My Dad Is An SSS Lycan!

Chapter 4: Five Years Without You.

The top floor of the largest hospital in the capital had been completely sealed off from the moment the convoy carrying Elena and Lyra arrived. Silverfang personnel occupied every critical position along the corridor, while inside the intensive care unit, rows of advanced life-support equipment operated continuously around two beds placed not far apart. Lyra lay within a separate monitored area, her skin still pale from the amount of blood she had lost, her small arm fitted with multiple IV lines and sensors; Elena remained unconscious in the bed beside her, the bruises on her face and the split in her lip already treated, though the traces left by the beatings she had endured were still stark beneath the cold white lights.

Zeyan stood outside the glass, his gaze fixed on the small body lying amid the medical equipment. Even now, the fact that he had a child still felt overwhelmingly sudden, yet the resonance of their bloodlines had confirmed it more clearly than any test result ever could. The little girl on the other side of the glass was his daughter, a child who had been alive for nearly four years while he had known absolutely nothing of her existence.

The corridor door opened, and twelve people dressed in black uniforms entered together before stopping several steps away from Zeyan. Damian and Lira led the group, the two of them ranking only below Lucas among those closest to him. The names gathered here had once been enough to make many powers across the continent wary, yet as they looked through the glass, every face changed to some degree.

Damian stared at Lyra for a long time before finally speaking: “Boss, is she really your daughter?”

Zeyan shifted his gaze toward him, his expression turning cold: “That has already been confirmed. I need to know what happened over the past few years.”

Lira immediately stepped forward and opened the file she had just gathered: “As soon as we received the report from Lucas, we reinvestigated all records concerning Elena Ashbourne over the past several years. After she became pregnant, the Ashbourne family removed her from their internal system on the grounds that marrying a Rogue had disgraced the bloodline. Elena was still pregnant with Lyra at the time.”

Zeyan’s jaw tightened, his eyes returning to the unconscious woman on the bed. Five years ago, he had left because he believed Elena would have an easier life returning to Ashbourne than remaining beside a Rogue. What Lira had just said rendered that assumption meaningless.

Damian continued: “After she was expelled from the family, her circumstances deteriorated quickly. Access to most of her assets was frozen, and the connections she once had were severed one after another. Elena’s parents were affected as well. The family was pushed out to the outskirts and lost nearly all support from Ashbourne.”

Zeyan asked, “What about the shares she was just forced to hand over?”

Lira turned to the next page: “Ashbourne had already been targeting those shares. They promised that if Elena transferred all of her ownership rights in the company, she would be allowed back into the family, and Lyra would also be formally recognized. That agreement was only meant to lure her into signing.”

“Then when was Lyra taken to the laboratory?”

Damian handed Zeyan another file: “It began after several abnormalities appeared in the girl. Minor injuries healed faster than they would in an ordinary werewolf, and at times she even emitted bloodline pressure that a child her age should not have been capable of producing. The information reached Ashbourne, and they subsequently contacted a secret research organization.”

Zeyan took the file, his gaze stopping on the figure marked in the middle of the page.

Three hundred million dollars.

Damian watched his expression before continuing: “The Ashbourne family sold the research rights to Lyra for more than three hundred million dollars. Elena discovered what was happening before the transaction was finalized and tried to flee with her daughter. She was drugged, and the two of them were then held at an isolated facility for nearly three weeks before being transferred to the laboratory we just destroyed.”

Zeyan’s grip tightened around the file.

Lira said, “The person who directly pushed the matter forward was Diana Ashbourne. From what we found, Diana and Elena had already had a poor relationship for many years. Elena once surpassed her in nearly every aspect within the family, from bloodline rank to her position in the company. After Elena lost her standing, Diana took over most of the authority that had once belonged to her, then used Lyra’s bloodline mutation to force Elena into surrendering the rest of her shares.”

A very faint c***k sounded beside them. The palm Zeyan had braced against the glass had caused a thin fracture to spread outward from beneath his fingertips, while his expression remained just as cold.

“Who is this research organization?”

Damian shook his head: “We extracted all the data from the facility, including the backup servers. The people we captured were only personnel carrying out the work and intermediaries. Orders were passed through multiple layers, and the payment accounts constantly changed their source. The data indicates that there is a larger power behind the laboratory, but at present we still haven’t identified who they are.”

Lira added, “The way they concealed the information was extremely professional. A facility of that scale could not have operated for so long in a border region without someone protecting it. We’re tracing the financial routes, equipment suppliers, and sources of the reagents. As long as one link is exposed, we’ll be able to keep tracing it backward.”

Zeyan set the file down on the table. Through the glass before him, Elena still lay motionless, while Lyra was surrounded by monitoring equipment, her small body almost lost amid the tangle of IV lines. Only a few hours earlier, he had been standing before thousands of people, accepting authority over the entire North. Now, what he needed to know was contained in several files documenting the four years the mother and daughter had endured while he had been completely absent.

He turned to look at those waiting behind him for orders: “Investigate everything again. Don’t rely solely on the data taken from the laboratory. From Ashbourne, the three-hundred-million-dollar money trail, the intermediaries, the equipment suppliers, all the way to whoever ultimately received Lyra’s research data—I want the identity of every single person involved in this.”

The atmosphere in the corridor immediately grew heavy. Lira was the first to lower her head and acknowledge the order: “Understood, Boss.”

The others answered in unison as well, because every one of them understood that this investigation would not end with one illegal laboratory or a handful of Ashbourne members. Whoever stood behind it had abducted a child carrying Zeyan Wang’s bloodline, sold her like a specimen, then drained her blood and experimented on her for days. For a Lycan whose very existence had already forced the entire North to bow its head, that had gone far beyond any boundary a power could cross and still expect the matter to end with a sum of compensation money.