Chapter 274: Deranged

The hospital ward was in absolute, deafening chaos. White-coated medical personnel and panicked staff rushed through the corridors, shouting frantic orders while alarms blared overhead. The attending doctors could not figure out what was happening to the infected soldier.

Kieran burst through the double doors of the intensive care unit, his long black coat billowing behind him. Before he could even call for a status report, a trembling nurse rushed directly toward him, tears already streaking her pale cheeks.

"Doctor Ravencourt! Thank Goddess you’re here!" she sobbed, clutching her clipboard to her chest.

Before Kieran could demand a single detail, a bloodcurdling, monstrous howl echoed down the hallway, vibrating the glass windows in their frames. His blue eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

"Report. Now," Kieran barked, his voice dropping into pure Alpha authority.

"The... the warrior shifted!" the nurse stammered, her whole frame trembling. "He transformed into his full wolf form and went completely rampant! His mind is entirely gone!"

Kieran’s gaze darkened as he strode down the central corridor, his long legs eating up the distance. "Was anyone injured?"

The nurse hesitated, her footstep stuttering for a fraction of a second. "There... there was just one casualty."

"Who?" Kieran demanded, his voice echoing off the sterile tiles.

"The... the student intern from Draven Hall assigned to the research department," she squeaked, shrinking back from his aura.

Kieran’s mind went cold. His steps ground to a halt. "Yuki?" The name left him before he could stop it. His chest tightened. "What was she doing in the hospital so early? Her research shift isn’t scheduled until noon after her academy classes."

"It’s a national public holiday today, Doctor!" the nurse cried, visibly shaken by the ferocity in his eyes. "The Draven Hall interns were assigned a full day shift today due to a lecture free day!"

Kieran did not wait for her to finish. Ignoring the chaos around him, he expanded his heightened senses, cutting through the sharp smells of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and old blood until he locked onto her distinct fragrance—sweet rosewood and fresh rain. Yuki’s scent

He moved instantly, following the scent until he reached the observation bay at the end of the wing.

Yuki stood frozen in front of a reinforced observation window. Her left arm was bound in a thick white gauze bandage, and her face was deathly pale. She stared wide-eyed into the padded room, so absorbed in the spectacle inside that she did not notice Kieran’s approach until his broad hand clamped around her uninjured wrist and turned her to face him.

"How did you get injured?" he demanded, his voice low and volatile.

Even if Yuki was on duty today, she was assigned strictly to his private research team. She had no business near the high-security isolation wards unless she was accompanying him directly.

Yuki met his stormy blue eyes, taken aback by the intensity in them. Her lips parted, but for a moment no words came. She tried to steady her breathing, then forced herself to answer.

"I didn’t have a choice," she said, her voice quieter than she intended. "He came straight at Clara."

Kieran’s gaze snapped down to her left arm. Dark, wet crimson blood was still seeping through the thick layers of white gauze. His throat closed. Under normal conditions, a healthy matured werewolf—even an untrained one—would have begun cellular regeneration within minutes. The bleeding should already have stopped.

Noticing his fixed glare, Yuki instinctively tried to pull her arm back, her cheeks flushing as she attempted to hide the injury behind her back.

"She was protecting the staff, Doctor," Clara’s voice broke in quietly from behind them. The senior researcher stepped forward, her own uniform disheveled and splattered with droplets of blood. "We weren’t in the special containment wing. The warrior somehow broke through his primary restraints and burst out of his room while the orderlies were attempting to administer the nerve block. He lunged directly at me... and Yuki pushed me out of the way."

Kieran’s jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped along his cheekbones. He wanted nothing more than to reprimand her for throwing herself into fatal danger—to make her promise never to play the hero again—but the words caught in his throat.

Instead, his gaze snapped away from her face and locked onto the wide observation window.

Inside the padded containment room, the massive brown wolf sprinted in frantic, erratic circles, slamming his body against the reinforced glass over and over again. The creature’s eyes were not the vibrant ruby of a normal werewolf. They were a pitch-black abyss, completely devoid of reason or light.

