Chapter 7

Chapter 7 The moment Lucifer’s lingering aura completely vanished from the periphery of the realm, the mechanical rhythm of the hell loop shuddered. The phantom crowd cheering for Radcliffe’s execution froze mid-shout. The heavy iron blade of the guillotine suspended itself motionless in mid-air, inches above his neck. The sky—a sickening shade of bruised purple—cracked like glass as Radcliffe slowly lifted his head from the wooden block. A dark, bitter smile stretched across his face. “Predictable as always, morning star,” Radcliffe rasped, his voice echoing off the frozen specters of the court. He stood up, nonchalantly dusting off the phantom robes of his ruined nobility. He knew the Devil’s routines. Lucifer looked for chaos, for grand displays of rebellion, and for flashy displays of hellfire. He checked for cracks in the walls, but he never looked closely at the foundation. Radcliffe turned toward the towering, ghostly form of the Empress. To any observer outside the loop, she appeared to be a divine predator pinning him down with glowing ethereal chains, forcing him through his loop. But as Radcliffe stepped closer, the illusion dissolved into the reality he had spent two years meticulously crafting. The chains no longer bound him; he was holding them. Wrapped tightly around Empress’s translucent throat was a web of black, parasitic veins—roots he had slowly grown from his own fractured soul while pretending to suffer. Every time the loop reset, while Lucifer watched the blade drop, Radcliffe was secretly draining a fraction of Empress’s wolf energy, feeding off her strength to corrode the cage from the inside out. Empress’s red eyes flared with desperate fury. She thrashed against the unseen tether, her ethereal roar reduced to a faint, muffled vibration that bled upward through the dimensional planes—straight toward Kalea. “Shh... reserve your breath, my dear beast,” Radcliffe whispered, his fingers caressing the fur of her jaw as he tightened the dark siphon. “Let the Princess hear your little whimpers. Let her think it’s just a bad dream. The more she doubts it, the less prepared they’ll all be when I tear this realm open.” He stepped back onto the platform, placing his neck precisely back onto the execution block. With a flick of his wrist, time unspooled. The crowd roared to life again, the blade plunged, and the illusion of absolute captivity resumed—flawless, unbroken, and waiting for the right moment to snap. The next morning, Eddie’s alarm went off for morning training. Usually, he could slip out of bed without waking Kalea, but he stopped when he noticed her tossing and turning restlessly beside him. “Hey, babe, did I wake you?” Eddie asked, turning toward her side of the bed. That was when he saw her shivering uncontrollably. “Kalea?!” Sweat beaded across her forehead, yet her skin was ice-cold to the touch. “Baby, what’s wrong?” “I’m—co—cold… free—freezing…” Kalea sputtered through chattering teeth. “Is it the virus? Are you feeling okay?” “T—ti—tired…” Kalea said, her voice barely above a whisper. “There’s something wrong with you. Hold on, baby,” Eddie said hurriedly. He threw the blanket off them both, yanked his shirt over his head, and gathered Kalea into his arms. Carrying her closely against his chest, he burst out of the bedroom and rushed down the stairs toward the pack hospital. He ran straight into Kurt on the landing. “Whoa, where’s the fire?!” Kurt asked, jumping back as Eddie charged past him. “Emergency! Tell the royal family I’m taking Kalea to the hospital!” Eddie called back without breaking stride. Kurt nodded solemnly and turned on his heel, racing toward the living quarters to inform Kalea’s family that something was terribly wrong. When Eddie burst through the double doors of the pack hospital, his eyes were blazing gold with pure adrenaline. “DOC! DOC!” Eddie roared, his voice echoing off the sterile hallway walls. “Alpha, the doctor isn’t in yet!” one of the nurses shouted, rushing out from behind the central station. “Kalea needs help! Something’s wrong with her!” Eddie shouted, his heart hammering against his ribs as he held Kalea’s shivering, ice-cold frame tighter against his chest. “Bring the Luna this way!” The nurse waved him over toward an open examination room. Eddie rushed inside, carefully laying Kalea down onto the bed and pulling the crisp sheets over her chattering form. The nursing staff immediately swarmed the bed—hooking up vital monitors, checking her blood pressure, and wrapping her in heated blankets—while one nurse sprinted down the hall to get Dr. Martin at his residence. “Eddie…” Kalea rasped, her eyes barely open as her hand weakly searched the mattress for his. “I’m right here, baby. I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie promised, grabbing her hand in both of his and pressing it to his cheek, trying to transfer any amount of his own body heat to her freezing skin. “I’m sorry, Alpha, but we need you to leave the room while we try to figure out what’s wrong with the Luna,” one of the nurses said, placing a firm but gentle hand on his chest and nudging him back. Eddie stood his ground for a second, his jaw locked. He had just promised Kalea he wouldn’t leave her side, and now they were forcing him away. “Eddie…” Kalea whimpered, her voice tiny as her cold fingers slipped out of his grasp. “Alpha, please,” the nurse repeated, her tone sharpening into a strict medical command as she used her momentum to push him across the threshold. The door was shut right in his face, severing their connection. Eddie