Chapter 67: I intend to help you.
July 2 2026, 10:19pm.
Celine staggered forward, her breath catching as she stole a glance at the bewildered look on Kai’s face.
Her face drained of its color and in another desperate moment, she rushed over to Kai, dug her fingers into his collar, and screamed; "Test my husband’s blood. It should match!"
For a moment, after she said that, the room was plunged into a deafening silence. Tristan glared between his father and his stepmother, his brows knitting together as he snapped;
"Mother!... Celine?! What the hell are you saying?!"
But she wouldn’t even look at him. She was so hysterical, she wouldn’t take her fingers off Kai’s neck. She also wouldn’t stop screaming and staring at him like he was her last lifeline.
He growled again; "Stop being so hysterical and let us find a reasonable solution to Elara’s situation!"
And as soon as he said that, Celine rounded on him and slapped his face so hard his head lolled to the side. She yelled so loudly that her voice turned hoarse; "This is not the time to be reasonable, Tristan! Kai, go get your blood tested! Elara needs it and she is your daughter!"
For a moment, after she said that, silence echoed throughout the room. The entire ward was so silent, the sound of a pin dropping could be heard even a few miles away. Tristan’s mouth hung open in confused shock as he stared between his father and stepmother, feeling quite unsure as though he had heard incorrectly.
This time, he was the one who rounded his father slowly, like a predator stalking its prey, and hissed; "Father, what does that mean? What is Celine talking about?!"
Kai couldn’t look at his son’s face because he was so embarrassed, he couldn’t even bring himself to. He dragged in a deep breath, eyed Celine slowly like she suddenly felt disgusting to him, and snarled under his breath;
"Celine is talking nonsense!"
His fingers dug into her arm from the side, at an angle where Tristan could not see, and then he continued in that deep baritone that always seemed to wash over people like a drizzle; "She is probably going into shock from the whole terrible news! Who knows what she would say next!"
Tristan, even though he still felt slightly unconvinced, sighed dramatically, but he didn’t see the knowing look that his father and stepmother had shared in that moment. Turning away from them, he lowered his head and asked the doctor; "What is Elara’s blood type?"
"AB-" the doctor answered without missing a beat.
That was weird. It was a rare blood type and coincidentally his own.
A strange emotion flickered across Tristan’s face, but pushing it off, he mumbled; "Thank God, I have the same blood type!"
Another silent heavy gaze swept through the room, but ignoring it, Tristan then rushed out of the room with the doctor following closely behind him, refusing to look another time in his father’s and stepmother’s direction.
His heart pounded as he rushed off, but just as soon as he slammed the door shut behind himself, Kai turned to his wife. His face and voice were as dark as the night as he snapped;
"Now, what was the meaning of that?!"
Celine shuddered at the sound of his voice but she was not sorry. If anything, she was tired of hiding her secret in the closet for so long.
Her nostrils flared as she turned to glare at her husband— gone was her desperate need to have his arms wrapped around her— and seethed;
"What exactly?"
"What you just did, Celine! What you almost did!" Kai snarled back, his eyes thinning. "Do you intend to ruin me?! Do you want our family to lose every single respect we command and want Elara to lose her position as the future Luna of this pack?!"
His berating made Celine’s mouth clamp shut and she turned away, lowering her eyes as she hissed through gritted teeth:
"I am sorry."
But Kai didn’t care about her half-arsed apology. If anything, he wanted to hang her at the pyke for insolence, if that would mean hiding his secret until he retired to his grave.
And he had so many secrets...
—
July 5 2026, 8:12am.
For the next couple of days, Nyx’ara avoided her husbands like they had the plague... or maybe they were the ones avoiding her because no matter what corner she turned to in the house, they were nowhere to be found.
By the second day after their last meeting, she heard from Eloise that they had gone for a business trip in Singapore, and for some reason, knowing that they were more than a couple of kilometers away from her filled her with an immeasurable kind of peace that she could not begin to explain.
She rested her back against Kieran’s statue and closed her eyes as she pressed her notebooks to her chest because for some strange reason, her heart was beating so fast, she could literally hear the heavy pounding in her ears.
She clutched her phone tightly in her hands and stared at the message on the screen over and over again, willing it to disappear. But no matter how hard she glared at it, she just couldn’t unsee the message.
Unknown: Meet me at the front of the grocery store we used to visit together.
She gulped.
Her fingers hovered over the surface of the accursed text message as if it burned against her flesh.
Another text: come alone. I need to talk to you alone.
The audacity she felt permeating from the text made her nose scrunch up in distaste, and there was only one person she knew would text her like this.
Flynn fucking Ravenscroft.
Closing the tab on her phone, she turned away, pushed the device deep into her pocket, and hissed under her breath; "Over m-my dead body."
But just as she did that, another text made her phone buzz and made her flinch in surprise. It read:
I know the truth behind Princess Leilani’s murder and I intend to help you.
But she didn’t open the text. She wasn’t even interested in anything he had to say to her.