"Now that's better." Avalina smiled and made her way inside the laboratory, followed by Leah who was silently observing Avalina's every movement.
Unlike what anyone seeing her like that would assume, Leah had no foul intention towards Avalina. In fact, the reason why she was so intently looking at her boss was that other than being her assistant, Leah also happened to be Avalina's newly appointed bodyguard.
Avalina was an asset to the king, after all, her research could potentially get rid of one of the two greatest weaknesses of the vampires. The undead blood. While the vampires could avoid the sunlight, an undead's blood was something that could kill them any time by forcing the coffin to activate.
So far the werewolves were not aware of this weakness of them, but it was only a matter of a few decades if vampires were lucky before the werewolves figure it out. Thus, they needed to get rid of this ridiculous weakness before the werewolves could potentially weaponize the undead blood.
Although the three pillars, the vampires, the werewolves and the undead lived under an agreement of non-violence against each other, it was an agreement made more because of a need rather than a want.
After a long tiring war against the humans, they could not afford to fight amongst themselves to claim each other's resources. Thus the agreement was made to avoid any such conflict from rising.
However, as decades passed and each of their kingdoms stabilised, their 'need' was stability and peace with other pillars slowly started fading away and was well on its way to being replaced by their 'wants'.
Each of them grew weary of each other as things started to change. Although it might take a few more decades for an all-out war to happen, it was better to be prepared for it rather than wait and hope for the best.
Thus, Avalina and her research were one of the only things that could help the vampires at this time. However, not all vampire kings and lords believed Avalina was up to any good. Although they trusted humans, they could not completely trust someone who was not only a human but one who was in close contact with the werewolves for most of her life.
These kings and lords were worried if Avalina was a double agent who could be setting up a stage for the werewolves to attack them. Then there were other people who wanted to have the research for themselves so that they could gain immunity from the undead blood and blackmail the others into doing their bidding.
These people knew no limits and could do anything to get their hands on Avalina. That's why protecting her was of utmost importance. Even more important than the direct relatives of the king himself.
But Avalina was a free spirit and did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Like going back to Lycania. No one, not even Avalina's closest aides knew why she went to the place where she had nothing but bad memories from. Nor was she ever going to disclose the true reason for her visit to Lycania.
However, when she returned from there about a month ago, the king wanted some answers. His court was worried that she might have been colluding something with the werewolves and that's why she was not revealing the intention of her visit.
The king trusted her to be innocent of the crimes she was being 'accused' of. But in a desperate attempt to prove everyone wrong, he made Avalina take a lie detector test in front of the court. However, before it all began, Avalina put forward a condition.
Had she been proven innocent, the entire courtroom, excluding the king and his family, should be imprisoned for trying to place false charges on her. Otherwise, she would not take the test.
After that, there wasn't much to say. The ministers backed off as none of them wanted to be imprisoned. Avalina no longer needed to take the test, but she did and in doing so, told all of them the reason for her visit to Lycania... well, one of the reasons.
She was looking for some 'Venom' as she hoped using it, she would be able to develop some sort of a vaccine or medicine to help get rid of the effects of undead blood on vampires. The magicians confirmed that she was speaking the truth and that was that.
However, her real reason to visit Lycania was still shrouded in mystery and Leah knew Avalina was hiding the reason from everyone.
"Real motive? I already told everyone what my real motives were." Avalina smiled and got back to work.
"But doctor, as far as I know, you are not one to take steps to help vampires-"
"You are right. I'm not trying to help them. I'm trying to help myself." Avalina immediately interrupted Leah, "Since, I too am a vampire now, thus the blood of the undead is enough to kill me as well. So I'm doing this research to protect myself more than anyone else. Do you get that?"
Leah nodded and kept her mouth shut from then on. Avalina was her boss, but she was also her friend. She did not want anything to happen to her because of her reckless moves. But it would appear, Avalina did not care about anything anymore.
'Who can blame her?' Leah thought to herself, 'If I were to lose my husband and my only son, who knows what I'd end up doing.'
"Leah!"
"Oh- yes, doctor?"
"Stop daydreaming and ask someone to sort these files, will ya? I left for a month and everything turned into chaos." Avalina sighed heavily before shaking her head in disappointment, "Also, I want daily logs of the last month for test subject 07c."
"On it." Leah mumbled and immediately left.
Avalina waited for her to go out of her sight before she was finally overwhelmed with emotions. She went to Lycania in hopes of rescuing her son, Ashton from the clutches of the vile mistress. However, by the time she got there, it was already too late. Ashton had been taken away by the mistress.
"Someday... I will reunite with you. Just hold on a while longer." Avalina mumbled to herself, "you are the only reason I am so dead set on finding a cure for the poison within undead's blood.. Once I find that, the vampires will attack Lycania and we'll be together once again."