The Lycan King's Muse

Ep 22: True Sense of Magic

The beeping sound of the monitor becomes music in my ear alongside with footsteps and cries of healers. I forget about the fact that I am the only werewolf in this kingdom, or that lycan warriors are observing my every move. Even when the curtain is closed, they can still hear and smell my presence.

In my old pack, I have only assisted in delivering a baby once. It was a night of blue moon when I was still a junior healer. My senior healer, Jen, was the one in charge of the delivery. Since it's pretty rare for werewolf females to conceive, let alone give birth in the recent decades, it was a pretty big event for us.

People surrounded the hospital while reciting prayers to the Moon Goddess. Even werewolves from other packs visited our pack to show support. It was that big of a deal.

As a junior healer, I could only hand tools to the senior healers and follow whatever they asked me to do. There were three other senior healers working on delivering the baby, each brought at least one junior healer, so the room was packed. Sometime that night, they told all the junior healers to go out of the room. The next thing I remembered was hearing the baby crying through the door.

The next morning, I heard the mother did not survive. But the entire pack was busy being overjoyed that another female had been born. They didn't have room to mourn the woman who sacrificed her life. Her body had not even been cleaned properly from the operating room, yet a party for the baby had been announced. And I remember thinking how sad it was.

When people were celebrating, I made it my task to clean the woman's body. When people cheered joyfully with beer, I cried because the world easily forgot about the woman behind their joys. I thought it was some sick joke from nature because the baby they were so proud of might be the next body on the operating table and no one would care for her then, as long as she could deliver another baby to keep the werewolf lineage going.

I didn't get up from my bed for days after that.

Gripping the pregnant woman's hand tighter, I focus on keeping the pain untangled on her body with my magic. When I touch this woman's hand, I get the picture of a fish being entangled in webs of nets, preventing it from swimming freely in the vast ocean. The fish is the embodiment of the woman's soul and the convoluted nets are the source of pain to this woman right now. With every minute passing, more tangles are formed. I know then that it is not enough to soothe her pain. I need to calm her fear, too.

With my other hand, I take the cloth that a healer has brought and wipe the woman's sweat. The woman's heart rate is increasing despite my magic. Her pupils travel all around the room, following the figures wearing scrubs. Two healers open the woman's feet to inspect what's under the blanket. One of them is shaking their head at the other, saying that we need to wait a few minutes more.

But the woman panics when she sees someone shaking his head during her labor. Her hand reaches out to the infusion set to rip it off. I can feel she's being terrified and that she's acting irrationally through my magic. Before anyone else notices, I yank her hand hard, making her look me straight in the eyes.

"Hey, hey, look at me," I whisper to her, "What's your name?"

The question makes her stop to think for a second.

"Elisa," she answers. As her pupils focus on me, they return to their normal sizes along with her heartbeat returning to normal.

"Elisa," I repeat her name while maintaining her eyes to keep staring at me, "You're going to be okay. Alright?"

White and warm light emerges from the tips of my fingers. They insert themselves into Elisa's skin, becoming one with her blood vessels. That's my magic, trying to soothe the adrenaline rushing in her veins while still concentrating on untangling the web of pain in her lower stomach.