Cole, my driver, pulled smoothly away from the estate and headed toward the High Council District.
The cabin smelled of expensive leather, the faint ozone of security runes, and the sharp, bitter tang of my own absolute dread. My scent of violent storms and cedar had turned toxic with panic.
Adella sat beside me, staring out the window. Her profile was perfectly calm, her hands resting gently on the swell of her maternity dress. To anyone else, she looked like a Luna at peace. But to my fractured, self-loathing mind, her silence carried the cold, clinical detachment of a woman who had finally decided to cut away her dead weight.
Three days ago, she had given me an ultimatum: go to Switzerland and fight, or she would leave with our pup forever. It was a lethally poisoned thorn buried deep in my soul. I had agreed to the surgery, but the damage of my cowardice was already done. When she told me we had “paperwork” to file at the High Council Archives before our flight, I knew exactly what it meant.
She was going to file a Decree of Severance. She wanted to legally and magically sever our ties before I died on the operating table — or woke up as a permanently wolfless shell.
No! Not Mate! She cannot leave us! Ragnar thrashed against the confines of my mind, unleashing a silent, agonizing howl of pure despair.
I gripped the armrests of my wheelchair, my knuckles turning white. I was too proud, and far too terrified, to ask her to stop. I was a King riding to his own gallows in silence. In the front seat, Cole kept his eyes rigidly on the road, his own Inner Wolf completely subdued by the crushing weight of my agony.
The SUV slowed to a halt. The High Council Archives loomed before us — a massive, imposing fortress of black marble and ancient, rune-carved pillars.
Cole helped me navigate the wheelchair out of the vehicle. The air inside the grand hall was freezing, thick with the scent of old parchment, magical ink, and shattered lives. We moved toward the Office of Bonds and Severances. In the waiting area, a young couple was viciously arguing over territory division, their voices echoing off the vaulted ceiling. Every angry word they hurled at each other twisted the knife deeper into my gut.
We approached the thick, blast-proof glass counter. A tired, fifty-something Elder Scribe peered at us over her spectacles, her Inner Wolf barely registering our presence through her sheer exhaustion.