161 Lonely Night
By the time Jerome reached the dungeon while carrying Everard on his shoulders, Everard was digging his claws into Jerome’s back. Everard’s bones were constantly cracking and breaking, and he grabbed onto the only thing that was in his sight.
Jerome didn’t mind that at all. He looked at the guards who came to the dungeon along with them and ordered them, “Chain the Crown Prince. Quick!”
Four of the guards grabbed onto the Crown Prince’s limb, each with great care. They didn’t want to cause further pain to him by accidentally grabbing onto his broken bones. They then carried him to the corner where thick and strong chains had been attached to the wall.
One of the guards grabbed a chain that was supposed to go on Everard’s wrist and then tried to put it on him.
However, Everard snarled at that guard and shouted at him in his growling voice, “Leave me alone!”
“But, Your Highness...”
Everard’s amber eyes suddenly shone in the dimly lit dungeon. He was trying his best to hang onto his consciousness. But the push and pull had already made him furious. He head-butted that guard and roared again, “I said, leave me alone!”
He hit that guard so hard that the guard began to bleed from his head.
Jerome quickly took over and said to the Crown Prince, “My Prince, remember what your father said. Don’t try to fight it, and it will be over soon. But we have to tie you up, in case your wolf side completely takes over your consciousness and tries to cause mayhem here.”
.....
They were, of course, going to lock the door of the dungeon behind the Crown Prince. However, if a rabid wolf was left freely, one could never tell how long the door would hold.
Jerome successfully locked the cuff on one of Everard’s wrists.
Everard was still trying to fight, but Jerome tightly grabbed his head and wrist and asked the others, “Quickly! Tie him up! We have to be ready too. I can already feel it coming.”
Crack!
“Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Everard’s scream resounded throughout that dungeon cell when his rib bone suddenly snapped in two.
The guards took that chance to cuff the Prince’s ankles and wrist.
Jerome jumped on his feet and ordered the guards while taking in heavy breaths, “Alright, run back to your posts.”
The guards didn’t need to hear it twice. The transformation was already knocking on their consciousness, and they all wanted to get it over with sooner than later.
Everard could see them all leaving from the corner of his eyes, leaving him alone and chained. He didn’t want to be alone like the last time. The trauma from that time was still fresh in his mind.
So, he shouted at them, “Where are you all going, you bastards! Stay here!”
Snap!
“Aaaarghhh...” his agonizing scream pierced through the silent and lonely night.
This time, the bone on his leg cracked. He suddenly fell to his knees. Tears started to roll down his eyes as if the dam in his eyes suddenly broke down.
He still tried to look up at the door through his blurry vision, hoping to see at least one person there. But there was no one. And the door had already been shut close.
Everard’s heart was already in emotional turbulence. And the fact that he was left to deal with his transformation alone made him feel heartbroken and utterly lonely.
He banged his head on the stone floor and let out a guttural murmur, “S-Stay! Don’t leave me alone, you arseholes!”
The flashes of memories of the last transformation began to dance in front of him. He recalled being alone in that forest, screaming in pain, and shouting for help. He had felt as if he was the last man on Earth.
And this time wasn’t any different.
He began to wail like a child who had been abandoned in the middle of the forest by their parents.
“I’m scared... I’m so scared... Please...” Everard sobbed while gasping for air.
After a while, he looked up at the door again and screamed furiously, “Open the door! Whoever is out there! I can’t breathe, dammit!”
However, there was no one to listen to his pleas. Even if they were, they wouldn’t dare to open the door for an unstable werewolf who was going through his transformation.
‘Ruby...’ Everard suddenly recalled her. ‘Where is she? At least she would agree to stay by my side, wouldn’t she? I need to call her.’
With that thought in mind, Everard filled his lungs with as much air as he could. And he shouted so loudly that he thought he burst his vocal cord and lungs, “Rubyyyyyyyyyyy...”
There was no answer.
Though his throat was already dry and hurting, he called her a few more times.
Again, there was no answer at all.
‘I need to find her.’ He thought to himself resolutely. ‘I don’t want to be alone...’
Everard then started to pull himself forward in the hopes of breaking the chain and running away from there.
However, the cuffs were designed in such a way that the more one would try to get out of it, the tighter it would become.
Nonetheless, Everard turned to face the wall and grabbed the chain of one of his wrists with both of his hands. Then he clung onto that chain and tried to pull the chain by putting the force of his whole body weight in it.
The ring on the wall to which that chain was attached creaked a little.
For a moment there, Everard’s hopes went up. He believed that he could break free.
But the very next moment, his efforts went down the drain when his shoulder dislocated.
“Arghhh! Son of a-”
He collapsed down on the floor again, his back slammed hard against the stones.
Everard had forgotten the instructions given by his father and Jerome. His mind was not in the right state to be able to think rationally.
Rather than trying to give in to the overwhelming wave of emotions that were trying to sweep him off, he did his best to resist it.
He was breathing in and out of his mouth, trying to contain the inexplicable amount of pain that he was feeling all over his body at the moment. His broken bones needed to reform into the shapes of the bones of the wolves. However, Everard was using all his willpower to stop the bones from reforming and reattaching themselves.
Everard continued doing that for more than half an hour. He was not allowing his body to go with the flow.
He was still lying flat on the cold floor. He was covered in sweat and tears, his long hair was all damp, and his clothes were tattered. His body looked as though someone was trying to butcher him into pieces but left after breaking his bones instead.
Suddenly, he felt something hurling inside his stomach. He gagged and felt something warm running up to his throat, but he tried to hold it in.
He had been trying to withstand the transformation for so long that his internal organs had ruptured.
A mouthful of blood came gushing out of his mouth. He coughed uncontrollably and spat the blood on the ground.
“Holy shit!” He was shocked to see the blood he just vomited.
—
On the other end of the dungeon, Ruby was in no better condition than Everard.
She was covered in sweat, and her wrists and ankles were bleeding because she also had been struggling to get out of the chains that bound her.
Earlier, she was listening to the heart-wrenching calls of Everard.
However, she wasn’t able to answer because before being tied up, she had thought that it was a good idea to gag her mouth with clothes.
After trying for all this time, she was finally able to spit the cloth out of her mouth, because her jaw snapped wide open.
She was in so much pain that she used that jolt of agonizing sensation to shout Everard’s name as loudly as she could.
“Eeeeeeeeeve!”
The sourc𝗲 of this content is fre(e)webnovel