Chapter 62: Handsome Guys Like Ugly Girls

It didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive.

The paramedics loaded Blair onto a stretcher. Inside the back of the ambulance, beastwoman nurses immediately got to work, running rapid tests and hooking her up to life support monitors. Blair’s condition was incredibly alarming; her temperature was burning high, and her breathing was shallow, yet her unconscious body was trembling violently from the cold.

Killian stepped up into the back of the ambulance. He looked down at Daemus standing in the rain. "Stay here," he ordered.

"As if," Daemus scoffed, grabbing the handles and climbing right in after him.

The nurses exchanged wary glances, curious about the human girl’s identity, but they didn’t dare question the two bickering princes.

By the time the ambulance backed into the loading bay of the Royal Crest Hospital, the gossip had already started to spread like wildfire.

The Royal Crest was a marvel of beast-world medical engineering. Its walls were crafted from gleaming white marble, and the air smelled faintly of expensive antiseptics rather than bleach. The lighting was soft and golden, designed to soothe heightened senses, and the floors were polished to a mirror shine. It was a facility strictly reserved for the upper echelon of beast nobility, a place where a single night’s stay cost more than most humans would earn in ten lifetimes.

And yet, rolling right through, was a human.

The Wolf Prince of the Wintercrest pack and the Crown Prince had arrived together, and they brought a human.

Of course, everyone was curious. It was unheard of. The whispers echoed down the corridors so loudly that even the sick patients woke up out of their hospital beds. A recovering Panther noble, IV stand clattering behind him, practically threw himself against the glass window of his private suite, pressing his face to the pane to catch a glimpse. Down the hall, a Fox beastwoman with a broken leg hobbled out of her room, craning her neck and shoving past a startled orderly just to see the unfolding drama.

Blair was rushed on her stretcher toward the emergency room doors.

Daemus stayed right on the nurses’ heels, trying to follow the stretcher into the room, but a human doctor quickly stepped into his path, holding his hands up.

Killian let out a cocky hmph, fully expecting to waltz right past the lesser, but he found his path blocked as well.

Killian’s purple eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "Do you dare to block the Crown Prince?"

"Y-Your Highness, I apologize, but hospital protocol..." the human doctor squeaked, his voice cracking as he tried desperately to reason with the apex predator. "It is a sterile environment, you must stay outside!"

Killian’s annoyance spiked.

And then...

The terrified human doctor suddenly broke into a bright, ecstatic smile. It was a deeply unsettling sight—the man was grinning from ear to ear, beaming with joy, even while his heart raced in terror and his hands shook wildly.

Daemus felt a sudden shudder go up his spine. There were times Daemus could easily tell the Crown Prince to go fuck himself, and then there were times like this, where he found it difficult to even look at Killian without feeling a bit uneasy.

Realizing he lost his cool, Killian’s jaw tightened. He hated when he couldn’t control it. Annoyed with himself and the situation, he dropped his glare.

"Fine. Whatever," Killian stated flatly, walking away down the corridor.

Daemus let out a breath, turning back to the trembling doctor. "Sorry about that. Don’t mind the Crown Prince. He didn’t get house training, unfortunately."

The doctor’s tense shoulders relaxed just a bit, the feeling that he was about to die fading away.

Daemus gently patted the doctor on the shoulder. "I’m depending on you to save my girl."

With a quick nod, the doctor disappeared behind the ER doors.

His girl.

Those two words hit the rumor mill like a lit match in a fireworks factory. The gossip got around insanely quickly.

"Did you hear?" a triage nurse hissed to a doctor by the charting station, her eyes wide. "The Wolf Prince took a human pet!"

"A pet?" the doctor scoffed, adjusting his stethoscope. "He called her ’his girl’! And Prince Killian was with him! The Crown Prince hates humans!"

As the night ticked on, the gossip evolved and transformed, passing from the cafeteria staff to the overnight doctors, each person adding another ingredient to the chaotic mixture.

"I heard she isn’t just a pet," an orderly whispered conspiratorially to a group of nurses near the blood bank.

It mutated from a simple pet into a massive scandal: A human girl had built a harem at the beast academy.

"A harem?" a nurse gasped, scandalized. "There is no way she could only be a pet. No beastman would treat an injured pet like this, much less bring them to the Royal Hospital. It’s the most exclusive facility in the sector! If they were both here, the Wolf Prince and the Crown Prince must be sharing a human!"

Eventually, the bored, resting patients turned the gossip into a full-blown political conspiracy theory.

"It’s a trap," a recovering Bear noble murmured from his bed, leaning over to whisper to his roommate. "The humans plan to use their best women to ensnare and trap strong beastmen to revolt against us! Think about it, taking down the Crown Prince from the inside?"

Then came the petty comments from the few triage nurses who had hardly managed to glimpse her on the stretcher.

"She isn’t even pretty," a Lynx nurse scoffed to her colleague, rolling her eyes. "She looked plain."

"Right?" the other nurse replied with a bitter sigh. "But didn’t handsome guys always go for the ugly girls?"

Hours later...

Daemus and Killian had finally gotten themselves cleaned up, changing into fresh sets of clothes. They sat together in the quiet waiting room just outside the emergency doors.

They sat in silence.

Worry was etched deeply into Daemus’s features. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and staring hard at the floor tiles. It was all his fault. If he had just swallowed his pride and walked away from Rain, Blair wouldn’t be fighting for her life in there right now. He would never forgive himself if something happened to her.

Daemus slowly turned his head to look at Killian. The Snake Prince had busied himself by reading a magazine from the waiting room table, looking very calm in comparison.

"Why did you really go this far for her?" Daemus asked, his voice low and exhausted. "And don’t tell me that bullshit about her being your pet."

Killian hummed quietly. He turned a page of the magazine.

"I have no answer for you then," Killian replied.