The Lycan King's Secret Daughter

Chapter 255

POV: Sylra

Night. The medical wing was empty. No guards inside the room — I had told them to hold the corridor. Just me and Vedran and the monitors and the dark.

I sat in the chair with my hands flat on my knees. The golden wolf pressed against my ribs. I breathed through it. In. Out. Hold. The technique was failing — each breath bought less time than the last.

The connection to Vedran was barely there. A whisper. I held it open anyway, feeding thread into a channel that returned almost nothing.

The whisper pulsed.

I straightened.

It pulsed again. Stronger. Then stronger. The signal climbed — not gradually. All at once. A door thrown open.

The third connection flooded through me.

It hit my chest like a fist. My vision whited out. Pain — real pain — tore through the channel. I doubled forward, one hand locked on the bed frame, unable to breathe. For three seconds the signal was louder than anything I had ever carried.

Then it died. Completely. Not fading. Gone. Where the connection had been there was nothing — a severed line, silence so total it had weight.

I gasped. My fingers dug into the bed frame.

Vedran seized.

His body locked rigid. Spine arched. The monitors screamed — every alarm at once.

I was on my feet. "Vedran —"

His eyes opened. What looked back at me was not Vedran. Not the wolf. His face twisted with rage — raw, unrecognizable hatred directed at me as if I was the enemy in the room.

He came off the bed. Fast. His fist drove toward my face.

I got my forearm up. Blocked the strike. "Vedran, it's me. It's Sylra."

Nothing. No recognition. He swung again — harder, faster than a man unconscious for days should move. I deflected and stepped back.

"Listen to me," I said. "You're in the medical wing. You're safe. Vedran —"

His eyes were empty. He followed me toward the door. I absorbed his strikes with my forearms while the golden wolf screamed inside my chest.

"Help!" I shouted toward the corridor. "I need help in here now!"

His fist caught my arm. A clean hit — nails tore the skin open from elbow to wrist. Blood. Immediate. I hit the doorframe with my back.

Caelen came through the door at a dead run. One second to read the scene.

"Get behind me," he said. Not a request.

He caught Vedran from behind — both arms around his chest. Vedran slammed his head backward into Caelen's jaw. Caelen's teeth cracked together but he held.

"Vedran." Caelen's voice was low and hard. "Stand down. You're home. Stand down."

Vedran didn't hear him. He thrashed against the hold with a force that drove Caelen's boots across the stone.

Kael came through the door. Then Sera. Two guards behind them.

"His wolf has severed," I said. "The connection is gone — completely. He's not in there."

Kael grabbed Vedran's right arm. "How long since the seizure started?"

"Less than a minute," I said.

"Sera — I need restraints from the workroom, second cabinet," Kael said. "Now."

Vedran broke Caelen's grip on his left side. His elbow caught a guard in the throat. The man went down hard.

"Hold his legs!" Caelen shouted. The second guard dove for Vedran's knees. Vedran kicked free and sent him sliding across the floor.

"Reinforcement!" Sera called into the corridor. She was already moving for the workroom. "Two more — medical wing — now!"

Caelen regained the hold. His arms locked around Vedran's chest from behind, his legs braced wide. "Kael, I can't hold this much longer. He's running on something I've never felt."

"It's not the wolf," Kael said. He had Vedran's right wrist pinned to the floor. "The wolf signal is dead on the monitor. This is neurological — the body compensating for total system severance."

"What does that mean?" Caelen demanded. Vedran's elbow caught him in the ribs. He grunted but didn't let go.

"It means his body doesn't know who it is right now," Kael said. "Everything that regulated him is gone. He's running on raw adrenaline and severed nerve response."

A third guard came through the door. He and Kael forced Vedran to the ground. Caelen dropped his weight onto Vedran's shoulder. The guards locked down his legs.

Vedran fought all of them. Thrashing. Snarling. His face contorted into something that didn't look like the man I had sat beside for weeks.

"Is he in pain?" Caelen asked through gritted teeth. His jaw was already swelling.

"I don't know," Kael said. "I can't assess until he stops moving."

"He's not stopping," the third guard said. His voice was strained. Vedran's leg nearly broke his grip.

"Hold him steady," Kael ordered. "If he throws you, get back on. Don't hesitate."

It took five people to pin him flat.

I was against the corridor wall. Blood ran down my arm in a thin line. The cut was open from elbow to wrist — not deep, but real. Red on the stone. Red on my fingers.

Caelen saw it from across the room. His hands still locked on Vedran's shoulder, his body still absorbing the strain — he looked up and saw the blood on my arm.

His face broke. Not anger. Anguish.

"Sylra." His voice cracked on my name. "How bad?"

"It's not deep," I said. "I'm fine."

"You're bleeding," he said. "That is not fine."

Kael released Vedran's wrist to the third guard and crossed the room. His hands found my arm — clinical, automatic. He turned the wound toward the light.

"Superficial," Kael confirmed. "Long but shallow. It needs cleaning and closure but it's not —"

He stopped talking.

He was looking at my face. Not the wound. My face.

"Sylra," he said. His voice dropped. "Your eyes."

The gold was there. I could feel it. Burning steady — not flickering, not fading. The golden wolf had broken through the last wall during the fight and I had nothing left to push it back with.

"How long?" Kael asked quietly, just for me. "How long has this been happening?"

I couldn't answer. Behind us Vedran strained against the five people holding him down. Caelen was staring at me from the floor with blood on his chin and devastation in his eyes.

Kael was six inches from my face reading the gold in my irises with the focused horror of a healer who has just discovered a second emergency inside the first.

Two things breaking open at once. Vedran on the floor, fighting a fury that had no source and no name. Me against the wall with blood on my arm and gold burning in my eyes that I could no longer hide.

"Sylra," Kael said again. "How long?"