Chapter 712:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

The chilling echo of Dallas’s dark whisper in the operations room still lingered in my ears, but the immediate threat of Alistair’s execution had passed. The adrenaline of the morning standoff faded, leaving behind the quiet, heavy reality of our subterranean sanctuary.

I pulled my oversized cashmere shawl tighter around my shoulders and walked barefoot toward the small kitchen. The rich aroma of brewing coffee mingled with the heavy, suppressed scent of violent storms and cedar.

Dallas stood with his back to me at the granite countertops. He was trying to pour hot water into a French press, but his massive hands — hands that had effortlessly snapped the necks of Rogue mercenaries — were trembling violently. The neurological spasms from the silver-toxin backlash made the boiling water splash erratically across the marble island.

I needed to know if his tear-soaked confession of being “broken” last night had permanently severed our physical bond. I needed to know if his guilt had built an impenetrable wall between us.

I stepped silently across the dark tiles. “It’s freezing in the hub,” I murmured, wrapping my arms around his waist from behind.

I felt his spine stiffen. I stepped around him, rising onto my tiptoes, and pressed my lips gently against his tense mouth.

A low, warning growl vibrated deep in his chest. He tried to pull back, his Inner Wolf terrified of his own instability, but I didn’t retreat. I deepened the kiss, refusing to let him lock himself in the dark.

The fragile thread of his restraint violently snapped.

𝘛𝘩е 𝘮𝗼𝗌𝗍 рo𝘱𝘶𝗹𝖺𝗋 𝗻𝗈𝗏e𝗹s 𝗈𝗻 𝗀а𝗅𝗇𝗼𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘴.𝘤𝗼𝘮

A ragged, desperate groan tore from his throat. Dallas spun me around, pinning my back against the cold edge of the marble island. His storm-gray eyes instantly bled into the pure, abyssal black of his Lycan, Ragnar. The kiss turned frantic, a starving man finally tasting rain. His large, calloused hands slid up my waist, burning with a feverish, possessive heat.

But as his fingers trailed upward, a violent, involuntary spasm — a cruel reminder of the silver toxin — jerked through his forearm. His grip, usually so precise, tightened with a crushing, bone-snapping force for a split second before his hand went limp and useless. It was a stark, physical betrayal of his own strength.

Dallas violently recoiled, tearing himself away from me. He stumbled backward, his broad shoulders crashing against the stainless-steel refrigerator. His chest heaved in rapid, shattered gasps. He stared at his own useless hands, his pupils dilated in sheer, unadulterated frustration, as if his own muscles had turned into a traitorous enemy.

“I can’t even hold you,” he choked out, his voice thick with a new, raw kind of fury directed at himself. “My own body is a weapon I can’t aim anymore. If I can’t control a simple touch, Adella, how can I stand between you and what’s coming?”

He was drowning in the abyss of his own perceived weakness, completely consumed by the terror of losing the one thing that defined him: his ability to protect.

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