Page 61 of A Silent Prodigy for the Lycan Princess

I wonder what he sees when he looks at this data, when he looks at the pictures. He doesn’t even blink once. What kind of connection is his brain making?

Chapter nineteen

Blood

*ARDEN*

The various dates and snippets of information seem to fly around me, information putting itself together like puzzle pieces before separating again because the pieces didn’t fit.

A new attempt to make it fit, to find the connection.

They are werewolves. Omegas.

Roughly aged twelve to forty-four, but no pre-teen children except for Meg, and no elderly. Most of them are above eighteen and below forty. Yet, age still plays a minor part.

They are orphans, many of them from packs that didn’t care if they went missing or believed them in an accident.

But are they truly all orphans? Scanning the reports, I realize there have been some kidnappings that seem to fit our case but don’t involve orphaned omega wolves. Then, we have somepotential orphaned victims who don’t really fit the rest of the criteria.

But nothing else seems to make sense. They have different hair colors, different eyes, different nationalities, different genders. It cannot be a sexually motivated crime, can it? They differ too much from each other. I grab my tablet and look up more information online, trying to research the packs and see if there is a connection there.

Someone has to be seeking them out, but across continents, it can’t be just one person. It can only be a group.

The packs are all of smaller size, probably those who lack the infrastructure, the connections, the knowledge, and the money to help. Only, the last victim Aurelia presented is from a pack that had connections to Silverlake, a factor the group probably didn’t consider.

I sort through the folders again, putting some of them aside. Their data differs too much from the others; either they are too old, or their packs too big, too important, or they were adopted and very obviously not on their own.

I roam the human database again, everything that Zoé collected for us, printing the additional information out and putting them all next to each other on the floor. Age isn’t the primary factor. Omegas, orphans and…

And…

“Blood,” I mutter.

“Hm?” I feel someone stir behind me, turning around abruptly to notice Aurelia. She is wearing her pajamas and is covered in a blanket. When did she return? Why didn’t I even notice!? Is it that late already?

“When did you get back?” I ask, shocked.

Aurelia glances at her watch. “Around two hours ago.”

“I’m so sorry!” I blurt out, feeling panicked instantly. My mate comes back, and I don’t even realize she is here. “Why didn’t you say anything? I would have spent time with you.”

“It looked important, what you were doing,” she says, wrapping the blanket around herself tighter.

Just like that, I feel my heart skip a beat. I don’t know what it is… the fact that she isn’t upset or that she deems what I do important. “When I am like this,” I say. “When Ithink, then it’s like I am in my own world.”

“How does it work?” she asks curiously, while I sit down next to her. She smiles, opening the blanket and wrapping me into it as well. I can feel the heat of her body radiating, warming me up as well.

“Do you know what a memory palace is?” I ask in return.

“I just know that it’s a technique to memorize things,” she says.

“Okay, so the brain is a muscle,” I say. “And like any muscle, it can be trained.”

“So, you are like a brain athlete?” she asks.

“More like a mental athlete,” I explain. “You convert information, any information, into an image, and then build these images into a palace. It’s a mentally constructed palace, just for you. The trick is to turn basic information, something that doesn’t look interesting, into something exciting. Make it colorful, spicy, and then add it to your palace. I try to make it as fantastic as possible, different from anything I see in real life. My memory palace is very colorful. And when you want to recall a memory, you walk through the palace, and everything you need to know is there. The trick is to not let the information just float around in your brain or you will forget it. It needs to be attached to something you know. It needs to have structure.”

“That’s how you store information?” she asks.