CHAPTER 77: A SISTER’S SHADOW II

Slater

"That’s not all," Jex continued. "Turns out that though Omegas are generally weaker in nature, they have shown much better progress in carrying hybrid babies to term than girls with Alpha wolves, Luna wolves or even Beta wolves."

At this point, I was beyond speechless. I couldn’t breathe.

When I finally managed to speak, my voice was barely a whisper. "Is my sister one of these test subjects?"

Jex looked at me with pity and nodded. "I’m not sure she had to go through all of that, like having her body being used as the embryo’s house since she’s not an Omega, but according to the records I found, your sister got pregnant four times."

He opened the manila envelope and pulled out a folder inside it, which he passed across the table to me.

When I opened it, it was an Ebonvale document containing Riley’s medical records. In the pregnancy history, there were indeed four entries, but each one had a comment attached. It was written in medical jargon, so I didn’t understand it.

I looked up at Jex, watching me. "Do you know what this means?" I asked, pointing to the comments.

"I asked a doctor of mine, and he said she was pregnant four times but didn’t carry any of the babies to term. From what she also told me, she tried to have them terminated each time by ingesting dangerous liquids, hitting herself until she had a miscarriage and..."

He trailed off.

"And what?" I asked anxiously, as Riley’s cries began to ring in my ears. All those times she’d call in the middle of the night, sobbing profusely, or when she begged not to go back to Ebonvale. She’d been trying to tell us something.

"The fourth pregnancy was ectopic, so one of her tubes was cut out. She suffered a lot of damage because her womb had weakened due to the frequency of pregnancy and how her body was not allowed to recover from past miscarriages before she was allowed to take in again."

"What?" My eyes misted with tears.

"She would never be able to give birth again. She opted to have her womb removed to help her survive."

I leaned back in my chair, wide-eyed with horror as I tried to grasp everything. "You’re trying to tell me that they sell our girls, future Lunas, people’s fated mates as escorts to humans or make them be surrogates for humans too?"

Jex nodded grimly. "Not just humans. A new project was launched around the time your sister went missing. Project Renew. They’re trying to create a triple hybrid from the strongest supernatural creatures: Lycans, werewolves, were-foxes, faes and vampires. They’re trying to cross all their reproductive genetics and see what kind of offspring it produces. But for that, they would need a werewolf—specifically a werewolf with a Shadewolf—to carry the pregnancy to term."

My heart skipped a beat, and I thought of Charis.

"Why?" I asked. "Why do they need a Shadewolf? Why are they doing all these things? What’s the fucking reason?"

"There’s a DNA found in Shadewolves that can help to bind all the genetics of those supernatural creatures I mentioned earlier. They attempted to do it in the labs, but ultimately created something that did not have a human appearance. Something ugly..."

"A blue creature?" I asked instinctively.

Jex paused, staring at me with surprise. "How did you know that?"

"We were attacked by one of those creatures a while ago at summer camp. The staff that came to retrieve it were acting strange."

"That means the lab is in Ravenspire," Jex said with an excited shrill in his voice. "I tried to find the lab, but it was nowhere, and what better place to hide a lab than a summer camp. Far from the eyes of unsuspecting people. No one would have guessed."

"So, that blue creature is the mistake?" I asked.

"Yes," Jex nodded. "With a Shadewolf, all they would need to do is inject the genetics into her or him, maybe," he shrugged. "Male Shadewolves are hard to come by, and then when these genetics are injected into the female, a DNA from her body binds with these strands of genetics, and she may be able to birth a baby that looks good."

My heart was beginning to pound violently. I should never have allowed Charis to stay. If anyone finds out she’s a Shadewolf...

"Do you know what else is funny?" Jex sighed. "In their lab, I received reliable intelligence with proof that they’re also creating hybrid babies. Cross-mixing them. Faes and werewolves. Werewolves and Werefoxes... something like this, and I heard they ones that passed the experiment have shown tendencies to be stronger than the best warriors or fighters from each of these creatures."

I clamped my hands over my mouth. "What the fuck?"

Jex nodded gravely. "That’s not all. Most of the boys missing from Ravenshore are sent to the human world as soldiers. They’re sold to the military because of their unique fighting abilities, stamina, and fast healing properties, too. The twisted part is, most of them don’t even know they’re werewolves."

"I thought supernatural creatures aligning with humans was aimed at sharing resources and not this."

"Humans are trying to be at the top of the food chain, and they’ve mastered the art of getting anything they want by feeding on our greed. Besides, imagine having a soldier on the field who heals instantly? Not to mention, we age ten times slower than the average human. Do you know how perfect that would be for their black ops? And when they need to fight each other?"

He pulled out a picture and slid it across the table to me.

I picked it up and saw a young man in a human military uniform. "Who’s this?" I asked.

"Bane Castor. Son of Alpha Argus Castor. He was declared dead twenty years ago, after his father lost everything from trying to get answers. This is a recent picture."

My jaw dropped. "H-He’s not dead?"

"Nope," Jex nodded. "He’s a special force operative in the human world. Trained, maybe has been tweaked because he doesn’t know he’s a werewolf. That’s what they do. They take your memories, your identity, everything and use them as a weapon."

"Is the Alpha King aware of such impunity?" I growled. "There’s no way this would be happening, and top-tier Alphas would not know."

Jex’s expression grew even more serious. "Whoever is involved in this sees it as a business. They take young, virile werewolf boys and sell them to the military in the human world. If my hunch is right, they’re trying to deplete the workforce of the werewolf world systematically."

"Why do you say so?"

"If all the sons of Alphas, boys with Alpha wolves, are sold out, how would packs go to battle with just Beta and Gamma wolves? How would they fight rogues? That’s why the Academy turns a blind eye to indiscriminate sex among students. They want the girls to breed, to produce the next generation of test subjects or sell those babies to humans."

"That would explain the reason why they drugged a lot of first-years during their orientation program at the summer camp. Many students do not recall what happened at the pool. Whereas, they’d actively had sex and were not queried for it."

Jex sighed and shook his head. "In all my years of investigation, I have never seen so much organised evil. It runs deeper than you can imagine. It is as if someone is planning a war because everything is done with that precision."

He removed a flash drive and pushed it to me. "I collected all the information I could. Watch it when you have the time, but be careful."

I nodded. "About my sister..."

"Yeah, oh that. I almost forgot."

From his pocket again, he reached for another picture. "Your sister escaped during one of the escort assignments. She killed the two people in the car with her and ran into the bushes. She’s now living in a small human town under a false identity."

He slid the picture to me. As I saw it, my eyes misted with tears. My sister had changed. Her naturally blond hair had now turned dark brown. She wore contact lenses to change the colour of her eyes and had gained weight.

"How did you know it was her?" I asked, turning to look at Jex.

"Her scent," he said quietly, and I remembered the first thing he’d asked was to get a personal item that belonged to Riley. I’d given him her scarf. "And her other body mannerisms. I almost doubted myself, but it’s her. I’m sure."