A MAZE OF GREED

Ruth's mind was absent the rest of the day after she ran from Edwin's office chamber. After taking an hour to gather herself, she resumed working as if nothing happened.

And indeed, nothing happened. She should not be so bothered by his behaviour. She should not be upset that their kiss remained incomplete.

Edwin was only a pawn of her game. She should not be attached to him in any way. She kept herself reminding that.

"Miss Ruth."

She turned around to see a guard.

"Yes? How may I help you?" She asked.

"Here is a note for you." He showed a paper to her.

A note?

Ruth turned stiff as she remembered the last time she received such a note. She hurriedly took it from the guard.

"Who gave you this?"

"I do not know Miss. It was left at the second gate with your name written on it."

Ruth had a fair idea of who it might be. "Thank you very much!" She said with a small smile.

The guard left.

Ruth stared at that note for a minute. Finally, giving up on her thoughts, she opened the note, that had only one sentence inside.

'Get ready for a suprise in the morning!'

Ruth's body went cold. A surprise?

She knew that it was Florence. What trick that vile woman had up her sleeves this time?

*

*

*

The next morning, Edwin was ready at his regular time. Thea brought a tray in her hand and kept it on his table, where he had busied himself since he entered the office.

He was so distracted by the task in his hand that he did not waste time to see what she had brought for him. He picked up the glass and drank. His face scrunched up as the first sip slipped down his throat.

"Thea, what is this?"

"A strong dose of wolfsbane potion." She smiled innocently.

"I remember asking for juice." Edwin frowned.

"And I know that you need this better than the juice!" She shrugged her shoulders with a smirk.

Edwin had no time and energy to argue with him. Or maybe he knew that she cared, and she was right.

He wordlessly drank the potion, now in a better mood than yesterday.

He heard a knock on the door. "Come in only if you do not ogle at your wife," Edwin said, still not looking up from the papers he had spread on his table.

Rees opened the door, smiling cheekily. He closed it behind after Lester entered along with him.

"Good morning, Master!"

"Good morning, my sunshine!"

"This sunshine can burn you into ashes, Lester!" Edwin glared at his friend as he sat in front of him.

"See, I told you he loves me," Lester whispered loudly, looking at Thea.

Thea could not help but giggle at him. Sometimes she had a hard time believing that Lester was soon to be an alpha of one of the powerful packs of the werewolf world. And yet he managed to keep the kid in him alive.

"What is the progress, Rees?" Edwin finally put down the papers and now emptied the glass of wolfsbane potion.

Thea thought of leaving from there, but then, there were no secrets from her now. So why not she stayed and see if she could help them?!

"Master, we have contacted all those packs, who have lost their cubs in the recent three to four months. What we have found is a similar pattern in all these missing cases.

The cubs had no clue on how to shift, or how to control their wolves. They went playing or were accompanying their parents for various reasons. And when they did not return for hours, their pack members searched for them in their territory but found no clue about them.

They first speculated that it might be the children who went missing or fell prey to a wild animal. But when such instances became frequent in surrounding weak packs, they thought of reporting it to the leader. But..."

Rees did not need to repeat the discussion they had before. That reminded Edwin of his pending talk with Lord Augustus.

For Thea, this was all new. She had heard of human kids going missing. But werewolf children who were yet to learn shifting gone missing was something she took time to comprehend.

Edwin leaned forward and turned the pages he was studying before.

"I have got some news and reports from this recent time. They have mentioned all the details that you told Rees. But the disturbing fact is that none of them found any clue. How is this even possible?"

Lester and Rees ran their eyes on the words written in black ink. Lester had a deep frown etched on his handsome face.

His olive-green eyes held concern for those cubs. "Edwin, if we do not have any clue then we should consider every possibility, no matter how foolish it sounds."

"Yes, My Lord. But the most important question in this matter is why? If we consider that these cubs are abducted then why anyone would do that?" Rees queried.

"To get some Ransome?" Thea jumped into the conversation with her opinion.

All three men looked at her with a blank stare.

"What? In human world people kidnap children for money or... or with a motive of getting revenge."

