Chapter 4: The King of Alpha Already Knew

Hazel burst into a soft laugh, her hand gently resting on Clara’s head with deep warmth shining in her gaze.

"Don't look so frightened, Clara. I am right here by your side."

"I will never permit that ruthless beast an opportunity to break your spirit again."

A sudden wave of warmth flooded straight into Clara’s chest, making her vision blur with heavy emotion.

Yet, after a long pause, she simply shook her head, a bittersweet trace touching her lips. "In truth, my design is only to secure treatment for Leo’s condition and vanish back into the human realm. That supreme entity... carries no relevance to either my life or Leo's."

The exact second the words left her mouth, a sudden, heavy thud echoed from the secondary bedroom.

Clara’s heart violently contracted. She tore across the floor at a dead sprint.

Leo was collapsed on the hardwood floor, his delicate little face flushed with a terrifying, unnatural fever.

"Dad... dy..." his tiny voice rasped, slipping into incoherent, feverish murmurs.

Clara felt her entire soul threaten to detach from her body. Her hands trembled uncontrollably as she lifted the burning pup into her embrace, screaming toward the living room.

"Hazel, summon the pack medics! Call the ambulance now!"

"Calm your breathing, Clara. I am already establishing the link."

Though Hazel’s chest hammered with pure dread, she maintained her calculated composure, refusing to let panic blind her like it had Clara.

She swiftly knelt to examine the pup’s symptoms, rolling back his small, delicate sleeve.

Across his porcelain skin, a sudden breakout of small, vibrant crimson hives had manifested like an angry rash.

"Leo has been exposed to a severe bloodline toxin. Retrace his steps, what did he consume?" Hazel recalled a human orphan who had suffered anaphylactic shock from peanuts during her volunteer days; Leo’s rapid deterioration mirrored it perfectly.

Clara froze, her dark green gaze clouding with sharp confusion.

Leo had fiercely rejected the flight rations.

Aside from the organic strawberry purée she had personally blended, he hadn't consumed a single item since crossing the border.

Wait... during those unsupervised thirty minutes when Leo vanished within the Imperial Terminal, could Dominic have...

"The rescue unit has breached the lower gates. Move!"

The absolute second the diagnostic sheets were finalized at the high-tier pack medical facility, Clara’s spirit cratered into pure darkness.

As she feared, he had suffered a severe toxic reaction to wolfsbane-laced almonds.

When Leo was an infant, he had accidentally ingested an almond extract and nearly suffocated from throat constriction. From that terrifying hour onward, she guarded his nutrition with lethal vigilance, never permitting outside substances near his mouth. Dominic Vance had to be the one who fed him!

Staring down at the fragile, sleeping silhouette of her pup on the sterile medical sheets, Clara was consumed by an overwhelming wave of self-loathing. It was entirely her failure for losing sight of him.

If she hadn't let her guard down, Leo would never have cross-contaminated with Dominic's dark orbit, nor would he be enduring this agonizing trial for nothing.

Meanwhile, along the stark, dimly lit obsidian corridor of the medical center.

Dominic Vance came to a sudden, violent halt. Beneath his custom silk shirt, his heart suffered a sudden, viciously agonizing contraction!

"Alpha King, what is disrupting your aura?"

Gamma Logan had just stepped out of the VIP executive ward when he noted Dominic gripping his left chest, his commanding features twisted into an expression of rare, suffocating discomfort.

A flicker of uncharacteristic confusion flashed within Dominic's dark amber gaze.

Yet, within a single heartbeat, his face smoothed back into its impenetrable, freezing mask of absolute authority. He offered Logan a clipped reply. "It is nothing."

The Phantom ache inside his left chest vanished as quickly as it had arrived.

It was almost as if his wolf’s instinctual senses had projected a phantom warning.

He maintained his heavy stride down the corridor.

But as he bypassed the central registration desk, his predatory gaze locked onto a silhouette that was simultaneously familiar and jarring.

It was her—still clothed in that elegant gown, but her midnight-dark hair was now wild and tangled, and her feet were slipped into hurried residential indoor slippers.

To descend upon the pack hospital with such frantic haste... was she afflicted with some illness?

Dominic’s dark brows knitted together in an uncharacteristic display of concern. He cast a sharp sideways glance at Logan, commanding in a low undertone, "That woman. Unearth everything regarding her current file."

Logan froze, tracing the trajectory of his King’s gaze until it landed squarely on Clara.

In that exact instant, a thousand-foot wave of pure shock capsized Logan’s mind.

By the ancient ancestors... it couldn't be. Could that silent little wolf pup truly carry the supreme Alpha's dominant bloodline?

"Did my command fail to reach you?" Noting Logan’s paralyzed state, Dominic’s brow deepened with dangerous irritation.

"Forgive me, Alpha! I will execute the order this very second!"

Logan immediately bowed his head in absolute compliance, though a deep, uncontrollable spark of excitement danced beneath his professional mask.

Oh, Matriarch Evelyn!

Even in your wildest divinations, you could never have foreseen this. You pressured the Alpha King a thousand times to claim a Luna, cursing him as a thousand-year-old stone tree that would never bloom. Who would have guessed that the supreme Alpha King had secretly already borne fruit years ago!