The Hidden Empress Stripping Her Secrets After Divorce novel Chapter 67

“Even with all your medical expertise... you can't fix this?” he heard himself ask.

Evelyn shook her head, sweat plastering the hair to her temples. “There's no... time. Synthesizing a targeted inhibitor... would take at least two hours. I can't wait that long.” Her body convulsed, and she clenched her jaw. “Make... a decision fast. While I can still... rationally choose... my partner.”

She forced the last few words out with agonizing difficulty. Her logical mind was locked in a brutal, desperate war against her primal instincts.

Sebastian stared at her in silence for several seconds. Her face was a canvas of agony, intense flushing, and unyielding determination. Those usually calm, clear eyes were now reflecting his silhouette, holding a reckless sense of trust... or perhaps just the cold reality of having no other options.

He suddenly leaned down, carefully avoiding her bandaged wound, and scooped her up, blanket and all.

“Mr. Thorne?” the assistant asked in shock.

“Open another suite on this floor. Make sure it's completely soundproof with zero surveillance cameras,” Sebastian ordered, his voice returning to its usual commanding cadence, laced with an undeniable authority. “Have our men secure the entire floor. No one comes close. Cancel the doctor.”

Held tightly in his arms, Evelyn's foggy mind processed his words. She forced her eyes open, a sliver of genuine confusion finally breaking through her stoic facade. “You...?”

Sebastian carried her toward the door. Without looking down, he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, his deep voice carrying clearly to her ears, “There won't be anyone else.”

He paused, adding a final sentence that sounded like an explanation to her, but also an excuse for himself: “I refuse to watch you... throw yourself at some random stranger. At the very least... I'm clean.”

---

The door to the secondary penthouse suite clicked shut, completely cutting them off from the outside world.

Sebastian gently laid Evelyn down on the center of the massive, plush mattress. Only a single warm, amber wall lamp illuminated the room, casting a hazy glow over the bed.

The drug had taken complete control of her system, rapidly eroding whatever sanity she had left. She curled into a tight ball, her body trembling uncontrollably as suppressed whimpers escaped her throat. Her gaze flickered between sheer desperation and complete dissociation.

But when he finally took her...

“...It's your first time?” His voice was hoarse beyond belief as he froze. He had investigated her background and knew her three-year marriage to Christian was nothing but a sham, but he never expected it to be this authentic of a sham.

Gasping through the pain, Evelyn forced her eyes open. Her tear-filled gaze shimmered with a strange sense of clarity, and perhaps even a hint of mockery—whether aimed at him or herself, it was impossible to tell. “Christian... never touched me,” she rasped, stating it as a simple matter of fact. “Saved me... the trouble.”

The phrase “saved me the trouble” pricked Sebastian like a fine needle. Looking at her face, caught between the throes of passion and the remnants of agony, he remembered how clinically she had demanded a man just moments ago. The heavy, suffocating ache in his chest surged to the surface once more.

He didn't speak again...

Time lost all meaning as they rode the violent waves of the night.

The intense physical release acted like a floodgate, turbo-charging her metabolism and completely flushing the drug from her system. Evelyn's consciousness drifted in a sea of absolute sensory overload and the subsequent, hollow exhaustion that followed the drug's retreat. As she drifted off, all she could feel was the powerful, unwavering embrace holding her tightly against his chest, a warm hand gently stroking her sweat-slicked back, and a deep, ragged voice murmuring against her ear: “It's over... Evelyn, you're safe... It's all over...”