Chapter 78
Chapter 78:
I gasped, my lungs burning as I snapped back to the freezing stone floor of the Parrish cellar. The spilled 1982 Petrus soaked through my clothes, pooling around my legs like dark, congealing blood. My chest tightened violently, the old claustrophobia crashing over me in suffocating waves.
Muffled voices bled through the heavy oak door.
“Leave her down there,” Bryan’s voice echoed, cold and calculating. “The temperature will drop below freezing by midnight. The silver lock will keep her weak p>
“Are you sure she’ll sign?” Carolyn asked. There was no maternal concern in her tone — only greedy anticipation.
“She’ll beg to sign,” Bryan sneered. “We give her the Pack share transfer and the Rejection decree. Once she formally Rejects Kain Blackwell, the Mating bond is severed. The Lycan King loses his claim, and we take the empire p>
A violent shudder ripped through my freezing body.
A Rejection decree. Rejecting a Fated Mate caused soul-tearing agony — a pain that could literally kill a weakened wolf. They wanted to strip me of my King, my Pack, and my life, leaving me with absolutely nothing.
My hands shook uncontrollably as I pulled my phone from my pocket. The screen illuminated my shivering frame, casting long, skeletal shadows across the wine racks.
No Service.
The thick stone walls of the underground cellar blocked everything. I couldn’t call for help. The ambient silver toxicity bleeding through the lock was already poisoning the air, making my head swim. The freezing dampness of the floor was seeping into my bones, turning my fingers numb. I was going to die down here.
I opened the camera app and hit record.
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The pale light of the screen caught the tears freezing on my cheeks. My breath plumed in the icy air.
“Kain,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “They locked me in. They want me to sign a Rejection — to sever the bond. I won’t do it. I won’t give them our Pack p>
My vision blurred, the edges of the cellar darkening as hypothermia began to shut down my body. I stared into the camera lens, imagining his storm-gray eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, a sob tearing at my throat. “I never regretted signing your contract. I never regretted you p>
My numb fingers lost their grip. The phone clattered onto the stone floor, its screen cracking, but the red recording light kept blinking.
I curled into a tight ball on the damp, wine-soaked stone, my body trembling so violently it ached. The cold was a heavy blanket, dragging me under. As the suffocating darkness finally claimed my consciousness, my dormant, broken soul reached out into the absolute void, screaming a single, silent name.
Kain.
Kain POV
I was thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic, reviewing the final acquisition documents for a London firm, when it hit me.
It wasn’t a thought or a sound. It was a violent, soul-tearing agony that ripped straight through my chest, burning exactly where the jagged A.W. was inked into my skin. The heavy Montblanc pen snapped in my grip, ink bleeding over the pristine contracts.