Chapter 87

Rowena

When my father finally finished telling the story of how I was found, I was utterly speechless. I was standing on the opposite end of the room, my eyes fixed on the now-open window as I looked down at the backyard below. But I couldn’t see any of the familiar flowers or shrubbery, tears blurring my vision as my heart pounded like a war drum in my chest.

So it was true. That vision that I had had of Eric with the blood on his shoulder—those moments when I had nearly drowned and had heard voices referring to me as ‘Princess’. All of the other times when I had wondered what if, what if, what if.

“I’m the missing princess,” I whispered, my voice choked and raspy.

I felt a hand on my shoulder then and looked up to see my mother standing over me. She had long since run out of tears, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy.

“Rowena…” she whispered. “You can’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”

Swallowing, I took a step back and wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Why not? The Northern King has been looking for his daughter. It’s been practically tearing everyone apart. Shouldn’t we…”

“You can’t,” my father said sternly. When I looked over at him, his face was still ashen but his blue eyes were filled with intensity. “It’s not safe.”

“Safe?”

My mother nodded hastily. “Rowena, if it were simply your biological parents looking for you, it would be one thing. But there are also those who wish to harm you.”

“Like who?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips.

My father sighed deeply and passed a hand over his weary face. “A couple months ago, someone came looking for you—he claimed to be an envoy from the North. Eric saw right through his lies and brought him here.”

“Your father and I knew as soon as we saw him that he wasn’t from the North,” my mother continued. “He was working for one of the foreign regions.”

“The same people who were chasing you that day that Eric found you.”

I felt as though my heart had leapt up into my throat. Looking back and forth between my mother and father, I knew that they were dead serious.

“What do they want with me?” I whispered.

My father shook his head. “No one knows for sure. There are some rumors that they were the ones who brought Wolf’s Fury back in order to take over the North, and that they wish to eradicate the Northern royal bloodline.”

No sooner had my father uttered those words than the gears had begun whirling in my head.

Bloodline.

Blood.

Without a word, I suddenly rushed past my mother and over to my desk, where I forcefully shoved my textbooks off of the surface and began hastily digging through the vials hidden in the back of the drawer. My parents watched, astounded, as I retrieved my own blood vial along with an Erlenmeyer flask.

“Rowena, what are you doing?” my mother asked cautiously.

“Finding the cure,” I replied simply.

My parents watched, too dumbfounded to speak, as I began poring over the old textbook and dropping the basic solutions into the flask. I muttered to myself as I worked, carefully measuring and mixing, until…

I added three drops of my own blood and swirled.

Finally, I transferred the solution to a few vials and took a step back, nearly bumping into my parents—who had come up behind me during my work—as I did so. I felt both of their hands on my shoulders, and for what felt like an eternity, we all held our breaths and watched.

For the longest time, nothing happened. The vial simply sat on the desk, utterly unchanging. I felt my stomach begin to bottom out; the textbook had stated that the solution would turn a dark blue color if the blood contained the correct gene. But it didn’t.

Until it did.

Slowly, almost too slowly to register, the blood began to turn blue. A deep, brilliant sapphire blue. And I felt as though my feet weren’t even touching the ground anymore.

“It worked!” I shrieked, whirling around to face my parents with tears in my eyes. Without thinking, I pulled them both into a bone-crushing hug. “I can’t believe it worked!”

Before either of them could even register what was going on, I was already out the door with the vials in hand.

…

By the time I burst into the quarantine center, it was nearly ten AM; precisely four days since Eric had been diagnosed with Wolf’s Fury. Four days was often all it took for the virus to spread throughout the brain, causing permanent damage or even death.

I just hoped I wasn’t too late.

“I need to see Eric Griffith,” I commanded the receptionist. “Now.”

The receptionist shot me a wary look from behind her desk. “I’m afraid Eric Griffith is in the high security wing,” she said. “We don’t allow visitors to the high security wing.”

“I’m—” I paused, obviously unable to state who I really was, before continuing. “I’m his sister. I’m the daughter of Alpha Griffith. I demand to—”

“Sorry, Miss Griffith, but we simply cannot allow visitors. It’s protocol.”

“Fuck your protocol.”

Both of us whirled around at the sound of a familiar voice. I felt my heart soar as I saw my father’s tall form striding in, his jaw set hard.

“A-Alpha Griffith—”

“Take us to my son,” my father commanded, slamming his palm flat on the desk. “Now.”

The receptionist didn’t hesitate. Obviously, no one would dare to go against an Alpha’s orders—not even when it went against hospital protocol. Turning to the guards stationed at the metallic sliding doors, the receptionist muttered something to them, eliciting nods from both.

The doors slid open and the guards strode through. My father and I exchanged wary glances before following them quickly, our shoes clicking on the pristine tile floors.

“I’m coming, Eric,” I thought to myself, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might pound right out of my chest. “I’m coming…”

It felt like an eternity before we finally made it to the high security wing, and another eternity after that.

As we strode rapidly through the hallways, inhaling the scent of antiseptic, the sounds of other patients caught my ears—growls, snarling, curses flying, scratching at walls. Nurses and doctors scurried back and forth, hardly noticing us. Alarms beeped, machines whirred, guards burst into rooms with tranquilizer guns to subdue erratic patients that had escaped from their restraints.

God, it was like a nightmare.

With each room that we passed, I hoped that Eric wasn’t in such a condition; I had never been the religious type, but I prayed in those moments. I prayed that he was still in his own head, even if it was just a tiny scrap of his former self.

And I prayed that the tiny vial I had clutched in my hand would bring the rest of him back.

Finally, up ahead, one of the guards leading us stopped in front of a cell door and began tapping at the control panel. The other guard turned to look at us, his gloved fingers tightening around his tranquilizer gun.

“He could be dangerous, you know,” the guard muttered, his voice muffled through his mask.

Hearing those words made my breath hitch. I glanced up at my father, only to see his clenched jaw from where I stood. I tightened my own grip on the vial in my hand and shook my head.

“Not to me,” I said.

The guard huffed behind his mask, but said nothing more. And then, finally, the doors to Eric’s cell slid open.