The Moon Goddess' Chosen

493 Must be Going Senile

Caden brought his car to a stop inside a hospital parking lot and turned it off, sighing with contentment. Peaceful, quiet and private… A rarity for the king’s stand-in.

Ever since Cole and the other beta alphas had left for the royal games, running the kingdom had automatically fallen upon his shoulders.

Bracing himself for his next order of business, he stepped out of the car and took a few looks around to confirm no one was around before he lazily stretched his arms.

‘That morning drill is bound to kill someone. Right… let’s get this issue over with.’

Walking out of the parking lot, he was greeted by a timid man dressed in a green uniform. The man was of average build for a security guard but in the presence of a beta alpha, he was just another man.

And his nerves showed just how aware he was of his weakness.

Caden had long learnt to ignore that reaction.

“Beta alpha Caden, you have our gratitude for gracing our humble establishment with your presence.”

“Yeah yeah, just show me the way,” Caden sighed.

.....

“This way, sir,” the man timidly turned and started a jog up to the hospital.

“Are you going to make me run?” Caden didn’t notice his voice go up when he asked this… until the man flinched.

“I’m sorry… Isn’t this an emergency?” the man asked.

“Just show me to the lady I spoke to over the phone. She said the situation had been contained for now,” Caden sighed. This man bowed timidly once more and apologised profusely before leading him to the reception.

At the double doors admitting them into the hospital, a scent invaded the beta alpha’s nostrils. It was sweet and calling out to him… but just as it had come, he rubbed his nose and completely shut it out, “Do you grow strawberries nearby?”

“Uh… no,” the man replied with a hasty tone, “But we can get you some if you need any. A quick run to the supermarket and you could have them in under ten minutes.”

“No, never mind,” Caden sighed.

‘I must be going senile,’ the beta alpha thought to himself.

Reaching the receptionist’s desk, he noticed a blonde woman, standing with her eyes glued to a notepad, scribbling a few words onto the pad of paper. A stethoscope was draped around her neck and the labcoat she was wearing seemed to suit her very well.

Not to mention the glasses that seemed to enhance the intelligent gaze. The sight of this woman deep in thought seemed to be a sight for the ages…

‘I found the First Wonder of the World. Talk of Effortless Beauty,’ Caden’s mind sang.

As he followed the beta alpha, he noticed the security guard was taking him in her direction. For some reason, that made Caden anxious.

‘Me, a beta alpha, anxious to meet a woman. You live as long as me, you’re bound to meet a couple of anomalies…’ he inwardly chuckled at his own joke.

“Uh, Miss Catherine… I, uh… brought—”

“Oh, thanks Cal, I can take it from here,” the woman spoke, her words sounding like a waterfall of pure caramel in Caden’s ears. Like a river of honey flowing down a crystal waterfall. Like a—

‘Yeah, definitely going senile.’

The woman dismissed the timid security guard, turned to Caden and flashed him a bright smile, “It’s a pleasure meeting you, Alpha Caden. This way.”

She placed down the notepad and beckoned for the alpha to follow as she led him deeper into the hospital.

Caden followed, the image of the nurse’s smile getting carved with utmost detail into the deepest parts of his brain, ‘I’ve seen a smile before, right?’

“Thank you for coming on such short notice. We deeply appreciate it,” the woman snapped him out of his… questionable thoughts.

While she had a smile fit for a goddess, the beta alpha had also noticed the colour of her eyes. The nurse had a pretty set of hazel-brown irises that seemed to reflect more light than they should have.

She was human.

“Oh, no problem. How long has the patient been like this?” Caden asked the nurse leading him through the plain white-walled building with only a few portraits here and there.

“Sh… She’s been showing this erratic behaviour since we brought her in. At first, she was having seizures so we gave her the required medicine and they seemed to stop but after a while… the medicine stopped working… and something else started happening to her.”

“What happened?”

“I think it’s better if you see for yourself,” the nurse, scrunched her eyebrows, as though unable to explain exactly what she had witnessed.

She led the man through a steel door that led down a staircase to a clandestine bottom floor. This entrance was positioned at the back of the hospital. A place one could only get to after several turns through the convoluted maze of halls and with prior guidance.

The door had three locks, each of a different kind and the smell that hit Caden’s nostrils once he was inside was an assortment of medicines, poisons… and blood.

It was similar to the smell that was to be found in the hunter’s torture chambers. Only this one was a lot less pungent and there wasn’t a hint of wolfsbane.

