Chapter 492: A dead man.

Daniel.

The heavy iron chains pulled mercilessly against my blood-slicked wrists, the cold metal digging deep into my skin every time I tried to shift on the mattress.

I slouched back against the wooden headboard, my split lip throbbing violently with every ragged breath I dragged into my bruised lungs. Blood dripped slowly onto my ruined velvet collar, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the icy, suffocating dread settling deep in my stomach.

Across the room, Aidan and Davian stood together by the tall glass window, bathed in the dim amber glow of the fireplace. They weren’t panicking, and they weren’t arguing. They looked like two apex predators calmly waiting for the trap to spring.

I stared at them, my mind spinning out of control. ’This wasn’t supposed to happen.’

The plan had been flawless. I had spent months coordinating with the Lycan prince and repeatedly hearing them addressing him as Vincent felt strange, but I hoped it wasn’t the Vincent I knew. I was making sure every detail was aligned. I slipped the refined wolfsbane into Maria’s tonics for two days drop by drop, weakening her wolf until she collapsed. I turned the guards in the outer perimeter. I locked Noah in the subterranean cells to keep the Alphas fractured and paranoid. Everything was staged for a clean, effortless surrender at dawn.

And now, it was all falling apart.

Davian turned his head, catch-and-release style, catching me staring. A slow, lethal, arrogant smirk spread across his face—the look of an Alpha who knew he held every single card in the deck.

"Something on your mind, Daniel?" Davian asked, his voice dripping with cool mockery.

I locked my jaw, choking down the rage burning in my throat. "You think you’re clever," I rasped out, my voice hoarse and broken. "You think that pathetic little letter is going to fool Him? He’s a Lycan prince, Davian. The moment the sun breaks over that ridge and he doesn’t see your surrender procession on the road, he’s going to order his war bands to level this entire pack."

Aidan didn’t even bother to turn around. He just kept his dark eyes fixed on the horizon outside the window.

"Let him come," Aidan said softly, his voice dead and cold as winter ice. "We aren’t hiding in this pack Daniel... have you forgotten so soon..." He paused dramatically. "... we’re waiting for him."

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead, dampening my skin despite the stillness of the room.

’Marcus.’

The name struck through my mind as the realization settled heavily over me. I had heard the faint, heavy shift in Davian’s posture moments ago—the telltale stillness of an Alpha taking a direct mind-link. I knew that look. I knew what it meant.

My men outside... the troop of loyalists I had stationed right at the gates... they were gone.

The thought made my stomach tighten as the truth became impossible to ignore. The quadruplets had moved against them without giving them any warning, without allowing a single sound to expose what was happening. They had disarmed my men without making a single sound.

I was completely, utterly trapped.

There was nowhere for me to turn, and the realization pressed down on me with suffocating weight. I twisted my wrists against the iron, desperately searching for even a millimeter of slack in the links. I pulled harder, shifting my hands against the cold metal and testing every point of restraint.

Davian had bound them with ruthless precision. The iron held firm against my wrists, refusing to loosen no matter how desperately I struggled. The links didn’t budge. Not even slightly.

My fingers were already going numb from the pressure, the sensation slowly fading beneath the unforgiving restraints. My signet ring was gone, and with it went another piece of the status and dignity I had once carried so easily.

Now, stripped of both, I could do nothing but remain where I was.

I slowly looked toward the window.

Beyond the glass, the dark sky was beginning to change. The blackness was gradually softening, giving way to a faint, dusty gray stretching along the eastern ridge.

Dawn was coming... and with it came the unmistakable realization— a sickening realization that washed over me, heavy and absolute— I was a dead man.

If the quadruplets succeeded in ambushing the Lycan prince, they would drag me out into the courtyard and execute me as a traitor in front of the entire pack but if the Lycan prince somehow broke through their lines and stormed this room, he wouldn’t spare me either. He would see that I had written that letter, that I had failed to deliver the quadruplets, and he would rip my throat out for incompetence.

There was no victory for me at the end of this night. No glory. No seat at the Lycan’s prince’s high table... just a shallow grave.

Aidan finally turned away from the glass, his attention shifting from the dark horizon as he reached down toward the rack near the wall. His fingers closed around the hilt of his broadsword, and he carefully unclamped the heavy weapon from its resting place.

The sound of heavy steel sliding against leather echoed through the quiet bedroom, sharp and deliberate, cutting through the silence like a death knell. The weight of the moment seemed to settle with that single sound.

"It’s time," Aidan said softly, his voice low and controlled as he looked over at Davian.

Davian gave a slow, firm nod in response. He reached down and pulled a short, heavy dagger from his belt, holding it securely in his hand. He turned the blade slightly, testing its edge carefully with the pad of his thumb, and then his gaze shifted back to me.

His eyes seemed to glow with a dark, terrifying promise, and the look alone was enough to make the air feel heavier around me.

I pulled back against the headboard as far as the chains would allow, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged beast. I was surrounded by monsters, trapped in the dark, watching the first light of dawn creep across the floorboards.