Chapter 338
Chapter 338:
She slowly lifted her head. The vibrant, defiant light I loved so much was completely gone from her eyes, replaced by a devastating, hollow pain.
I took one hesitant step forward.
She flinched violently, shrinking back against the freezing stone wall as if bracing for a physical blow.
Adelina POV
I pressed my spine against the freezing stone wall of the balcony, the biting autumn wind whipping my silk gown around my trembling legs. The withered rose gardens below were swallowed by darkness, but the true nightmare was standing right in front of me.
Kain took another step forward. His ancient cedar scent, usually my safest anchor, now felt like a suffocating cage. My mind raced with the violent threat I had just overheard, twisting it together with the gossip blogs I had seen. A.W. Alfred Waller. He was a liar. A violent, manipulative monster hiding a secret lover while playing the devoted husband to a broken, wolfless Omega.
оr𝘨𝗮𝘯іz𝗲 𝗒𝗈𝘂𝗿 𝗹i𝖻rаr𝗒 oո.с𝗼𝘮
“Don’t touch me,” I choked out, shrinking away from his outstretched hands.
The sheer, primal terror in my scent hit him like a physical blow. Kain’s golden eyes widened, flashing with absolute, soul-shattering panic. His Inner Wolf was thrashing, completely unhinged by the realization that I was looking at him the same way I used to look at Jase Davenport.
He didn’t stop. He couldn’t.
In a blur of terrifying Lycan speed, Kain closed the distance. I gasped, trying to shove his chest, but his large hands clamped around my wrists like iron shackles. Ignoring my frantic resistance, he yanked my hands downward while his other hand gripped the collar of his expensive dress shirt.
With one violent, guttural pull, he ripped the shirt open. Buttons popped and scattered across the stone floor.
He forced my freezing, trembling palm flat against the scorching, hard muscle of his left pectoral, directly over his wildly hammering heart. Beneath my fingertips, stark against his skin, was the dark, jagged ink of the tattoo. A.W.
“It’s not him! It’s you! It has always been you! Adelina. Wolfe.” Kain roared, his voice a hoarse, agonizing rasp that tore through the freezing night air.
The words struck me like a bolt of lightning.
Adelina Wolfe.
The breath was punched from my lungs. The terrifying illusion of Alfred Waller shattered into a million pieces. I stared at the black ink, feeling the frantic, desperate rhythm of his heart beneath it.
“Three years ago,” Kain breathed, his golden eyes burning with a dark, terrifying obsession as he stared down at me. “I marked myself with your name three years ago. Even when you belonged to another Alpha, you were mine. I hunted you, Adelina. I orchestrated every fallen domino, every ruined empire, just to tear you away from him p>
My mind went entirely blank. The sheer, psychotic magnitude of his confession paralyzed me. This wasn’t a Mating Contract. This wasn’t a marriage of convenience. It was a meticulously calculated, years-long hunt by an apex predator who had reshaped the world just to trap me in his den.