Chapter 732:

🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙 🍙

Relief washed over me, but it was violently short-lived.

Dallas shifted his weight, pushing himself off the mattress. He walked over to the biometric safe concealed in the concrete wall. The scanner beeped a hollow green, and he pulled out a dark velvet box.

“Before we go upstairs,” Dallas said, his voice softening with the profound ache of a father missing his pup, “I want to give you this.” He popped the velvet lid open. “I had Alistair intercept this from a local black-market auction before the chaos in Monaco. I want him to send it back to New York through his Vanguard channels. For little Arthur’s first Christmas.”

The blood instantly drained from my face. My wolfless heart stopped dead in my chest.

Resting on the black satin was a First Era Mechanical Dire Wolf. It was carved from flawless rosewood, its articulated joints exposing microscopic brass gears that ticked with a faint, magical hum designed to soothe a Lycan pup’s spirit.

I knew every single groove of that wood. I knew the exact tension of those brass springs.

Years ago, while trapped in Braydon Hyde’s mental cage, I had been forced to use my restoration talents to repair stolen artifacts for a ruthless Rogue black-market broker just to secretly hoard escape funds. Using bribed Omegas and the same dead-drop mail system I used to contact Healer Sterling, I smuggled tiny gears and relics in and out of the estate. And like a foolish, desperate artist trying to hold onto her identity in the dark, I had left a micro-signature deep inside the central brass gear of this very wolf: the letter A intertwined with a moonflower.

If this artifact entered the Manhattan penthouse, Eleanor “Gigi” Marshall and the High Council’s security grid would scan it. My illegal, black-market past would be dragged into the light, completely destroying my unblemished authority as Luna Regent.

𝘛h𝗲 𝗆оѕ𝗍 𝘱𝗈𝗽ul𝖺𝗋 𝘯𝗈𝘷𝗲𝗹s o𝗇 𝗀𝘢lոo𝘷𝘦𝘭ѕ.𝖼𝗼𝗆

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Dallas murmured, completely unaware that he was holding a ticking time bomb.

A suffocating wave of nausea hit me, but I ruthlessly shoved the terrified Adella Everett back into the dark. I forced a flawless, radiant smile and reached out, gently taking the velvet box from his massive hands.

“It’s perfect,” I lied smoothly. “I’ll pack it for him.”

Dallas smiled, a rare, genuine expression of peace. He leaned down, pressing a warm kiss to my forehead. “I’m going to shower before we head up.”

He turned and walked into the adjacent bathroom. The heavy door clicked shut, and seconds later, the roar of the shower filled the silence.

I stood frozen in the center of the dim sanctuary, my fingers gripping the velvet box so tightly my knuckles turned white, staring down at the brass gears that threatened to tear my entire world apart.

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