Chapter 199
Chapter 199:
She slammed the phone down onto the cradle as if it had burned her and fell back against her chair. Her chest heaved as she looked up at me, her eyes wide with shock.
“He…” Carmella’s voice was hoarse, her fingers trembling against her lips. “He said my name… like… like he thought I was dead p>
A chill swept through my veins, confirming every dark suspicion I had harbored about the secrets buried in the Blackwell family’s past.
Beside the desk, Jaxon’s tears vanished instantly. He wiped his dry cheeks, a triumphant, chillingly calm smile spreading across his little face.
“Daddy is coming,” he whispered.
Grant POV
The ten-minute drive from my midtown political fundraiser to The Wolfe Hotel was a blur of agonizing adrenaline. I didn’t wait for my security detail to open the door of the armored SUV — I shoved it open myself and sprinted toward the entrance.
I burst through the heavy revolving doors of the hotel lobby. I didn’t see the bustling tourists, the marble pillars, or the bellhops.
I smelled her.
Beneath the bitter aroma of roasted espresso beans from the lobby coffee shop, buried under suffocating layers of expensive human perfume, was the impossible: rosemary and rain.
Save your favorite novels on FindNop>
My Inner Wolf, entombed in a cold grave of grief for seven agonizing years, violently clawed its way to the surface. It let out a deafening, soul-shattering howl in my mind.
I tracked the scent through the crowd. There, sitting at a small table with Jaxon, was my Fated Mate.
Carmella.
My breath vanished. The world around me plunged into a dead, ringing silence. My hands trembled uncontrollably as I closed the distance, every instinct screaming at me to pull her into my arms and never let go.
“Carmella,” I breathed, her name tearing my throat like shattered glass.
She looked up. Her dark eyes — the eyes I had kissed a thousand times, the eyes that haunted my every nightmare — met mine. But there was no spark of recognition. There was no warmth. Only polite, guarded confusion.
“Do I know you, sir?” she asked.
The question was a silver dagger plunging directly into my heart.
I froze. I reached out through the mate-bond, desperate for the familiar, vibrant hum of her soul. Nothing. Only a terrifying, hollow silence. She was completely wolfless. Her Inner Wolf was gone, and with it, every memory of me.
“I’m Jaxon’s father, Grant Blackwell,” I choked out. I forced my Lycan to submit, burying my aura deep so I wouldn’t terrify her. “You… you look exactly like an old friend I lost p>
“I’m Carmella Golden,” she replied, offering a hesitant, sympathetic smile. “Jaxon was very upset in my office. I thought waiting down here in the open would be better p>
I couldn’t breathe. The agony of standing inches from my mate and being treated like a stranger was suffocating. I thanked her, my voice mechanical, and gently pulled Jaxon to my side.
“Bye, Mommy!” Jaxon chirped, waving at her with absolute, innocent certainty.