Chapter 471: Crazy Plan!!!

Davian.

I stood frozen at the foot of the bed, my hands clasped so tightly over my face that my knuckles were stark white.

My heart felt like a piece of hollow glass, cracked down the middle and ready to shatter at the slightest touch. I looked at Maria—at her pale, feverish face, at her weak, shallow breathing—and then down at Adrein, who was still slumped on the floor in the corner, clutching his chest where his bond thread hung frayed and bleeding.

A sickening, suffocating knot tightened in my gut.

Adrein was right. Goddess help me, he was right. We were smothering her. Our possessiveness, our lies, our refusal to let her breathe—it was dragging her soul straight into the ground.

But how the hell was I supposed to just let her go?

How was I supposed to stand by and watch our mate walk away with another man?

The mere thought of severing our bond made my wolf roar in pure, unadulterated agony. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.

"Davian..." Damien’s cracked, trembling voice broke through the heavy silence. He was sitting on the edge of the mattress, gently holding Maria’s ice-cold fingers. "What do we do? Look at her. She’s barely holding on."

"I don’t know, Damien!" I snapped, my voice breaking into a ragged, desperate mess as I pulled at my hair. "I don’t know what to do anymore! Every choice we make just seems to hurt her!"

Aidan didn’t say a word. He remained standing near the window like a stone statue, his jaw locked, his bloodshot eyes staring blankly at the floor. The total, helpless silence in the room was crushing. We were four Alphas, leaders of a premier territory, and we were completely paralyzed by our own grief and guilt.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sudden, sharp sound against the heavy wooden door made all of us flinch.

I wiped a hand aggressively across my eyes, trying to clear the moisture, and forced my chest to expand as I took a heavy step forward. "Who is it?" I barked out, my voice coming out raspy and rough.

The door creaked open slowly, and Daniel stepped into the room.

He didn’t look like he belonged in the middle of our private nightmare. His posture was clean, his clothes were immaculate, and his face carried that same calm, unreadable expression he always wore.

He paused just inside the threshold, his dark eyes scanning the room—taking in Adrien weeping in the corner, Aidan frozen by the curtain, Damien gripping Maria’s hand, and me standing in the center, looking like a broken man.

"I came to check on Maria," Daniel said quietly, taking a small, deliberate step further into the room. "I heard the shouting from down the hall. Is she any better?"

"She’s not," I grunted, crossing my broad arms tightly over my chest, as much to hold myself together as to keep him at a distance.

Daniel let out a low, sympathetic sigh, though his eyes remained sharp and calculating. "That’s not exactly what I planned to hear."

"Is that all you came for, Daniel?" Aidan asked from the window, his voice dangerously low, not even turning around to face him. "Because if you’re just here to pity us, you can turn right back around and leave."

"No," Daniel replied calmly, turning his attention directly toward me and Aidan. "I also came to ask if you’ve given any serious thought to my suggestion. The offer I made to you earlier."

I swallowed hard, a bitter taste rising in the back of my throat as his words hung in the stale air.

His suggestion.

The plan Daniel had laid out to us was insane. It was risky, humiliating, and completely against every prideful bone in our Alpha bodies.

"You want us to surrender," I said flatly, looking Daniel dead in the eye as the weight of the proposal crashed over me again. "You want the four of us to pack up, march into the Lycan prince’s territory, and present ourselves as completely defeated lords."

"It’s the only logical play you have left," Daniel reasoned softly, stepping closer and lowering his voice so it carried a persuasive, practical edge. "Look at yourselves. Look at this room. You are broken, your mate is dying, and the Lycan prince is sitting in his fortress, waiting to crush this pack the moment he realizes you’re vulnerable."

"We are Alphas, Daniel!" Davian spat out, my chest heaving with a sudden burst of defensive anger. "You’re asking us to bow our heads to a rival! To pretend we’re groveling at his feet!"

"I am asking you to play smart for once!" Daniel countered firmly, his eyes flashing with a sudden, intense seriousness. "I’m not asking you to actually surrender, Davian. I’m asking you to act like you have. If you go to the Lycan territory as defeated, broken Alphas, the prince will lower his guards. He will think he’s won. He won’t see you as an immediate threat anymore."

Damien looked up from the bed, his brow furrowing in confusion and lingering panic. "And then what? What happens once we’re inside?"

"Once we are inside his perimeter and his guard is down," Daniel explained, looking at each of us in turn, "we strike him together. All four of you, alongside my men. We take out his top commanders, break his stronghold from the inside, and eliminate the threat to your pack once and for all."

A long, suffocating silence settled over the room again.

Adrein let out a hollow, bitter laugh from his spot on the floor, leaning his head back against the wall. "Strike the Lycan prince? While Maria lies in this bed dying? You think fighting a war in another territory is going to fix her spirit, Daniel?"

"If the prince falls, the pressure on your territory vanishes," Daniel argued smoothly, ignoring Adrein’s mocking tone and keeping his eyes fixed on me. "You won’t have to spend every waking second worrying about an invasion or hiding behind your perimeter wards. You’ll have the freedom and the resources to actually heal your mate without a war hanging over your heads."

I looked back toward Maria, my mind spinning in complete turmoil.

Every single part of my Alpha pride screamed at the thought of feigning defeat, of walking into enemy territory with my head held low like a beaten dog. It went against everything I was raised to be. But as I looked at my brothers—at Aidan’s hopeless stare, at Damien’s tear-streaked face, and at Adrein’s shattered bond—I knew we were running out of time and running out of options. We were already defeated in this room.

"We haven’t agreed to anything yet," I said softly, my voice lacking the harsh authority it usually carried.

Daniel nodded slowly, a subtle, unreadable glint passing through his eyes before he smoothed his expression back into one of quiet concern.

"Take a moment to think about it, Davian," Daniel said quietly, backing toward the heavy wooden door. "But don’t take too long, because the prince isn’t going to wait around for you to make up your mind, and neither is Maria’s condition. You need a decisive move, and you need it now."

He turned, opened the door, and slipped out into the dimly lit hallway, closing the heavy oak paneling silently behind him.

I stood in the center of the room, looking down at my trembling hands, completely lost in the dark fog of my own mind.

Was Daniel’s crazy plan our only way out?

Or were we about to walk straight into a trap we couldn’t fight our way out of?