Kingsley's POV
In the conference room, everyone was engrossed in their tasks while I watched the surveillance video from the hospital on the day Freya gave birth on the computer on my desk with a cold face.
Soon, my Beta, Jeremy, walked in.
"We have a witness," he said. "He was a member of a circus troupe that encountered two people with a baby on a ship bound for Bonnatown. They had borrowed a leopard he had raised to provide milk for the hungry baby. He might be able to give us information to determine if Grace was among those two."
Jeremy signaled for the witness to be brought in.
The man appeared thin, slightly dirty, and his clothes were disheveled, as if he had been traveling for some time. His eyes were downcast as he entered between two guards.
He was middle-aged, and there was no reason to doubt his reliability as a witness.
As he raised his eyes and saw my face, he took a few steps back. "You..."
The guards seized him by the shoulders, and he lowered his head, trembling.
"Calm down!" One of the guards shouted, pulling him roughly. "This is Alpha Kingsley! Show him some respect."
I glanced at Jeremy, who immediately understood my concern.
"It's okay," Jeremy intervened, holding up his hand to quiet the guards. He then approached the man, calming him. "We scared him."
Jeremy offered the man a glass of water and spoke in a confident yet soothing tone. "I assure you, you have nothing to fear here. You're not in any trouble. We just need to confirm something with you."
Some of the man's worry and fear seemed to dissipate, though he still leaned back against the door.
Jeremy glanced around the room and suggested, "There are so many of us here that we might overwhelm the witness. Please allow me to speak with him in private. I will provide a detailed report within an hour."
I nodded in agreement, and with my consent, no one else raised any further objections.
Once Jeremy relocated the witness to a snug private room, he connected with me by mind at once.
"Now you are free to speak," I heard Jeremy say in a gentle tone.
"Yes... Yes, sir," the man muttered.
Jeremy inquired, verbatim, "I have a photograph here, and I'd like you to confirm that this man was one of the two individuals you observed on the ship?"
It seemed as though the glass in the witness's hand had fallen to the floor. I heard the sound of splashing water.
"Don't be afraid. You can tell the truth," Jeremy's voice was reassuring and persuasive.
"Yes," the witness stammered.
My heart sank.
After hearing the witness, Jeremy and I reconvened outside the conference room. Neither of us spoke until we reached my office.
Jeremy closed the door behind me.
"Alpha," Jeremy began, "if it really is Grace, I'm concerned..."
I walked over to the desk and turned the computer on my desk toward Jeremy, "Here's the surveillance from the day Freya gave birth; look at this person."
Jeremy bent down and carefully identified a nurse in the corner of the video wearing a mask and holding a baby in her arms, "This is..."
After a moment, he looked at me in surprise, uncertainty in his tone.
I nodded, "The video is too blurry to see her face clearly, but I can sense that's her!"
"But how did she do it?" Jeremy asked in shock.
Of course, I understood his confusion.
After all, snatching a baby away from under the watchful eyes of so many doctors and nurses on the day Freya gave birth was no easy task.
After a moment of contemplation, I sternly ordered, "Jeremy, I need a video of Freya in the birthing room, and I need to know everything that happened in the birthing room that day."
Freya had been in a coma for a while when she gave birth. I was outside the birthing room, so if Grace had planned to take my baby for a long time, her best chance would have been during that period when Freya was in a coma before I entered the birthing room.
Jeremy quickly contacted the hospital to retrieve the surveillance video of Freya's entire time in the birthing room.
Carefully, I watched the video on the computer, afraid of missing a single detail.
That was until I heard a loud wolf howl coming from the video, and an electric current passed through my entire body.
It was a wolf howl that sounded completely different from Leo's.
Immediately afterward, the doctor happily announced, "It's a boy!"
"Wait!" another nurse suddenly exclaimed.
I moved closer to the screen, instantly becoming alert.
But the next second, an eerie thing happened.
Everyone in the video was frozen instantly, as if time stood still.
After that, a figure slowly stepped out from the corner. It was none other than Grace, disguised as a nurse.
She picked up my child from the side, then reached out and placed her hand on my child's neck.
My heart clenched with fear. "No!" I screamed in my mind!
In the next second, yet another baby's cry came, accompanied by a faint wolf howl.
I realized instantly that this would be Freya and my other child, Leo.
Grace stopped moving and looked quizzically at Freya, lying on the operating table, still unconscious.
Soon, as if she thought of something, a wicked smile curled up at the corners of her mouth before she left, jumping up to the window with the baby in her hands.
The very moment she left, everyone instantly resumed their movements.
The doctors quickly realized that the unconscious Freya was experiencing a postpartum hemorrhage and urgently began resuscitation after handing Leo over to one of the nurses.
After watching the surveillance video, Jeremy and I looked at each other.
My heart was filled with remorse. I should have been with Freya the entire time she was in labor.
"Jeremy," I said coldly after calming down, "It seems Grace's ability is to keep people still; she's just never demonstrated her ability before."
"Yes, Alpha, but as far as I know, this kind of ability does awaken in some werewolves. It only works on werewolves who are weak or not strong-willed enough, so the ability to be still has never been much appreciated."
I nodded, instantly understanding why Grace had never demonstrated this ability before.
It was only the fact that Freya was so weak from giving birth that gave her the opportunity to do so.
At this moment, a knock on the door interrupted our discussion.
"Please open the door, Kingsley." It was Freya's voice.