Page 33 of A Silent Prodigy for the Lycan Princess

“No, your vision was way too detailed. The only other possibility would be for her to have been born in captivity.” I pause. “But seeing how her body and health are described, I doubt she would have survived that long. Alternatively…” I pause. “Can you alter the picture, Zoé, and make it younger?”

“Sure,” she nods. “I can run it through the age-altering software.”

“Subtract eight to ten years,” I say.

Zoé stares at me in shock. “That much?” When I nod, she proceeds with her work. It takes a while, so the rest of us go through the list of victims again, those omegas who were abducted recently. I’ve made sure that we also have folders of all missing omega wolves going back for three years. I’m certain this case didn’t just start now. It began years ago.

“It’s sad to imagine how long some of them might have been held captive,” Gustave mutters.

“Yes,” Leila agrees. “But I’m not sure what exactly we are looking for, Arden?”

“Only the omegas are of interest to us at the moment,” I tell them. “So far, they have all been between the ages of sixteen and forty when they disappeared, so let’s exclude anyone who is older than that.” I pause, allowing the information of the known victims to flash in front of my inner eyes. “None of the abducted omegas we know of was a hybrid. So those who are hybrids, exclude them. And they were all orphans, at least from what we know. We still need to verify these facts, though.”

“Got you,” Gustave says and hurries to oblige. I noticed he tries really hard to be polite to me. I’m not sure what to make out of it.

Meanwhile, Zoé is finished running the picture through the database again. Once more, without any success. I frown. “Try it again,” I say. “But this time use the human database.”

“What!?” Emilien asks, shocked.

“I’d need to hack into it,” she says.

“Can you do that?”

“I’m not sure,” she admits.

“I can ask our IT team to do it,” Emilien says. “They will find a way around the safety protocols.”

“Do you think they could get access to Interpol?” I ask.

“Goddess,” Emilien groans, “give me a minute.” With that, he leaves. It takes him more than a minute, though. He stays gone for two hours while we all go back to going through the folder of victims, writing down similarities on the whiteboards I had brought to the office and coming up with theories.

Eventually, Emilien returns. “Zoé,” he says, “do it now, but please be fast.”

Zoé instantly hurries to her laptop. “Which picture should I use?”

“The one where she is a kid,” I say.

She nods and runs the picture through the database while Emilien shifts around nervously. “Why are you so nervous?” Leila asks. “No one can possibly track us.”

“That’s true, but it still could mean trouble,” he mutters. “When they know they might have been hacked, they will up their security. They might do research, and we need to be double as careful. And—”

“Goddess!” Zoé exclaims. “I… I got her.”

“Quick, copy the information,” I push her.

“Got you.” She instantly downloads all the information before leaving the database. Emilien lets out a sigh of relief before linking someone to tell them we are done, and they should remove all the traces.

I pull my chair closer to sit next to Zoé and stare at the screen. The girl looking back at us resembles the one Leila drew. She is just a younger version. She has a fuller face, though, and looks healthier. “She lived in a human orphanage,” Leila mutters. “That’s why she was in the human database.”

I stare at her picture. “Meg Acorn,” I say. “We have a name.”

Meg. We finally know your name.

“You think she is important?” Emilien asks.

“You don’t?”

“No, I think you are right,” he says. “Leila saw her in her vision after all.”