Foam and black drool dripped from his jaws. His abdominal incision—the deep wound that had failed to heal—had completely torn open, thick dark blood spraying across the white padded walls with every violent impact. Yet the beast acted as if he felt no physical pain, continuously throwing his flesh against the glass.

Kieran immediately exerted his Alpha command, releasing a heavy wave of dominant aura through the glass to force the beast to heel.

The pressure radiated down the corridor. Every order-less wolf, nurse, and doctor in the hall stumbled; the weaker wolves collapsed onto their knees under the sheer weight of a Ravencourt Alpha’s command.

Every wolf submitted—except the brown beast in the cage.

The wolf did not flinch. He did not submit, nor did his posture shift into defense. It was as if his higher wolf instincts had been utterly erased, leaving behind a hollow, ravenous shell.

"He... he isn’t taking commands, Doctor Ravencourt," Clara whispered, her voice trembling as she wiped a tear from her eye. "It’s like his mind isn’t there anymore."

"What are we going to do, Doctor?" another attending physician asked nervously.

Kieran slowly released Yuki’s wrist. His fingers trembled once before he forced them still. In all his years of high-level medical research and military trauma analysis, he had never witnessed a case so grotesque. The wolf’s mindless assault against the glass was unnatural—it reminded him of the reanimated ghouls from human horror novels.

"Who else has been informed of this breach?" Kieran asked coldly, keeping his eyes on the thrashing beast.

"Gamma General Reed was notified immediately, since the patient is an active-duty soldier," Clara explained rapidly. "General Reed ordered him to be physically restrained, but every neural sedative we injected failed completely. In fact, the chemical compound seemed to trigger his sudden, violent shift."

"Have you attempted to chain him with wolfsbane-coated iron?" Kieran asked.

Another doctor shook his head helplessly. "We barely managed to force him into the padded observation room, Lord Kieran. There isn’t a warrior on duty strong enough to hold him down long enough to fasten iron cuffs without taking fatal injuries. There is no medical record of a condition like this in pack history..."

Kieran swallowed, his throat dry as he stared at the bleeding creature.

Heavy military combat boots echoed down the tiled hallway, cutting through the panicked murmuring of the staff. Kieran turned his head to see General Reed striding down the corridor, flanked by an elite squad of armed guards and a civilian woman dressed in simple clothes.

The woman took one look at the glass window and burst into hysterical tears, her hands clutching her heart. "Wade...! Oh Goddess, Wade!"

General Reed offered Kieran a brief, somber nod before turning his stern gaze toward the window. The civilian woman pressed her face against the glass, weeping loudly as she called her son’s name over and over. The brown wolf inside offered no flicker of recognition. He merely slammed his bloodied snout against the pane, snapping his jaws wildly at her reflection.

"He can’t even recognize his own mother," Reed stated gravely. "He is completely feral and violent."

Reed had brought the mother here as a last-ditch effort to test whether any psychological tether or emotional bond remained intact within the soldier’s mind. The answer was chillingly clear.

"What... what is happening to my boy?!" the woman sobbed, grabbing General Reed’s uniform sleeve. "He was completely fine before he was deployed yesterday! Fix him! Please, do something!"

Reed let out a heavy sigh and motioned for two of his soldiers to step forward. "Escort her back to the waiting quarters."

"No! Let me go!" the mother shrieked, struggling against the guards’ grips. "What are you planning to do to him?! What are you going to do to a decorated soldier who can’t be sedated and won’t take commands?!"

No one answered her. The heavy silence that fell over the corridor was an answer in itself. Every professional in the hall knew the protocol: a werewolf who had lost all higher cognitive function and posed an uncontainable, lethal threat to the pack had to be put down.

Sensing the silent consensus hanging in the air, the mother’s mind shattered. Driven by raw maternal grief, she let out a desperate cry, her body half-shifting in a split second. With sudden explosive speed, she broke free from the guards’ grip and sprinted straight toward the observation room’s heavy steel door.

Kieran’s sharp eyes caught her movement first. "Stop! Don’t touch that door!" he roared.

But she did not hear him.