"You are right Thea. But we supernatural creatures are more interested in power and authority than money. I doubt money is the reason behind these kidnappings." Lester said, intertwining his fingers on the table.

"And about getting revenge... how and who would do that with small children? If revenge was the reason then the kidnapper might have made a statement or something by now." Rees added.

Edwin tsked in irritation.

Running his hand through his coffee brown hair, he said, "This is not that easy. It is more complicated than it looked. In the case of the six murders, we at least had a fair idea of who the killer was, but in this case, there is something that we do not know yet."

Goosebumps formed on Thea's skin when Edwin mentioned the six murders. The sixth victim was no one but Mr Payne. She pushed back a lump formed in her throat.

Vampires!

A shiver ran down her spine when she thought about that word. Rees had warned Thea to never talk about them or take their name.

Rees sensed his wife's concern after hearing her thoughts.

He caught her eyes and blinked his in assurance. Assurance that she did not need to worry and that they were there to protect everyone.

The short and sweet exchange between the husband and wife did not go unnoticed by Edwin. And that reminded him of his mate.

Edwin cleared his throat. "Lester did you contact your father? What did he say about that missing spy of his?"

"Yes, I did. But as I speculated Father has not found any clue about him after that attack. He is now contacting all of his spies, especially the ones who works in the far lands. Let's hope that they might have something to help us."

Edwin nodded his head. A minute of silence fell in the room. All of their brains ran in different directions with the same motive.

"Erm... I heard about this group some time ago from my father." Thea began.

She waited for any of them to tell her to shut up like they did every time she opined in her social circle. Surprisingly they all only looked at her patiently waiting for her to continue.

Feeling confident by their silent encouragement, Thea continued.

"That group used to kidnap small kids belonging to the age group of eight to twelve years. They then hardened those kids. They blinded them, cut their limbs or disfigured their body, and made them beg people for money.

Seeing such conditions of those kids, people sympathised with them and gave them money and food. That group then collected all the money from those kids without giving even a penny to them."

Thea was not sure if something like that was possible in the werewolf world. Sometimes she thought that humans were the cruellest creatures on the planet, but then she had heard how barbaric some of the supernatural breeds were.

She looked at three of them expectantly, but when none of them said a word, she felt like a fool to come up with something useless like that.

She looked up when Edwin pushed his chair and walked towards the shelf in the far left of his office chamber. He started rummaging through the stacks of papers.

"Do you remember when Mr Green told you about this?" He asked, not looking at her.

"Ermmm... maybe about a year or more ago?!"

He did not say anything after that and kept searching through the papers. The other three waited patiently. If it got Edwin so interested then, he must have something useful to say.

Ten minutes later, Edwin finally paused. Leaving the mess he had made behind, he came back and sat in his chair.

He put some handwritten reports on the table. Curiously, Thea also hovered above those papers with her brows slightly pulled together.

"This is a report about the group Thea has just mentioned. This group first selected the area then kept an eye on the children in that particular area. They identified the kids who belonged to poor families or the kids who had lost their parents and had no one to care for them.

When the royal guards caught this group, they confessed that they kidnapped children from all over the kingdom and trained them to be beggars. They capitalised on people's sympathy towards these handicapped kids." Edwin explained the news.

Rees and Lester read the contents of the report.

"Then what are you indicating Edwin?" Lester asked although, he had connected some of the dots.

"Do you see a pattern here?"

"Just like this group targeted children from poor families or the children who had no one to look for them, these cubs also came from the poor and weak packs. There was no one to keep a tab on them or search for them utilisng all the resources." Rees figured it out.

"Exactly!" Edwin nodded in agreement.

"If we consider this theory then there are two questions. One- who can dare to kidnap werewolf cubs? Certainly not humans! And Two- if not money then what is the purpose of these kidnappings?" Lester asked.

Edwin released a heavy breath. "That is for us to find Lester. Get on the work immediately. Before I take any step I need to have a good conversation with my uncle first!"

Edwin stood up to go out along with Rees and Lester.

"Good job Thea!" Lester smiled at her on his way out.

Ress winked at her with a proud smile.

Thea could not hide her goofy smile, but it was short-lived after Edwin commanded while walking out.

"I want that mess cleaned before I return."