Chapter 224
Chapter 224:
She turned and walked out of the office, completely unaware of the massive, ancient predator currently flying down the eastern seaboard, heading straight for her.
Adelina POV
The heavy mahogany doors of the Alpha’s Council Chamber clicked shut, sealing us inside. I sat at the head of the long table, beneath the stern portrait of my late father, but my authority felt entirely overshadowed by the suffocating presence of the Lycan sitting to my right.
Grant Blackwell hadn’t called this emergency board meeting to inspect the Wolfe Hotel’s assets.
The air in the room was overwhelmingly thick with his scent—rosemary and rain. But it wasn’t just a scent; it was a physical manifestation of agonizing, suffocating grief mixed with a dark, desperate possessiveness.
At the opposite end of the table, Carmella Golden stood illuminated by the projector screen, flawlessly breaking down our Q3 financial restructuring. She was the picture of human professionalism, completely oblivious to the predator in the room.
𝘋𝗂scоve𝗿 𝘯e𝘄 𝘴𝘁о𝗿і𝘦ѕ 𝗈𝗇
Grant wasn’t looking at the spreadsheets. His eyes were locked onto Carmella with a terrifying intensity. He didn’t blink. He was drinking in her every movement, every subtle shift of her dark hair, every syllable that fell from her lips. It was the gaze of a starving man staring at a feast he wasn’t allowed to touch. My dormant Inner Wolf shivered under the sheer weight of his silent torment. He was looking at her as if she were a ghost he was desperately trying to pull back into the world of the living.
“And that concludes the asset reallocation,” Carmella finished, offering a polite smile.
Grant didn’t say a word. He abruptly stood up, his chair scraping harshly against the floor, and walked out of the chamber without a single backward glance.
Carmella let out a long, shaky breath, her shoulders dropping. “Well, that was intense,” she murmured, gathering her files. “Lycan politicians certainly have their quirks p>
I stared at the empty doorway, my heart pounding. That wasn’t a quirk. That was a dangerous, consuming obsession, and I knew I had to keep Carmella as far away from the Blackwell family’s ghosts as possible.
Before I could dwell on it, my phone vibrated on the table. A text from the Pack Doctor: Elder Maeve is awake and improving.
Relief washed over me. I left the hotel and hurried to the Silvermoon Sanctum.
When I reached the private ward, the two massive Blackstone Warriors guarding the door bowed their heads respectfully. I pushed the heavy door open, expecting to find the nurses fussing over my grandmother. Instead, I froze in the threshold.
Sunlight filtered through the blinds, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. The room smelled of dry herbs, but it was enveloped in the warm, intoxicating scent of ancient cedar.
Kain sat in a chair drawn close to Maeve’s bed. The terrifying Lycan King—a man who had liquidated an entire empire without blinking—was holding a small, non-silver paring knife. With agonizing patience and gentleness, he was peeling a pear for my frail grandmother.