Chapter 249
Chapter 249:
The memory flashed behind my eyes—Grant standing in the mall, and later in the hotel boardroom, staring at Carmella as if he were looking at a ghost. I remembered the raw, agonizing obsession in his eyes, the way his Lycan seemed to claw at the surface just from being near her.
Carmella wiped her tears, completely oblivious to the storm brewing. She had no idea who Grant Blackwell really was, or the invisible, terrifying tether that seemed to connect him to her.
I gripped her hand, guiding her out of the ruined apartment and into Kain’s waiting car. As we sped toward Blackstone Tower, the silence in the cabin felt suffocating. I was pulling my best friend out of a nightmare, only to walk her directly into a cage with a starving beast.
The heavy oak door of the study was thick enough to block out the sounds of the city, but it could do absolutely nothing to stop the scent.
𝗗𝗶𝗌со𝗏𝘦𝘳 𝘯e𝘸 𝘀𝘵о𝗿iеѕ on.сo𝘮
I was reviewing Senate security protocols on my encrypted tablet when it hit me — a force that punched through the sterile, filtered air of the penthouse like a physical blow to the chest. Rosemary and rain. But it wasn’t the faint, phantom trace I had been chasing for seven agonizing years. It was real. It was here. And it was completely drowned in the sour, rotting stench of profound heartbreak.
My tablet cracked under the sudden, violent grip of my hands.
My Inner Wolf, starved and half-mad from grief, clawed its way violently to the surface. It let out a deafening roar in my skull, obliterating every ounce of my political restraint. I shoved the heavy doors open and stepped into the dim light of the living room.
There she was.
Carmella. My Fated Mate. She was curled against Adelina’s side, her dark hair disheveled, looking like a fragile, shattered ghost. The sheer agony radiating from her small frame made my bones grind with the desperate need to pull her into my arms and slaughter whoever had made her cry.
But my Lycan instincts — twisted by years of denial and the terrifying reality of seeing her in my brother’s den — overrode my sanity. To mask the overwhelming, paralyzing emotion threatening to break me, I wrapped myself in absolute, freezing ice.
“So the stray has finally found her way home,” I said, my voice a cold, unrecognizable rasp that echoed harshly in the quiet room.
Kain, standing near the hallway, instantly stiffened. His storm-gray eyes snapped to me, sharp as a silver blade. The atmospheric pressure in the room plummeted as his ancient cedar scent flared in warning.
Control yourself, Grant, Kain’s voice vibrated through our private mind-link, laced with the undeniable authority of the Alpha King. She’s broken. Don’t shatter her further.
I clenched my jaw, forcing my Lycan to swallow its feral growl. But the damage of my words was already done.
Carmella flinched violently. She looked up, her tear-streaked face pale. Without her Inner Wolf to recognize the mate-bond, she didn’t see a husband desperate to comfort her. She only saw a towering, dangerous male radiating an oppressive, predatory aura. The trauma of her fiancé’s betrayal was still fresh, and she instantly projected that terror onto me.