The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 162

Chapter 162: XIV

Valka

The infirmary had a smell about it. It wasn’t just the smell of the sick. It was worse. Worse than rot.

The physician, a young woman with a too-bright smile and perky voice joins us at the entrance, ushering us rubbery gloves and masks. "She’s been isolated. You cannot touch her. You may speak to her through the door. Though, she has asked that only the King be granted leave to speak to her."

Evadne steps forward. "And you told her I was here with her brother?"

The woman’s smile becomes something pained. "Yes. However, she insisted that it had to be him and no one else."

"That’s nonsense," Eva blusters, her blue eyes drifting to Lucien’s, placating. My heart clenches tight at the hurt in her eyes and when Sebastian moves forward to place an arm on her shoulder, she shrugs him away abruptly.

Lucien sighs and narrows his gaze at the physician. "We’re family," he says sweetly, and I suspect that even if he weren’t currently compelling her, she’d still have done his bidding. "We’ll be in and out, quickly. I assume you have more work on your hands to attend to."

The woman nods, blinks, hands him the keys and leaves without another word.

The further we walk, the more that smell worsens, and we halt at the entrance of the isolation chamber as Lucien unlocks the door, revealing a barred gate.

"This is a cell, not an isolated room," I murmur. "It’s not like she’s going to escape or something. Is all of this even necessary?"

A soft laugh comes from within, followed by a loud, wet cough. "I should’ve known better than to expect you would respect my privacy."

The chamber is dark. There is a lone figure sitting in the centre of the bed, her head tipped back as she glances out the small window, her legs crossed underneath her.

"Astrea," Sebastian calls, his voice heavy with loathing. Self-loathing. "I... Are you alright?"

She doesn’t respond. "Eva?"

Evadne bristles beside me, her fingers darting to mine and clutching tightly. She’s trembling. Her fingers are cold and clammy.

"Have you been well?" Astrea adds after a moment. "I considered responding to your letters, but as you must have realized by now, I didn’t get the chance to read most of them. Though, I assume they were as entertaining as the first."

Evadne’s lips tremble, but she says nothing.

"We’ve had a long ride," Lucien says and I flinch at the harshness in his tone. "We didn’t come all this way for pleasantries."

Astrea sighs. Coughs raucously. "There were rumors," she starts, voice scratchy and rough. "Missing children. All wolves. Some Lycans. And soon, all the children began to go missing. This was months before they landed on our shores at Averis. My uncle’s village, Erendor, was the closest to shore, with more casualties. We saw them first when they arrived for negotiations with the town headsman. They were strange. Their machines were stranger. They were frail, easily killable, but they had these weapons that killed faster than swords."

Another terrible cough. "Negotiations must have gone terribly, because the attack started shortly after. The humans, they killed, as well as the men who fought back. My uncle was the headsman. He died first. Then, theu burned the fields and houses. Left nothing behind for those who might have survived to feed on. They had detectors for us, wolves and Lycans. It was this terrible screeching of metal that made our ears bleed. It was worse than wolfsbane, ash or silver. It operated on a frequency that a regular human could not hear. Us, it left us incapitated for hours."

There is a long pause. "It was worse for Kara. I should’ve known it, then."

Kara. Her daughter.

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