Chapter 736:

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Adella’s POV

The glowing screens of Alistair’s military-grade laptops cast a sickly blue light over the cold concrete of the Geneva underground garage. My heart hammered against my ribs so violently I could barely breathe. We were thousands of miles away, but through the hacked security feed, I was staring directly into the private sitting room of the Manhattan penthouse.

“Cassia is down,” Alistair murmured, his eyes locked on the secondary monitor. His inner wolf was completely submerged in the absolute focus of a Vanguard operative. “The maids spiked her evening tea with a heavy dose of melatonin. She won’t wake until dawn.”

On the main screen, the heavy oak doors of the sitting room clicked open.

Eleanor “Gigi” Marshall glided into the dark room, flanked by two Dire Guard intelligence officers. Even through the silent, pixelated feed, the sheer, suffocating arrogance of the Matriarch’s aura was palpable. She directed her men toward Cassia’s heavy steel biometric safe.

They dropped a military-grade decryption terminal onto the Persian rug. Green code scrolled rapidly across the screen. Seconds later, the heavy steel door hissed open.

Gigi pulled on a pair of pristine white cotton gloves. She reached into the safe and pulled out the velvet box, extracting the First Era Mechanical Dire Wolf.

𝗟atеѕ𝘁 c𝘩𝘢𝘱𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗌 𝗈n 𝘨𝘢𝘭n𝘰v𝘦𝘭𝘴.сo𝗆

I stopped breathing. My hands gripped the edge of the tactical table so hard my knuckles turned white.

Gigi didn’t just look at it. She pulled a macro-UV flashlight from her coat. The harsh purple beam swept over the intricate rosewood carving, illuminating the microscopic brass gears in the wolf’s abdomen.

Suddenly, Gigi froze. She leaned in closer.

The camera angle caught the exact moment the UV light highlighted a complex, inverted triangle stamped with modern invisible ink onto the outer base casing of the toy. It was the transit and anti-counterfeit mark of the Iron Fang Quartermaster, one of the most notorious Rogue weapons dealers in the European underworld, proving the antique had recently been smuggled through their modern black-market channels.

A cold, victorious smirk stretched across Gigi’s wrinkled face. Her ancient inner wolf practically preened with triumph. In her mind, the puzzle was solved. She arrogantly assumed that Dallas, cornered and desperate in Geneva, had degraded himself by begging the Rogue black market for illegal weapons and intel.

She barked a silent order. Her men quickly snapped high-resolution photos of the Rogue mark. Without a second glance, Gigi placed the wolf back into the safe, turning on her heel to march toward the guest suite. She was going to upload those photos directly to the High Council’s encrypted servers, fully believing she had just secured the ultimate weapon to strip Dallas of his crown.

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