The Moon Goddess' Chosen

479 The Pain of Being Powerless...

Honour took the elevator to the floor that housed the infirmary. To keep the medical facilities close to everyone, this floor had been built to run all around the Great Arena for easy and quick access. As soon as someone needed medical attention, they simply needed to access any one of the six elevator shafts that were positioned at equal distances from each other around the Great Arena.

The floor itself had white walls and bore the quiet drug-scented atmosphere of an actual hospital. Surprisingly, the voice of the commentator didn’t make it through these walls.

The concentric hospital remained untouched by the chaos going on outside.

Except for the staggering lack of nurses and doctors bustling about, this place was normal. ‘I guess even medical workers like to watch the games,’ the girl thought to herself before walking up to the receptionist.

The woman seated behind the monitor had her eyes glued to the screen with earphones in her ears similar to the ones Lina wore when using her tablet. Having the sensitive hearing of a werewolf, her ears picked up on the sound of the commentator suddenly yelling over the microphone from the woman’s earphones.

Despite that, the receptionist seemed unbothered by the loud sound.

‘A human receptionist?!’

When she reached for the receptionist, the white-robed woman jumped back at the sudden invasion of her personal space. She quickly pulled out one of the earphones in her ears and put on a well-practised smile, “I’m sorry. How may I help you?”

“I’m looking for a room containing someone named Victor. He’s the werewolf that Prince Drake was carrying when he arrived,” she told her.

.....

“Oh, that one. Would you happen to be family with him?” the woman asked, her fingers flying over the keyboard in a flurry of clicks and clacks.

“I’m a… friend of a friend. I was asked to check up on him,” Honour replied.

“Oh, I see. Well, I thought Victor had no family. It’s sad really… for someone that handsome to have no one to look out for him. I’m glad he does have some family left. A family that cares enough to come to visit him,” the woman chirped.

With a click of her mouse, a machine beside her started to whir. After a bit, a bronze card labelled ’19’ in bold letters peeked out from within a dark slit in the small metal box that was making a whirring sound. The machine went quiet as the woman pulled out the card and handed it over to Honour.

“Normally, the doctors would take you to the room, so you wouldn’t need this. But most of them are now watching the games, so I can only give you this. Make sure to return it after getting out the door. It will stop working after using it to get out, so make sure you bring it back so we can reuse it for something else,” the receptionist smiled.

Honour took the card from her and turned away to go. Something still bothered her though. She wanted to know something more about what the woman had said. Right when Honour was about to turn a corner and start the journey through the halls to find the man’s room, she figured out what was bothering her.

With a gasp, she turned to the receptionist, “What do you mean by Victor having fam…”

But when Honour turned back, the woman had placed the earphones back in her ears and turned her attention to the Royal games playing on her screen. The young goddess sighed and turned around.

The hospital was even quieter when she got to the rooms holding most of the admitted patients. From the number on the card, Victor had been moved to another room to make space for worse cases.

Honour followed the numbers on the doors of each room she passed by.

Her card read ’19’ and she was currently passing by room ’32’ which meant she still had a way to go. The numbers kept going lower and lower as she walked the halls.

’31 30 29 28 27… tap tap tap…’ went a sound foreign to the calm serenity of the hospital.

A door further ahead of her suddenly opened and the girl suddenly stood frozen. First to peek out the door was a thin tapping stick. Following it, a man stepped out of the room tapping ahead of him with the stick in hand.

It was subtle but the goddess noticed it. This man’s gait was only slightly laboured and noticing this also allowed her to keep her face from reacting. Her heart, however, was not that easy to control.

Despite his fabulous impression of a visually impaired man, he seemed capable of finding his way around very easily.

The man was tall with a slightly muscular build. Honour tensed when the man looked her way. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses, but the young goddess could see through them like they weren’t there.

This man was not supposed to be here… and he wasn’t blind either.

