Chapter 141: Don’t play mind games

The silence inside the study was suffocating.

Dorian stood by the window, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. The muscles and defined ridges across his back and shoulders were stretched taut with tension.

His eyes remained pinned on Elvira where she sat on the sofa, watching her as if she might suddenly sprout horns from her skull.

Seated around the spacious room were Pandora, Jake, Alec, and Anthony, while Henna sat quietly behind Jake, her eyes darting between everyone.

Elvira wrung her hands nervously in her lap. Dorian’s unyielding glare made her skin prickle with dread; he looked at her not as a long-lost lover, but as an enemy.

"You are going to answer my questions, Elvira," he said suddenly, turning fully to face her. "And you are going to answer every single one of them truthfully."

She swallowed hard, tucking a loose lock of hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. "Ask away," she said softly.

"First of all, how in the hell are you alive?" Dorian demanded. "What happened the day you fell off the cliff?"

She let out a bitter scoff, shaking her head. "You mean the day you pushed me off?"

"I didn’t push you, and you fucking know it!" Dorian snarled, taking a threatening step forward. "Don’t you dare start with that bullshit! Answer my fucking question!"

Elvira stared at him in stunned silence, shocked by his coldness. She knew Dorian possessed a terrifying temper, but he had always been gentle with her; before that tragedy tore them apart.

"I honestly don’t know how I survived," she began, lifting her chin to meet his burning gaze. "One minute I was dying, and the next, I woke up in a hospital."

"What hospital?" Dorian growled. "Don’t play mind games with me, Elvira. If you’ve been alive all these years, where the hell have you been? Why did you decide to show up now?"

"How am I supposed to answer when you keep throwing questions at me?"

Dorian was getting impatient. He needed answers. Her sudden appearance was already a threat to his marriage.

"That day, after I fell," Elvira continued. "I lost consciousness. I thought I was going to die. I stayed awake for as long as I could, praying you would fly down to find me, to save me. But you never came."

A bitter, resentful edge filled her eyes as she looked up at him. "I woke up in a medical facility, like I said earlier. But I don’t know who dragged me out of the forest..."

"Liar!" Dorian barked out.

"I’m telling the truth!" she snapped back, tears brimming in her eyes. "I lost my child, Dorian. Do you honestly think my first thought upon waking up was to investigate who brought me to the hospital?"

"What hospital was it?" Dorian demanded again, advancing on her. "Didn’t the doctors tell you who checked you in?"

Elvira shot to her feet, her pale face flushing red with indignance. "I lost my baby!" she yelled hysterically, her voice cracking under the strain. "The very first thing I heard when I finally regained consciousness after weeks in a coma was that my baby died in the fall. Yet all you care about is the name of the fucking hospital?"

"And whose fault was that?" Dorian snapped back, completely losing control.

He marched right up to her and grabbed her arms in a crushing grip, completely ignoring the flare of the mate bond that erupted when they touched.

"Who tried to drag you back from the edge of that cliff?" he roared, his face inches from hers. "Me! That’s who! But you were too far gone in your own madness to let anyone save you. You leaped to your death and killed an innocent child in the process!"

A collective gasp echoed around the study. For years, no one in the kingdom knew the true story of that tragic day because Dorian had refused to recount the nightmare.

Rumors had circulated for decades that the Alpha had thrown his unfaithful mate and her child over Winter’s Peak. But the truth was finally revealed.

Dorian thought he made peace with his past. He thought he had buried the agony of Elvira’s betrayal and the hollow ache of losing her. But standing this close to her proved he was wrong. The scar had been ripped wide open.

His eyes began to bleed into pitch-black coals as Shadow thrashed against his ribcage.

Jake moved instantly, stepping forward and pulling him away.

"Alpha, control your beast," he urged in a low voice. "Please. If you go feral right now, we won’t get a single answer out of her."

Dorian roughly shoved his hand off and turned his back on Elvira, forcing a leash over his raging emotions. When he spoke again, his tone had gone flat and cold.

"Go on," he commanded. "What happened after you woke up?"

Elvira wiped her tears and took a shaky breath. "After the death of my child, I lost my mind. I spent months in and out of sanity. When the hospital couldn’t manage me anymore, I was transferred to an asylum."

She sniffed softly and crossed her arms, dropping her gaze to the floor. "I remained there for years, treated like an animal, tortured under the excuse of curing my illness. Years later, I was transferred to a rehabilitation center. But I tried to escape. They caught me and sent me back to the asylum."

She paused, swallowing hard. "I won’t bother giving you every detail of what I suffered. It was pure hell. The only reason I’m standing here today is because my doctor finally signed off on my release. After all these years, he declared I was cured, that I was free to leave."

She looked up at Dorian, her expression softening into something pleading and desperate. "You were the very first person I thought of, Dorian. The only person I wanted to see. I booked a flight the moment I was released and traveled straight to Wintercrest..."

"This hospital you keep referring to," Pandora interrupted sharply, her voice cutting through the tense air. "And this asylum, what region of the realm are they located in?"

Elvira shot her a venomous glare. Years ago, she and Pandora had been inseparable friends. But that bond shattered the moment Elvira’s treacherous affair with Joffrey was exposed.

"I don’t see how that information is relevant to anything," she retorted coldly.

"It is relevant," Anthony barked out, leaning forward in his seat. "You don’t get to march into this territory, construct a sob story, and expect us to believe. What is the name of the asylum?"

Elvira turned her head away, her lips pressing into a stubborn line. She knew that if she revealed it, she would blow Conri and Bethany’s cover, exposing their secret involvement behind her return.

"I’m sorry, but I cannot answer that," she muttered quietly.

Pandora let out a sudden, mocking laugh. "Typical. And you think we believe you? It’s all lies."

Elvira ignored her and turned all her attention back to Dorian. She stuck her bottom lip out in a familiar pouting gesture; a move she had used a thousand times in their youth to exploit his weakness for her and ignite whatever embers of love were still buried beneath his cold exterior.

"Please tell me you believe me, Dorian," she whispered. "I would never lie to you about something like this. You know me. You know I wouldn’t."

Dorian, who had remained silent all along, glared down at her. The muscle along his jaw flexed repeatedly as he used every ounce of willpower to keep Shadow and Soren locked beneath the surface.

The silence stretched endlessly through the study, so thick it felt dangerous.

Finally, Dorian turned his back on her and looked at the group.

"Everyone out."

Pandora was the first to react, snapping up from her seat. "What? Dorian, you can’t possibly believe a word of this story. Have you forgotten what she did with Joffrey?"

"I said OUT!" Dorian roared, his eyes flashing eerily as he glared at the room. "NOW!"