Chapter 98: ⁹⁸: Her eyes.

"Those people had killed Mom that day, only after making sure Dad was far enough away that he couldn’t help her."

I paused, trying to contain the anger surging through me at the mere remembrance of those days. Even after all these years, the memories were still capable of dragging me back into that helpless moment, the moment when I had lost Mom and realized that there were people in this world who could destroy everything you loved without hesitation.

"What would have been logical is that if they wanted to kill the Alpha King of the Starlight Empire, like they are after me this time, they would have targeted Dad back then. But they didn’t harm him. They harmed Mom..."

I clenched my fists as I continued, "A woman who had been the least influential person in the entire pack all her life. An orphan with no influential family, no powerful connections, and no known past that could have made someone consider her an enemy."

"That means those people aren’t after me because I am the Alpha of the Starlight Empire."

"They are after us because we are Ivana Dreven’s son," Nyx said, completing my thought as he finally understood what I was trying to piece together.

"Yes." I opened my eyes fully as I sensed Ryan approaching my room. "But how is Mom connected to those people?"

Before Nyx could answer, a knock sounded at the door.

"Alpha, the chief is here," Ryan announced before opening the door.

I nodded at the people who entered behind him. "Start with the briefing, Mr. Jayes."

I didn’t give him time to ask whether I was feeling better or whether I needed to rest. He could get that information from someone else. I didn’t want to waste my energy discussing something as insignificant as my condition when there were far more pressing matters demanding my attention.

"Okay, Alpha." Mr. Jayes nodded before signaling one of his subordinates to hand me a file. I took it from him and immediately opened it, scanning through the information.

"These are the details of the five people that man named," Mr. Jayes explained.

I nodded, continuing to read through the file myself. Their faces, names, families, occupations; everything about them appeared completely ordinary. There was nothing suspicious about their backgrounds at first glance. If we hadn’t already received information identifying them as spies, no one would have thought twice about these people.

That was precisely what made them dangerous. "They seem quite normal according to this information. Were they people from our empire who were working for them?" I asked, closing the file after finishing my review.

"At first glance, it would seem so, Alpha," Mr. Jayes replied.

His subordinate immediately handed me another file.

"But we investigated the families they had mentioned and the documents they had provided as proof that they belonged to those families. All of them were actually forged."

My eyes narrowed.

"Someone had managed to get these people into our army using forged documents," he continued. "That is a serious security lapse."

I slowly closed the file. Anger began to rise inside me again as I looked at the evidence of the forgery.

People had been using such underhanded tricks to infiltrate my Army, and no one knew how long they had been doing it. They had managed to create false identities, fabricate family records, and somehow pass through the security measures of the Starlight Empire’s army without raising even the slightest suspicion.

It meant someone had found a weakness in my empire’s defenses and had been exploiting it right under our noses.

My fingers tightened around the file. "Where, when, and how did the explosions happen?" I asked, my voice no longer carrying the calmness it had a while ago.

"Alpha, there were five minor explosions and one major one," Mr. Jayees said.

My eyes widened. I had thought there had been only one explosion. But there had been six?

"When we confirmed the information about those five people, we headed to arrest them, only to find out that all five of them had gone to their respective rooms. They had caused suicide explosions there, ensuring that neither they nor anything in their rooms would fall into our hands."

I frowned as he continued.

"We tried our utmost to find any clues in those rooms, but unfortunately, there was nothing useful. However, in their leader’s room, we found a half-burned photograph of a girl. Most of it has been burned, making it difficult to recognize the person in it. We brought it here in case you wanted to see it."

"Hmm." I nodded. "Bring it here."

Mr. Jayees’s subordinate stepped forward and handed me an almost completely burned photograph sealed inside a plastic bag.

I took it carefully and turned the picture around to see who it was. For a moment, I simply stared. And to my surprise or perhaps I should have expected it, the girl they couldn’t identify from the photograph was Athena Moonvel.

My heart seemed to turn cold. Almost the entire photograph had been destroyed by the flames. Only the upper portion of her face remained visible, with her eyes still clearly recognizable.

But I knew those eyes. There was no possibility of a mistake. This was Athena.

Without a doubt.

Another piece of proof right in your face, Kael. Do you still dare to have those ridiculous thoughts now? I asked myself bitterly.

The doubts I had allowed to creep into my mind earlier now seemed utterly foolish. Every new piece of evidence was pointing toward the same conclusion, yet somehow, I had still been searching for reasons to deny what was right in front of me.

My fingers tightened around the photograph before I finally crumpled it in my hand.

"We believe this girl might be an accomplice of theirs," Mr. Jayees said. "So, we were planning to use the photograph to find out whether anyone could recognize her."

"No need," I said, closing my eyes as immense anger and an even greater disappointment in myself surged through me. "I will investigate this myself. You concentrate on the other parts of the case."

"As... you say, Alpha." Mr. Jayees hesitated slightly, but he didn’t dare refute my decision.

I opened my eyes again, trying to push the image of Athena from my mind.There were too many unanswered questions.

Keeping the matter aside for the moment, Mr. Jayees continued with the briefing.

"It is a relief that nobody was hurt in the quarters and also we didn’t find any orb of the kind you destroyed there. But before killing themselves, they had already caused that huge explosion in the Information Bureau."

My expression hardened. "Where is the man who named them now?" I asked.

For a moment, I debated whether I should go there myself and question him directly.

If he knew about their plan, there was a chance he also knew about Athena.

Perhaps he could finally tell me why her photograph had ended up in the hands of their leader.

Mr. Jayees hesitated. His eyes briefly shifted toward Ryan before returning to me.

"That man..." he began carefully.

He paused for a moment.

"...was killed by someone anonymous in his cell, Alpha."