Chapter 78: It Was Them All Along

The damp, pitch-black corridor, shadows swallowed every inch of the stone walls, hiding two female figures standing together in the deep dark corridor.

"What the fuck is happening inside this damn academy?" a female voice demanded in a harsh, angry whisper, her breath coming out in ragged puffs.

"I don’t know!" the second voice snapped back in a frantic murmur, her hands fidgeting nervously with her coat. "I am confused as fuck... I still can’t believe what you’re telling me! How can a scentless rogue like her get protected by all four Lycan Kings?"

The first woman stepped into the dim moonlight filtering through the window, revealing her pale, enraged face. Her eyes burned with pure venom.

"You gave me the news that Adeline was still alive!" she hissed, her nails digging hard into the other girl’s arm.

"You told me that the Lycan Princes absolutely hated her! You said all the Lycans were looking for a reason to throw her out! That is the only reason I used my pack’s power without my elders noticing, to hire those three omegas to kill her, Miya."

"Yes! Yes, that was all true when she first got here!" Miya whispered frantically, pulling her arm back.

"She was an immediate target because she had no scent! She was just a broken, wolfless defect! The second I saw her, I remembered her from your pack’s house when we were on that video call months ago. You told me back then that she was just a pathetic maid, a useless, defect! So when she got assigned to the same dorm room as mine, I gave you the news that she was alive and here!"

Miya paused, her eyes darting down the dark hall.

"Miya..." the other female said. "Are you hiding something from me? Did she really come here all by herself on her first day?"

Miya swallowed hard, forcing her hands to stop shaking.

She was carefully twisting the truth, leaving out the crucial parts, like how Lord Raven had grabbed Adeline’s hand in front of everyone, declaring she was under his protection, or how Adeline had slapped Lord Zyran across the face and survived.

"Yes, she came completely alone," Miya said through gritted teeth, her eyes flashing with jealousy.

"And then she deliberately bumped into Lord Blake on her very first day just to catch his eye! That manipulative bitch planned every single move!"

"Then how the hell did the Prince of the Second Throne suddenly show up out of nowhere and claim that fucking slut is under his protection?!" the other woman snarled, her voice rising in sheer fury.

"You told me yourself that she doesn’t even know her real last name!" Miya answered immediately.

"You told me that her last name isn’t Vance! I am sure she is impersonating someone else! She lied to the princes just to save her own skin! That is how she must have crawled her way into this academy."

Miya let out a bitter breath, spitting her next words with pure spite.

"The whole academy hated her from day one!" Miya hissed into the dark.

"That slutty whore used her stupid tricks to get the attention of the Lycans, and that’s why the entire campus has a massive grudge against her! A wolfless nobody gets royal attention, while the rest of us dress up, wear expensive imported perfumes, and come from highly respected highborn packs just to get a single glance from the Lycan Princes!"

The other woman growled under her breath, pacing back and forth on the marble floor.

"She was supposed to fucking die that day!" she muttered, her fingers twitching violently.

"That bitch somehow escaped... and I couldn’t get a single word from those three omegas I hired. I only found out they failed when you told me the academy border guards caught them. So what the hell happened to them? Where are they now?"

Miya’s face drained of colour, her voice dropping into a terrified whisper. "They were executed."

The other woman gasped, freezing mid-step. "What?! They were caught just for crossing the border, weren’t they?! They got executed just for an unsanctioned entry?!"

"I... I actually bribed the guard who was watching over those three omegas in the lower cells," Miya stammered nervously, her eyes wide with lingering horror.

"That guard told me what really happened... Lord Zyran..."

Miya trailed off, her throat going dry.

"What do you mean?!" the woman urged. "Miya, fucking talk! That Adeline bitch is already getting on my last nerve! What did Lord Zyran do to those omegas?!"

Miya leaned in, her voice barely a thread in the dark corridor.

"He killed them ruthlessly on the spot. The guard said Zyran walked out of the cell after ten minutes completely drenched in blood... the omegas’ blood. He ripped one omega’s heart out with his bare hands, tore the throat out of another, and..."

"No... no, no, no!" the woman cut her off. She grabbed her own head, clutching her hair in absolute madness.

"Why would he do that?! He hates her! He is supposed to hate her!"

She repeated the words over and over like a chant, her mind unravelling in the dark as her nails dug into her own scalp.

"I don’t know why he did it either!" Miya whispered, glancing back toward the corridor entrance before adding, "And... I haven’t told you one more strange thing, Chloe."

Chloe stopped muttering, her eyes wild and dark as she snapped her head toward Miya. Her voice came out rough and raw. "What else?"

"The night she was attacked by those three omegas, the ones you ordered to kill her and throw her in the mud," Miya began, her brow pulling down into a suspicious line, "Adeline came back to our dorm room. She was badly injured."

"I could hear her weak, struggling footsteps from my side of the room, and the smell of her blood was so heavy it filled the whole hall. But the very next day... by evening she was completely healed! It was as if those bloody wounds were never on her body in the first place!"

Chloe stared at her, unblinking, as Miya pressed her final doubt.

"No medical salve in the world could work a miracle like that," Miya murmured, her voice laced with a cold, unsettling fear.

"Is there anything else that you are hiding from me?" Chloe demanded.

Miya swallowed hard, her pulse racing against her ribs. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, her hands tightening into pale fists at her sides before she finally gave in.

"Actually... the next morning, after she stumbled back, bleeding from those omegas," Miya began, her voice trembling slightly, "Adeline slapped Lord Zyran. Right across the face. In front of the entire campus."

Chloe completely froze. The colour drained from her face, replaced instantly by pure, unadulterated shock.

"What?" Chloe gasped, her jaw dropping as her mind struggled to process the sheer absurdity of those words. "What the fuck?! And what did Lord Zyran do?! Tell me he didn’t just let that slide!"

"We all thought he would have written her death sentence right then and there!" Miya whispered back frantically, her eyes wide as she recalled the terrifying scene.

"Everyone on campus was convinced she wouldn’t make it through the night alive! But... it was right after that slap that he walked straight down into the dungeon cells where those three omegas were being held. And that’s when he ripped their hearts and throats out."

Chloe stood completely frozen in the dark, the horrifying truth hitting her.

Why? Why would a royal Lycan King execute the very men who tried to kill her? Unless... unless he was protecting her all along?

"Why doesn’t she just die already?!" Chloe muttered in a frantic, hysterical rage, her voice cracking under the weight of her pure, unfiltered hatred.

"She has escaped death twice now! She survived the double rejection at the same time, and then she survived three trained omegas sent to cut her down! Why?! Why?!"

She stopped mid-step, her head snapping upward as she stared blankly into the shadows of the old stables.

"And now..." Chloe whispered, her lips curling into an ugly, venomous sneer. "Now all four Lycan Kings walked straight into the RDC court and casually dismissed every single charge against her... That fucking bitch!"

How does a wolfless, scentless defect keep winning? How does a broken, wolfless defect end up backed by the four highest thrones in the entire royal realm?