stared at the paneling, his chest heaving, his wolf scratching furiously inside his mind to tear the barrier down. Through the small rectangular window, he could only watch as the medical team rushed around the bed, hooking up monitors and checking her vitals as they tried to figure out why the Luna was suddenly deteriorating. A few seconds later, the royal family came rushing into the pack hospital alongside Hailey, Kurt, and Jared. “Kalea? Where is she?” Renee asked, her eyes wide with panic as they ran up to Eddie. “She’s in there,” Eddie said, gesturing toward the closed hospital door he had just been forced out of. Renee immediately stepped forward to go in, but Eddie reached out and caught her shoulder. “They won’t let anyone in. They kicked me out, too.” Renee’s expression became crestfallen. She turned toward Tobias with worry, and he pulled her tightly into his arms, resting his chin on her head as they both stared at the closed door. Ever since Kalea lost her wolf counterpart, she was far more susceptible to illnesses that standard werewolves were normally immune to—or could at least fight off rapidly thanks to their heightened healing capabilities. She no longer had that supernatural safety net, which meant all ailments were taken seriously. But as Eddie stood there listening to her ragged breathing through the thick wood, he knew this wasn't just a physical sickness, but that’s all he knew. “What happened, Edward?” Amelia asked, doing her best to keep her rising anxiety at bay. “I woke up to my alarm for training,” Eddie said. “Usually, Kalea is still fast asleep, but today I noticed she was tossing and turning. When I reached over to check on her, she was sweating profusely and ice-cold to the touch.” “How was she last night?” “She was fine, aside from a strange dream she had,” Eddie answered. “What kind of dream?” Tobias asked, leaning in. “She dreamt that the Empress was reaching out to her, crying for help.” “What? How long has this been going on?” Amelia questioned. “This is the first dream she’s had about the Empress since that night. She gets them every now and then, but never like this,” Eddie explained. “Did the Empress say anything specific?” Stephen inquired. “Just that she needs Kalea’s help,” Eddie responded, trying to recall every detail from the night before. “With what?” Renee asked, her brow furrowing with concern. “We have no idea,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “We asked Lucifer, but he didn’t give us much to go on, either.” “You spoke to Lucifer?” Amelia furrowed her brows, her eyes widening in disbelief. “He just showed up in our room,” Eddie said, rubbing the back of his neck with a weary sigh. “We asked him about it anyway, and all he told us was that Radcliffe may be trying to break out of his loop. But then he left to go check on things in Hell and never came back, so we took that as good news and went back to sleep.” “This is not random, Edward. First Kalea has a dream that her wolf counterpart—whose soul is currently stuck in Hell—is reaching out to her for help, then you say the devil himself showed up in your room last night, and now you’re telling us it’s because he believes Radcliffe is trying to break out?” Amelia repeated, laying out every piece of the puzzle to make sure she heard it all correctly. “Yeah… pretty much,” Eddie answered. Even to his own ears, the chain of events sounded completely ridiculous, spoken aloud. How the f*ck did we go from recovering from chickenpox to picking out black-and-white wedding invitations to an impending apocalyptic crisis from Hell, all in the span of twenty-four hours? Before anyone could decipher what was happening, the door to Kalea’s hospital room opened. Everyone’s eyes snapped up to see the nurses coming out, relief evident on their faces. As soon as they all exited, Dr. Martin came running down the hallway into the pack hospital, his coat billowing behind him. “Nurse, report,” Dr. Martin demanded, snatching Kalea’s chart directly from the lead nurse's hands without slowing down. “Her temperature is rising steadily, Doctor. We have her on fluids and heated blankets. Labs are on their way, and her vitals are stabilizing.” Dr. Martin scanned the chart, letting out a sharp breath of relief before looking over at the anxious family gathered in the corridor. “So she’s out of immediate danger?” Eddie asked, stepping forward, desperate for an answer. “I honestly can’t tell you, Alpha. She’s stopped shivering, and as I said, her body temperature is steadily returning to normal, but she’s still very weak.” “What could have caused her to deteriorate like this?” Amelia asked, turning to the hospital staff. “We won’t know until all of the test results come back, Your Majesty,” Dr. Martin answered, his eyes never leaving Kalea’s chart. “Could this be a lingering side effect of the chickenpox?” Tobias asked, his jaw tight with worry. “No, Your Highness. This doesn’t seem to be associated with the virus,” Dr. Martin answered, looking up to address them directly. “While it’s common to see chills or a fever, we’ve never seen a reaction to this extreme extent. As the nurse said, we’ll keep monitoring her vitals closely and see if we can figure out what caused this sudden shift in her health.” Dr. Martin tapped the chart against his hip and gestured toward the open doorway. “You may go in and see her now, but please—keep it brief. She needs all the rest she can get.” Eddie didn't need to be told twice. He was through the door first, with Tobias, Amelia, and the rest of the family filing in close behind him.