Bloodbound To My Four Archenemies.

July 2 2026, 9:42pm.

Tristan guarded the door to Elara’s hospital room like it was the tombstone of the late King Pharaoh, refusing to allow anyone to enter or even take a peek—not even the cleaners.

His hand fidgeted against the top of his pants as a slow but cold sweat broke out on his forehead and his head banged with each step he took to and from one end of the door to the other.

Ten minutes into his watch, his father finally arrived with his wife, Celine, hanging by his side like the trophy wife that she is. She was covered head to toe in dazzling jewelry, her body clinking with each step she took.

The look on her face went from smug to mortified the second she saw Tristan hanging by the door with his head low, and she felt her heart plummet to the base of her stomach when he approached her with slow, calculated steps.

"Elara is in danger..." his voice was dry. Weary. He sounded like the weight of the whole world was hanging on his lean shoulders.

Kai bounced away from his wife and pushed the door open, his mouth slackening when he saw the complete horror sprawled lifelessly on the bed.

"What happened to her?" He asked, a hint of fear seeping into his voice. "She was fine just this morning, so what the fuck happened?"

Tristan wasted no time in telling him the calculated lie he had come up with on his way to the hospital. He drawled; "She got into an accident in school..."

"School!" Celine shrieked, her hand jumping to the base of her throat. "She became this badly hurt in school and the management didn’t try to reach out to us first?!" When Tristan wouldn’t respond right away, she shook her head and turned away, her hands gripping at the hem of her bedazzled blouse until her knuckles turned white.

"What sort of incompetence is this?" She muttered more to herself than anyone else, her voice breaking as tears slipped out. "Why would this happen right now?"

Deep down, she feared looking at her daughter’s scalded face one more time. It was so mangled and so hideous it looked like she had attacked a lion head on.

Goosebumps spread across her skin when Kai pulled her into a hug, pressed his lips to her forehead, and hissed under his breath; "I’ll sue the school, Celine honey. Don’t worry."

She wanted to respond to him right away but the fear of breaking this fragile moment between them made her stay rooted in place. Ever since he found out that Nyx’ara had become the Sovereign Luna and she had proposed going to punish her at Stormborn pack, they had stopped being a couple, and goddess, he hadn’t laid a finger on her intimately ever since.

Until now...

She sighed. "Let’s sue them right away. Let’s make sure they pay with their blood for doing this to my beloved daughter!"

"Your daughter did this to herself," Tristan answered from behind, recollecting how she had come to be in this situation in the first place.

"It was not an assignment or classwork. Elara on her own decided to work on this experiment herself even after I warned her not to."

At the sound of his voice, both parents lifted their eyes to meet his own and the look in their eyes almost had him freezing in place.

Kai was the first to snap out of his momentary daze. He shrugged and let go of Celine who visibly stiffened from losing his warmth so quickly.

He walked over to Elara’s bed, traced his finger over her mangled flesh, and drawled; "Then we’ll take care of this quietly."

"She will heal," Celine added, sounding not too sure. "She is a full wolf. She just needs some time to recuperate."

Tristan chimed in from behind them. His eyes lingered on Elara’s small frame for a moment too long before he slowly shook himself up. "She has begun to heal... her healing process is just very slow because the dye she threw over her head is highly corrosive."

"She threw it over her head?!" Celine screamed, shocked. "Goddess, why?!"

At the sound of her very loud outburst, Tristan winced and shook his head quickly. "No, she accidentally fell into it, I have just been making some silly mistakes since morning."

He then turned away from his parents, unknowing to him that Celine was watching him closely. She had a faint idea about what must’ve happened but because she was quite unsure, she simply let it go.

A beat of silence settled between them for another long time before Tristan finally spoke again. This time, his voice was pleading and gone was his earlier bravado. He muttered; "Please let’s keep this a secret between us. Flynn must not know that something like this has happened to his fiancée."

The urgency in his voice made Kai turn to him. He lifted his brow at him and frowned. "Why?"

"Well, it’s because I noticed that he hasn’t been paying a lot of attention to her lately. I fear he might be falling out of love due to his broken mate-bond with Nyx’ara."

His response made a heavy silence settle once more in the room, one that was broken when Celine shook her head and hissed;

"That doesn’t make any sense."

"If he finds out that she had been clumsy enough to do this to herself... only the goddess knows how he would feel. He might even lose all respect he has for her and we do not want that to happen. Do we?"

Kai exchanged looks with his wife and a meaningful look passed between both of them before they finally turned to look at Tristan who was waiting eagerly.

Celine nodded quickly while Kai lowered his head and rumbled;

"We don’t."

—

The entire family waited a few more minutes before a very familiar head of graying brown hair walked into the room. Doctor Mattias was clad in a matching pair of tweed pants and a checked shirt that was covered entirely under his white lab coat.

His weary eyes darted around the room from Kai to his wife and then he muttered; "Elara needs some blood."

The coldness in his tone was so finite it made goosebumps spread across Tristan’s skin. The temperature in the room dropped so much that one would’ve believed they were in Antarctica if the beautiful skylines of NYC weren’t so visible from the floor-to-ceiling window.

He continued: "We noticed that by the time she was brought here, she had lost a lot of blood. Her skin was eaten very deep by the corrosive chemicals and burned in some places so it is almost difficult for her to heal properly."

Most of Doctor Mattias’ words sounded like gibberish to Celine’s ears and for this reason, she frantically ran up to him and fisted her hands into his clothes. She threw her head back and screamed at his face:

"I do not understand."

"What I have said isn’t so difficult to understand, Mrs Devereaux," he drawled back, his voice dry. "Your daughter needs a blood transfusion and you have to be quick about it before it is too late. Currently, her injuries are refusing to clot and we need to perform surgery on her... however, the only problem is..."

"She might lose more blood in the process," Tristan cut in quietly, causing the doctor to nod quickly.

Celine, distraught and confused, desperately pulled up the sleeve of her blouse to expose the green veins peeking from underneath her smooth skin. Her voice was hoarse and her throat felt tight as she cried; "Okay! Do it! I am her mother, my blood and hers should be compatible."

However, Doctor Mattias only stared at her dryly, his lips pressed into a thin line as he muttered;

"Your blood and hers don’t match."

And as soon as he said that, Celine’s world tilted beneath her feet.