Chapter 348
Chapter 348:
And I had doubted him. I had looked at him with terror on that balcony. I had called him a liar.
A ragged sob tore from my throat. I slid off the wicker chair, collapsed onto the floor, and buried my face in my grandmother’s lap. I wept hysterically, my wolfless body shaking as the crushing weight of my guilt was swallowed entirely by an overwhelming, devastating love for my Fated Mate.
Kain POV
The luxury hotel suite in Frankfurt was dark and suffocatingly quiet. I sat heavily in the leather chair by the desk, rubbing my temples. Ten hours of brutal, blood-soaked negotiations with the continent’s most ruthless Alphas had drained me—but the true agony was the vast, empty silence in my chest.
J𝗼𝗶n оu𝘳 со𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻і𝗍у 𝗈n
My Inner Wolf paced frantically in my mind, agitated and starved for the scent of wild roses and storm.
I picked up my phone from the desk. The screen cast a cold, harsh light over my tense features. Our message thread was completely blank. Not a single word from Adelina since I had left New York.
A cold, jagged shard of panic pierced my chest. She was still angry. My confession on the balcony—the A.W. tattoo, the years I had spent hunting her from the shadows, the psychotic magnitude of my possessiveness—had terrified her. In my absence, her fear had clearly hardened. Her silence wasn’t just distance; to my exhausted mind, it felt like a silent, agonizing rejection.
My Inner Wolf let out a low, wounded growl, the sound vibrating painfully against my ribs.
I gripped the phone until the glass screen groaned under the pressure. I would finalize this summit tomorrow morning. Then I would fly straight back to Manhattan, tear down whatever walls she was trying to build, and face the consequences of my own obsession. I tossed the phone onto the desk and stared out at the foreign city skyline, counting the agonizing hours until dawn.
Adelina POV
I jolted awake with a blood-curdling scream, my chest heaving as I clawed at the tangled black silk sheets. My skin was drenched in cold sweat. The nightmare was so vivid it felt like a memory branded directly into my own flesh. I could still smell it—the acrid, sickening stench of burning rubber, twisting metal, and the horrific, flesh-melting burn of silver. I could still hear the agonizing, trapped howl of Kain’s Inner Wolf echoing in my skull through our fragile mate-bond.
“Kain!” I gasped, my hands frantically searching the mattress.
It was empty. Ice-cold. His intoxicating ancient cedar scent was fading from the pillows, leaving me in a suffocating vacuum of terror. The realization that he had endured that hell alone—that he was currently an ocean away thinking I was terrified of him—ripped my soul apart. My hands shook violently as I grabbed my phone from the nightstand. It was 3:00 AM in New York, but I didn’t care. I hit his name and pressed the phone to my ear, praying to the Moon Goddess he would answer.