The Lycan King's Healer
The Lycan King’s Healer – Chapter 70

He didn’t say anything. The anger began to brew in his eyes like a storm from the west, but it never hit the east.

Instead of letting it hit, he left the room.

I stared at him before letting out a sigh. I supposed he was rather gracious for exiting rather than yelling at me in a state like this, for why wouldn’t he? I had basically sworn away our happily ever after.

Instead of following him, I tossed aside the duvet before slipping out of bed to then cross the room to Theo’s door. He would be waiting for me to k**s him goodnight.

I opened the door as quietly and tactfully as I could, making an effort not to wake him in case he fell asleep waiting. The moonlight drenched the room a little more than usual; the curtains were drawn.

As I peeked into his room, I discovered the moonlight was shining onto an empty bed.

“Oh, my god,” I sputtered, hurrying over to his bed. The sheets were void of any presence, wrinkled as if there was a body on it a mere few minutes ago. He must have gone to the bathroom. I stumbled over myself to the bathroom, my bones and tired body heavily protesting, but the panic stimulated me through it.

I flew the lightswitch up to illuminate an empty bathroom.

Turning away with desperate gasps escaping my lips, I looked back to the windows. The curtains were drawn along with the windows being flung ajar. My hand flew to my mouth, my gasps morphing into sobs. Before reacting, I hurled over to the window and looked below to see if there was any sign of him, but there was nothing but snow glazed grass. We were stories high–where could he have gone? And how?

Everything in me felt like it was shutting down, and the edges of my vision were growing black. But I couldn’t fail at a time like this. I could not let my worst nightmare come true. As I peeled out of his room and into the corridors, all I could think about was the arrow shaped wound in his head from my dream.

The screams that ripped from me did not sound human. As I shrieked Aldrich’s name, the panicking animal in me wanting to morph into a wolf, the night staff all looked at me horrified. I ran through the marbled hallway screaming until my throat was raw in a suffocating panic. I prayed he did not make it far from my chambers after I told him what I did.

The guards that stood outside my room ran off as soon as I was out the door, and I wasn’t sure if Aldrich heard me, or if they informed him. But he came bounding down the hallway to meet me.

I tried getting out what was happening, but clearly I was nothing but hysterical, for he was looking at me in horror as if I was speaking in tongues.

“Theo’s gone,” my voice pushed out, throat burning, “Windows open.”

“Cathy,” Aldrich said in a curt, authoritative voice. His hands clapped down on my shoulders to stabilize me, which caused me to look up and meet his gaze. This made me see straight for a couple moments.

“Theo is gone,” I managed to sputter out.

Once my words registered, he was already running to Theo’s room. The guards followed him inside, and I assumed they confirmed the empty bed and the opened windows before coming back into the hall like they were entering war.

Aldrich’s face had gone ghostly pale. “Send out the search crew,” he announced in his general’s voice, all traces of warmness and teasing that was on his face ten minutes ago with me completely absent now.

My body began to involuntarily tremble. What kind of nightmare was this? Had I fallen asleep after Aldrich left my room?

He did not leave me this time. His eyes held an array of troubled emotions, but he seemed to be the most concerned for me. “Alright, my Cathy, we’re going to have to be sharp if we want to replace Theo. Do you understand?” he asked me assuringly, taking my hand and squeezing it. He must have been afraid that I had gone into shock again.

“Okay,” I gasped out, nodding as my hand shook in his. I made a point to stare at him, specifically right in his eyes to feel somewhat grounded in this terror. “Let’s go,” I said, starting my beeline down the hall.

“Cathy,” Aldrich grabbed my arm, stopping me abruptly in my tracks, “you will freeze to death out there. Let the servants help you change.”

After I was forced to put on winter attire, we hurried out to the grounds. The staff was already alerted to be scouring indoors for him, so there was no point in looking anywhere inside. Alan joined us before we crossed the foyer, appearing like he was pulled right out of sleep, in which he most likely was.

“What is happening?” he demanded, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he power walked with us, “Why did my guards alert me that ‘Theo is missing?’”

I didn’t have it in me to explain, but Aldrich filled him in as we stepped into the cold. It immediately bit at my cheeks, but I also didn’t have it in me to feel cold. I did not feel temperature right now; all I felt was panic.

Our entourage dispersed through the snowy fields, each group being assigned a different slice of woods. I was about to fall apart. First I had to search for my missing sister and now Theo, but I knew I would not be able to handle sitting in my room waiting for them to tell me about my baby.

Aldrich did not focus on leading the men, but instead on me. “Alan, lead the search. I have to stay with Cathy,” he had declared to an instantly agreeing Alan. Before I could look at him, he was off.

It must have been around 1 AM. The air was crisp and cool, and it was a silent kind of dark outside. My terror felt ten times more amplified against the quietness of the late night.

Theo. Missing.

The words did not ring through my brain with purpose or meaning to them. Everything in the world had lost its meaning.

Our group was designated toward the slab of woods closest to Theo’s window, facing adjacently. Numbly, I crossed the field in tow with Aldrich’s hand wrapped around my arm. As we did this, the man in the front stopped.

“Footprints in the snow, sir,” he announced to Aldrich, who only released me to go investigate. I held my breath, unable to tolerate the pain of each breath through my lungs without Theo.

Aldrich knelt down to the ground for a closer look; the snow was very thinly strewn across the grass, but there was a patch that was imprinted by footprints. I shoved through everyone to observe them right by his side. The world froze as we all looked down, the footprints defined only by the moonlight and the mens’ flashlights.

“There’s a child’s footprint,” Aldrich concluded, then looked to the space next to it.

What was next to Theo’s footprint was a much, much larger one.