Chapter 296
Chapter 296:
I didn’t see Kira crying in the corner. I saw Adelina. She was clawing at the silver-lined door, her hands a mangled, bleeding mess of deep gouges, her flesh sizzling against the toxic metal. The scent of her pure terror and agony was overwhelming. Then, from the darkest corner of the vault, Kira emerged. She wasn’t bleeding. Her wrists were flawless. I watched in my mind’s eye as Kira calmly pulled a pristine pink dress from a storage box, slipping it over her head to play the traumatized victim just seconds before I broke through the door.
My Alpha wolf let out a guttural, agonizing howl that tore at my chest.
I hadn’t just married a monster. I was her accomplice. I had spent years systematically destroying the girl who had actually suffered, pushing the true victim deeper into hell while shielding her abuser.
“Fuck!” I roared, slamming my fist into the steering wheel with bone-jarring force.
Rеco𝘮𝗺𝗲𝘯d t𝗼 уо𝗎𝗿 𝘧𝗋𝗶е𝗇𝘥𝘴
The horn blared, followed instantly by the piercing shriek of the car alarm, shattering the quiet morning. I didn’t care. I gripped my hair, my chest heaving as a devastating wave of self-loathing crashed over me.
With trembling, bloodless fingers, I grabbed my phone from the floorboard. My Inner Wolf was thrashing, desperate and begging for a forgiveness I didn’t deserve. I scrolled to Adelina’s name — a name I had swiped past with contempt a thousand times before — and hit call. I just needed to hear her voice.
The line was dead silent for a second. Then a cold, automated voice filled the car.
“The number you have dialed has blocked your call p>
The phone slipped from my hand. The cold, mechanical rejection was a blade to the throat — definitive proof that the chasm between us was now bottomless. I was entirely alone in the ruins of my own making.
Adelina POV
I woke up suffocating in the scent of ancient cedar and pure, terrifying power.
Disorientation hit me first, followed immediately by the heavy, immovable weight banded across my waist. I blinked against the morning sunlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Penthouse Den’s master bedroom. Kain Blackwell’s massive arm was locked around me, pulling my back flush against his rock-hard chest.
Panic flared in my chest. I was wolfless, fragile, and currently trapped in the bed of a Lycan who treated me like a prized possession. I tried to slide out from under his grip, my heart hammering against my ribs.
His arm tightened instantly — a steel vice that dragged me closer. I could feel the low, warning rumble of his Inner Wolf vibrating against my spine.
Before I could fight him off, the soft squeak of rubber wheels sounded in the hallway.
I froze.
“Let them rest,” Elder Maeve’s frail voice drifted through the heavy walnut door. “They are newly Mated. They need their peace p>
“Of course, Elder Wolfe,” the Pack Doctor murmured in agreement.
My blood ran cold. If my grandmother came in and saw me fighting him, her fragile, disoriented mind would shatter.
Sensing my paralysis, Kain moved with terrifying, predatory speed. He flipped me onto my back, his massive frame hovering over me as he yanked the heavy black silk duvet over our heads, plunging us into a dark, intimate cocoon. The air instantly grew thick with his intoxicating scent and my own spiking adrenaline.
He lowered his head, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.