Chapter 100 What Exactly Is Wrong With Her?

Chapter 100 What Exactly Is Wrong With Her?
Liam's POV

Claudia dropped to her knees before I'd finished the question.

"I swear to you, my Alpha, I didn't do anything. I helped her with her bath, I took the pins from her hair, I answered her questions and I left."

"Stop." I held up a hand. "Which questions?"

Claudia blinked, tears already running freely. "Sh– she, during the fitting today, one of the maids mentioned the eclipse. The dragon story. She asked me about it before bed and I told her it was a fable. I told her it wasn't real." Her voice cracked. "I told her nothing would happen."

‘Dragons.’ The word landed in my chest harder.

Mrs. Fernworth scrambled behind me and I turned just as she lurched forward toward the bed.

"My Lady– my Lady–"

Kiara was convulsing.

I reached her immediately, both hands going to her face, my thumbs against her jaw. "Kiara. Kiara. Look at me–"

Her eyes snapped open.

They were glowing. A luminous silver-white that had nothing to do with the candles in the room and everything to do with something I didn't have words for. She looked through me rather than at me, her focus on something beyond this room entirely.

Her mouth opened.

What came out was not a language I recognized. The sounds were precise and deliberate, structured, intentional, then her eyes closed. She went still, the glow faded.

The room was completely silent.

Claudia had her hands over her mouth. Mrs. Fernworth stood frozen mid-step with an expression I had never seen on her face before. I remained where I was, my hands still on Kiara's face, trying to understand what I had just witnessed.

The door burst open.

Samuel. The physician directly behind him, bag in hand, already moving toward the bed before he'd finished entering.

I stepped back and let him work. He checked her pulse, her eyes, pressed two fingers to her throat and then her wrist, leaned close and listened to her breathing.

I watched his face the entire time.

Samuel appeared at my elbow. "My Alpha, you haven't eaten since this morning. Let me bring something–"

"No."

"Just something small–"

"Samuel." I didn't look at him. "I said no."

He fell silent.

My stomach had been making its feelings known for the last hour. I didn't care. I was not leaving this room until I understood what was happening to her.

I pulled the chair to the side of the bed and sat. I took her hand.

It was cold. A stark contrast to the burning heat of twenty minutes ago that made no medical sense I could identify.

"What is it?" I asked the physician. "What's wrong with her?"

He didn't answer immediately. He moved through his examination with a careful, methodical focus I recognized as the behavior of a man buying time while he processed something that wasn't fitting into any category he had ready.

"The symptoms present as fever," he said finally, still not looking up. "The temperature, the loss of consciousness, the elevated pulse." He paused. "But this–" he pressed his fingers gently to her wrist again "–is not fever. Fever doesn't do this. The temperature drop alone is–" he shook his head. "And the pulse is wrong. It's not weak the way illness creates weakness. It's as if her body is... elsewhere."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know yet." He looked up. "Has she displayed any other unusual symptoms recently? Anything you might have dismissed as unimportant?"

I thought about the wolf. The white hair. The way she had woken up in the forest completely healed when she should have been dead.

I said nothing.

The door opened again. Mrs. Fernworth and Claudia came through with the herbs he requested, Claudia still unsteady on her feet.

The physician directed them efficiently, which herbs to burn, where to position them, what temperature the water needed to be. The room was filled with something sharp and green. He applied what he could, checked her responses, waited.

Nothing changed.

Kiara lay completely still, her hand cold in mine, her chest moving in the slow shallow rhythm of someone very far away.

The physician straightened. He was sweating slightly despite the cold air from the window. He set down the cloth he'd been holding and faced the room.

"I need to speak with the Alpha privately," he said. "Everyone else, please wait outside."

They all looked at me.

I nodded once.

They filed out without a word. The door clicked shut and the room went quiet, just the two of us, and Kiara between us, and the sound of the herbs burning low.

The physician didn't speak immediately. He looked at her for a long moment, hands clasped, his expression carrying something I was starting to dislike very much.

Then he turned to me.

"My Alpha," he said carefully. "I need you to tell me the truth." He held my gaze. "What exactly is wrong with her?"

I looked at him.

Then at Kiara.

"That is why you're here," I said. "You can't possibly be asking me that question."

He held my gaze steadily. "I will ask again, my Alpha. What happened to your Luna?"

I said nothing.