127

127


MAGNUS

"Speak plainly, and look at me when I'm talking to you."

I growled, overwhelmed by the jargon of his line of work. The man's throat bobbed as he forced himself to look me in the eye. 

"Whatever caused that blackout... it wasn't mechanical. It wasn't human either. It was a force. A very powerful one. Beyond anything we can measure with our systems. It's a miracle that we aren't having an electrical failure." 

I reclined back on the seat as my jaw continued to tighten. So it wasn't just that room. It was the whole hospital. Was it an attack? No, it couldn't possibly be. Because we had already ruled out the possibility of an attack long before now. 

There was no foreign or dangerous looking person or group outside or within the hospital premises. And no physical weapon would have done that damage. This man had already made it clear that it was a surge of powerful current. 

I wanted- no, I needed- to believe that it was him. 

That it was Ariadne.

Because, even as unlikely as it sounded, that was the nearest thing I had towards answering the big question that was plaguing me now. Grabbing his chest and head right before it hit could mean some sort of connection between him and what had happened. 

But what if everyone in the hospital felt the same way too? What if it didn't just happen to Ariadne. I wanted to rule that out too because Callan didn't seem affected by it, but Callan was Alpha. And Alphas were strong enough to withstand painful sensations that would seem unbearable to normal shifters. 

Despite that it all came down to the fact that we had no proof. None. And without any proof, it was just suspicion. Just whispers inside my own head. That wasn't enough to carry out an immediate investigation. 

"Keep digging," I ordered in an icy tone. "Check the backups again. Check the logs. I want every second of footage, every line of code. If there's anything else, you'll find it. But I want my hands on anything that relates to what happened in that room." 

He nodded quickly. "Of course, your Grace. I’ll get to that quickly." 

Lifting my frame off the chair, the chair scraped back against the floor. My chest was still feeling heavy and my thoughts kept twisting like barbed wire. I wanted it to be him. Goddess, I wanted it. But wanting wasn’t enough. I needed certainty for him to be at my mercy. 

So that he wouldn't be able to deny it at all when I started asking questions. Making my way out of the room and strolling back to the room, I didn't have to wait long before another voice pulled me out of my thoughts. 

"Alpha." It was the doctor in charge of Ariadne. 

I'd sent a message across to him through one of the nurses and I'd told him to look into Ariadne. 

He was carrying a thick, brown folder. "You asked for a full evaluation of the boy," 

"What did you find," I ordered. 

He cleared his throat, then he quickly dropped the file on the table closest to us before he took the reports out and started to flip through. "Subjects show abnormal fluctuations in the pattern of his vitals. At the time of the blast, there were heart rate irregularities that didn't look anything normal. I have also been able to discover that cellular regeneration was elevated, nearly three times the rate of a normal shifter. There were also chemical imbalances and heightened adrenal response. Surges of electrical activity in neural pathways. This is... quite unusual." 

No shit. I studied him closely. "What was all that? What does it mean?" 

He swallowed before he went on. "It means that his body isn't behaving like a normal body should. It is adapting. Changing. Rapidly. And as much as this sounds impossible, Alpha, there are signs of... potential mutation. I think that has something to do with how quickly he recovered from the poisoning." 

I couldn't believe my ears after the doctor said that. I stood there staring into the space before me for a while as the word resounded in my ears again and again. 

Mutation. 

"Good, doctor," I muttered despite my shock, still staring into space." 

Then I added. "One more thing, nobody should hear a word of what you just told me. This stays between us. Do you understand?" 

He nodded, but I could tell from his expression that everything he had just discovered still unnerved him so much. "I will continue monitoring. But Alpha... whatever is happening inside him, it's beyond medicine. It's beyond science. That's what I think. I think there's still a lot we don't know about him yet." 

I waved him off. "Keep at it. Keep looking into this and order more tests done on him if you have to. I want every detail and report." 

"Yes, Alpha." He bowed slightly and then walked out of the room. I stood there for a long while after he left for his office, staring at the distance again for the umpteenth time since I beheld the strange occurrences that happened in here. 

The blast. The blackout. And the reports. It all pointed to one thing. The boy was hiding something. And Callan was pretty much aware of what it was. My brother knew more than me and I hated that I couldn't do anything to force him to speak. 

When I had asked Ariadne about what happened, he had pretentiously replied that he didn't know. But beneath all that pretense, I knew he was pretty much aware. Callan was protecting him, shielding him from me. But that wasn't going to last because I would eventually get my hands on their little secret. 

I also knew that if I wanted the answers, I couldn't rely on footage or doctors or the intuition and suspicion that Ariadne was behind it. 

He could really be behind all this, and there was a chance he had nothing to do with it. And that's why I couldn't be too sure. That was also why I needed to dig deeper.

This time, into his family. 

Even though they were dead, I needed to ask questions. 

Someone, somewhere, knew what the hell that boy really was. 

And I was going to find them. One way or another I was going to find out the truth. And when I did, there would be no hiding from me.