The beta alpha got a face mask that was handed to him and followed the woman to a large glass pane. The glass was opaque when they walked in but at the push of a button, it became transparent and exposed what was on the other side.

Caden froze…

The scene inside erased all his half-conscious thoughts of picnics and the secret room’s sanitation that lingered in his mind.

His first assumption had been that this was an experimental facility where the doctors were experimenting on werewolves but the woman they had come to see was a human who had gone out camping when she got attacked.

There were three doctors inside, surrounding the hospital bed with looks of concern written all over their faces. Their eyes were glued to the restrained person lying in the bed. Caden didn’t know what to think of the peculiar situation at first.

The woman was bound from head to toe in chains. The sheets that could be seen were stained with blood and shredded from what looked like claws. Thankfully, the woman seemed unconscious.

The machine that detected her heartbeat had been silenced but the visuals were left there to show what was going on within her body.

At that moment, the heart spikes were starting to get sharper, shifting from the calm heartbeat of a person sound asleep to someone stirring awake which explained the concerned looks on the doctors surrounding her.

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Caden thought to himself, feeling his stomach twist in knots.

“What happened to her?”

“I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on. This woman… she ‘was’ human. Now I don’t even know what she is. Werewolves are aggressive but not… mindless.”

“How did you manage to secure her? I didn’t see any hunters on our way here.”

“If it hadn’t been for the restraints we put on her while she was having seizures, she would have torn through every last living thing in this hospital and even then, she nearly escaped. We don’t have hunters here.

This is a public hospital that deals with only human patients. And with everyone going off for the Royal Games, there was no one to spare for this hospital.”

“Was anyone injured?” Caden asked.

“A few doctors were injured when she was trying to escape. Alpha Caden, what is the meaning of this? The king mentioned it would no longer be possible for humans to be turned into werewolves,” the woman asked frantically.

Unfortunately, they were out of time before Caden could reply. The chains rattled… and the woman woke up.

When the chained woman arose, her amber eyes locked on the alpha’s eyes through the mirror. The two of them locked eyes for a moment before she grinned, revealing a pair of sharp canines nearly thrice the length of normal human canines.

She was the mundane type of werewolf and yet the report he’d read from the king’s office suggested something else, “That’s not the colour you said her eyes were…”

“I know… She’s also lacking one more pair of canines in her upper jaw,” the woman added to the information, rubbing her temples to massage the incoming migraine.

“You’re suggesting she was bitten by a royal but no one has seen the Rogue King in nearly two years. If she was out camping with hunters, then they wouldn’t have missed his presence,” Caden tried reasoning.

“I don’t know the details of how your society works… Hunters and Werewolves… Rogues and Royals… I only know how to treat humans. My degree doesn’t stretch into the Supernatural. When I see my patient start to grow canines and go rabid like a dog, I’m reduced to nothing more than a worthless human that can’t defend herself.”

“How many were injured?”

“Two doctors and one of the male nurses. If it wasn’t for my colleague bashing her head with a fire extinguisher, you would be looking at mass murder—”

“ALPHA… CADEN…” Caden turned to the deep voice that had just rumbled through the room, interrupting the nurse’s words.

The voice rumbled loudly and commanded power. Fortunately, it was a power that the beta alpha was resistant to.

A power that belonged to a royal that had no control over him. The doctors surrounding the woman took a few steps back. The woman turned to the people walking away from her, “OH, DON’T BE AFRAID OF ME. AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO MAKE ME BETTER?”

“What are you?” Caden whispered, his words of curiosity aimed at no one in particular.

The woman’s face snapped to his, displaying awareness.

She’d heard him.

Caden held back a breath as he noticed a significant change in the woman’s appearance.

Her eyes were no longer the harmless amber he had failed to fear. They were now a deep crimson… ‘How does someone’s eye colour just change on a whim?’

“OH, ISN’T IT OBVIOUS? I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT MY BENEVOLENT VOICE WOULD BE ENOUGH TO TELL YOU WHO OR WHAT I AM?” the voice echoed.

The voice was so out of place that when the woman opened her mouth to speak, it felt like someone else’s voice took her place. The voice that escaped her small delicate lips was nothing like it should have been.

It was the voice of a killer… the voice of a predator, the voice of a bloodthirsty tyrant. Nothing like the person it came from.

Knowing that it became hard to even perceive the deep voice as coming out of the woman’s mouth. And as a result, it sounded like the voice came from everywhere but her.

“IT IS I, THE ROGUE KING… AND MY GRAND SIEGE ON THIS WORLD… HAS ALREADY BEGUN.”