Maintaining his act, the man turned in the opposite direction and started tapping his way down the hall. In his hand was a card very similar to the one Honour was holding and on it, a number was inscribed: ’19’

It was the same number as the one Honour held at the moment. ‘Victor doesn’t have a family.’ The young goddess increased the speed in her step when she was sure the man was gone and swiped the key card to open the emergency room.

‘Please don’t be dead,’ she begged, partly wishing she could pray to the goddess for help. The irony of being a goddess herself was not being able to say things like that.

The emergency room appeared undisturbed with everything still in order at first glance. However, Honour wasn’t going to let that fool her. She drew the curtains standing between her and the patient residing in the room.

The heart monitor was beating normally but something else caught her eye. The leather straps that were meant to hold the man were torn. The jagged nature in which they’d been damaged easily identified the work of claws.

The second thing Honour noticed was a fresh bite mark on Victor’s wrist. The werewolf himself was still unconscious. His forehead had turned red and swollen, probably from a heavy hit.

The gnawing feeling in Honour’s gut got worse. She remembered the scene from Drake’s memories and this was enough to make her move.

Without wasting any more time, the girl began to search the room frantically for anything she could use to restrain the werewolf. When she couldn’t find anything, she decided to get creative.

First, she found a pair of scissors and cut one of the sheets into neat strips which she quickly braided into strings as firm as she was able to.

With this, she began to tie the man to the hospital bed. As she was tying his second hand, Victor started to stir, “You’ll have to use stronger bonds than that. Even those flimsy leather straps were starting to give when ‘he’ came in here,” Victor grumbled.

“What did ‘he’ want with you?” Honour asked.

“You don’t want any part of my burdens. Just get out of here and warn the hunters. The rogues are already in the Great Arena. I don’t know how they got in. I don’t know what they plan to do, but it’s nothing good,” Honour finished making the last knot and turned to leave.

“And one more thing…” she turned to Victor, “Actually, two more things… I would like you to put as much of that sedative in the bag up there. Then close that door and find a way to make sure it never opens again.”

“That bite. What will it do to you?” Honour suddenly asked.

“My best guess… is that it will turn me into the same monsters that tried to kill prince Drake when we were out there… Not that I was any different. I wanted to kill the man too,” Honour put her best show to fake shock from the man’s words yet in truth, she had known this about him.

Victor was the man Drake had stripped of his power as a delta and the same man tasked with helping Madeline and guarding her. A little while after being given his job, he’d defected and sought out the rogues in an attempt to get his revenge against the prince of Sirius.

This man was the reason everything was such a mess, to begin with. Almost two years ago, the Rogue King had been captured. The war could have ended… but Victor was too focused on his revenge to see the bigger picture.

“Do you feel better? For releasing the most dangerous man in the name of revenge?” Honour reached for the bottle containing the sedative Victor had asked for.

“Hmm, I like to look at it in a way that this outcome was something completely different from what I had in mind. I had a plan and it simply didn’t go as I’d envisioned it. My intention was never to unleash the Rogue King on this world. It was more to kill the prince and nothing more,” Victor sighed.

Honour found this logic repulsive because it didn’t address the danger of unleashing the Rogue King into the world. Yes, the Rogue King had been contained at the Origin by the goddess but if that hadn’t been the case, he would have turned the whole world upside down with carnage.

There would be no end to his slaughter and yet, the man responsible for it all only cared about petty revenge. What was worse, was that the part of his plan that hadn’t worked out… was Prince Drake keeping his life after all this.

“You would trade the whole world to have a taste of revenge?” Honour asked. She plunged a syringe into the soft cap of the bottle and filled it before transferring the liquid to the bag delivering water into his system.

“You have no idea what it’s like… to be powerless,” the man yawned. Honour wasn’t sure if it was the sedative getting to work. She’d only just administered it. All the same, he was now out like a light.

‘No idea what it’s like to be powerless, huh…’