Chapter 334
Chapter 334:
I grabbed my nearly empty glass of whiskey and downed the burning liquid. “My company is bleeding millions by the hour. My fiancée is facing a Council trial. And the woman I actually…” I choked on the word, the sour metallic tang of my own shame suffocating me. “Adelina is gone. Kain Blackwell took everything p>
Lucas leaned forward, his expression grim. “That’s why I flew in. You need to understand what you’re actually fighting, Jase. It didn’t start this week p>
I frowned, my heavy, bloodshot eyes focusing on him. “What are you talking about p>
“A year ago,” Lucas began, keeping his voice to a low murmur. “You were in London for the European Alpha Summit. Do you remember what happened on the second day p>
My chest tightened. Of course I remembered. It was the day Adelina had finally snapped under my coldness and packed her bags to leave my penthouse. I had rushed to the airfield to fly back and stop her, only to be met with heavily armed human military personnel.
“A forty-eight-hour no-fly zone over the North Atlantic,” I rasped. “A sudden, classified national security crisis. My private jet was grounded indefinitely. All commercial flights were canceled. I was trapped in London while she walked out the door p>
“It wasn’t a geopolitical crisis, Jase,” Lucas said, his eyes locking onto mine. “My Pack’s intelligence network spent the last six months tracing the dark money and political favors that orchestrated that lockdown. It led straight to the Blackstone family p>
The ambient noise of the club faded into a dull, rushing roar in my ears.
“Kain Blackwell grounded every flight across the Atlantic just to keep you away from her,” Lucas whispered. “He needed the physical space to ensure she left you. He has been hunting her—and dismantling you—for a year p>
The revelation struck me like a physical blow. The jagged pieces of my ruined life snapped into a horrifying, perfect picture.
The relentless financial slaughter of my company. The massive LED billboard on Wall Street publicly executing my pride. This wasn’t a sudden rivalry over a female. This wasn’t a fair fight between two Alphas. It was a premeditated, year-long slaughter orchestrated by an apex predator who could manipulate human governments on a global scale just to clear a path to his prey.
𝖥о𝗅𝘭𝗈𝘄 𝘶𝗌 о𝘯
I, an Alpha, had never been a rival. I was just an ant walking blindly into a Lycan’s meticulously designed trap.
A wave of absolute, paralyzing terror washed over me. My Inner Wolf stopped pacing. It shrank back into the darkest corner of my mind, whimpering with pure, instinctual dread at the phantom scent of the monster lurking in the shadows. I began to tremble, my hands shaking so violently I had to press them flat against the leather table.
I was a dead man walking.
But as the icy terror settled deep into my bones, it mutated. It twisted into a dark, desperate paranoia.
I pulled my encrypted phone from my coat pocket. I couldn’t call Adelina. She looked at me with cold, detached disgust—to her, I was the monster. She would never believe that she was sleeping next to a centuries-old predator who had manipulated her entire life.
I didn’t need to warn her. I needed a weapon.