Chapter 77
Chapter 77:
“Let’s not end the night on such a bitter note,” Carolyn suddenly chimed in, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. She stood up, smoothing her skirt. “Adelina, if you want to leave safely, let’s at least toast to your late father’s memory. Go down to the cellar and fetch the 1982 Petrus. The one he saved for your future Marking ceremony p>
It was a blatant power play — a final humiliation designed to remind me of the father I had lost and the Marking I supposedly couldn’t have. But Brent wasn’t moving, and I needed to get out of this house.
“Fine,” I muttered.
I slipped past Brent, pushed open the heavy oak door near the hallway, and descended the stone steps into the wine cellar. The temperature plummeted instantly. The cellar was a maze of floor-to-ceiling racks, smelling of damp earth and aged cork.
I found the dusty bottle of Petrus in the back corner. As I turned around, a massive figure blocked the narrow aisle.
Brent stepped into the dim light.
“Dad doesn’t want wine, Adelina,” Brent sneered, his eyes dark with sadistic intent. “He wants you to learn respect p>
“Get out of my way,” I ordered, clutching the bottle.
Brent lunged. He shoved me violently backward. My spine slammed into the wooden rack, sending a dozen bottles crashing to the stone floor in an explosion of shattered glass and red wine. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs, leaving me gasping on the damp stone.
Before I could scramble to my feet, Brent turned and sprinted up the stairs.
𝗧𝗿𝖾nd𝗂𝗇 oո
The heavy oak door slammed shut. Total darkness swallowed the cellar.
A second later, the terrifying rattle of heavy iron chains echoed from the other side of the door, followed by the definitive click of a padlock.
I rushed up the stairs, pounding my fists against the unyielding oak. “Brent! Open the door p>
There was no answer. But as I pressed my face against the wood, a faint, metallic tang bled through the cracks of the doorframe — a scent that bypassed my logic and struck directly at the deepest, most traumatized core of my soul.
Silver.
Adelina POV
The metallic tang of silver didn’t just hit my nose — it scraped down my throat like crushed glass. The darkness of the wine cellar was absolute, and the scent radiating from the padlock on the other side of the oak door pressed down on me like a physical, suffocating weight.
Suddenly, I wasn’t twenty-something anymore.
I was ten years old. The air was sweltering, trapped inside the windowless storeroom at Wolfe Manor. The walls were lined with silver foil, gleaming with a sinister, toxic light. My skin blistered without even touching it. Deep inside me, a fragile, newborn presence — my Inner Wolf — whimpered in blinding, tearing agony.
Through the old brass keyhole, Kira’s sickly-sweet voice drifted in, dripping with venom. “You’re not a real Wolfe, Adelina. You’re a defect. No Alpha will ever want a broken thing like you. You’ll never have a wolf p>
To survive the torture, to stop the silver from burning my soul to ash, my wolf retreated into a dark, impenetrable coma. I became wolfless.