Chapter 718:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

I lowered the communicator, the roaring shower filling the silence. I reached out and wiped the condensation from the mirror. Adella Everett was gone. It was time to put on the mask.

Azalea’s POV

I lowered the encrypted communicator, the dead silence of the bathroom heavy against the roaring shower. I reached out, wiping the thick condensation from the mirror. The terrified, trapped girl staring back at me was gone. Adella’s fierce vow — I will never abandon my mate — ignited a dormant fire in my veins.

My Inner Wolf stopped her pathetic whimpering. She bared her fangs, letting out a low, vibrating growl. I wasn’t just a pawn. I was Zane Sterling’s daughter. An apex predator.

I turned off the water and stepped into the opulent stateroom. A soft knock drew my attention. The heavy oak door cracked open, and Healer Henri Laurent slipped inside under the guise of delivering a room service cart.

His Healer aura was tightly suppressed. He reached into his coat and pressed a microscopic burner phone into my palm.

“It bypasses the Embassy’s signal jammers,” Henri whispered urgently. “Gideon is on his way up to break your spirit before the banquet. Give him enough rope to hang himself.”

Henri vanished into the corridor just as the temperature in the room plummeted. The heavy doors swung open again, and a suffocating, bone-chilling Lycan aura flooded the stateroom.

𝖱𝗲cоm𝗺𝖾n𝗱 𝘨𝗮𝘭𝗇𝗼v𝖾𝘭𝗌.𝘤o𝘮 𝘁o y𝘰u𝗋 f𝗿𝘪еn𝖽ѕ

Gideon stepped inside.

I immediately dropped my shoulders, forcing my body to tremble as I backed away toward the velvet sofa. I slipped the tiny phone into the lace cuff of my sleeve, my thumb blindly pressing the record button.

“Look at you,” Gideon purred, his dead, obsidian eyes drinking in my fabricated terror. “Dressed like a proper Royal Pack sacrifice.”

“Elder Jean-Paul…” I stammered, injecting a pathetic waver into my voice. “He is your ally. He won’t let you hurt me.”

Gideon let out a dark, arrogant laugh. The sheer hubris of the Lycan blinded him to the trap. “Jean-Paul is a greedy, useful idiot. He and his precious Luna Cecelia have been embezzling Pack funds for a decade to finance my silver weapons smuggling and the Level 9 silver-toxin labs.”

He stepped closer, his scent of rotting pine making my stomach churn. “Tonight, once the engagement is announced and I have what I want, I am handing their treason directly to the High Council. The Royal Pack will burn, and I will annex their ashes.”

Gideon turned and swept out of the room, leaving me to my supposed despair.

The heavy doors clicked shut. I stopped the recording. A cold, lethal smile touched my lips.

An hour later, the grand staircase of the Embassy was a sea of scarlet carpets and gilded railings. I descended the steps, my arm linked with Alpha Heir Edward’s. Below us, the ballroom buzzed with Europe’s elite.

Waiting on the mid-level landing was Elder Jean-Paul, leaning heavily on his cane, his eyes gleaming with political triumph.

“Edward,” I murmured, offering a flawless, hollow smile. “Go ahead. I need a private word with your grandfather.”

Edward puffed his chest, oblivious to the tension, and descended to the ballroom.

.

.

.