Chapter 244 Edwin

I stared down at the reports in front of me and felt a surge of anger bubble up in my chest.

"You're sure that this is what's happening?" I asked, glancing up at my Beta. "There's no way you were mistaken?" Charles pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair. That was all the answer I needed.

I smacked my hand on the desk and looked away, clenching my teeth so tightly I thought they might *c*ck. My Beta remained silent, waiting for the storm to pass before he said anything else.

I couldn't shoot the messenger, of course. But the reports that Charles just brought back to me were enough to make my blood boil with fury.

I

According to our recent investigations into orphanages around Crescent territory, we discovered something... unsettling, to say the least. Apparently, it was commonplace for orphanages to commission-that's right, commission-human children to undeserving families.. Such as the family that Audrey was adopted into.

Since human children were often passed over when it came to adoption, I supposed that orphanages grew desperate. So, back in the nineties, a few orphanages started giving incentives to people who were interested in adopting. Adopt a human kid completely under the table-no paperwork, no background check, no money, no wellness checks, nothing.

101.

for.

exchange, use that child for whatever you wanted, whether it was for cleaning your house or working odd jobs to make ra money for the family or welfare checks or... I didn't want to think about what other things those kids would be used And what was required of the adoptive guardians, you may ask?

Nothing but a small percentage of whatever they earned off of that child.

A strange business model, certainly. But when an orphanage is pawning off dozens of human kids to greedy families every week, the profits add up. "Alpha?" Charles finally dared to speak up.

I

the time to be lamenting over what was

Beta had just plopped on my desk-receipts, documents, letters, all proving that this had been going on for decades. Charles sighed. "It's been

good-for-nothing father up over it, I thought bitterly. I wondered if he knew that this had been going on under his

my chair, considering my options. There was one obvious way to go about this:

Mon,

We would have to try and track down any of the sh***ty families

lot of kids by doing that. Uprooting their lives when they'd already been through enough. Siblings might get split up by

looks of things, the problem was rampant; I could only count the number of uncorrupt orphanages on one hand, and even if those orphanages weren't taking part in this awful scheme, there could be other

aren't actively dealing with the remnants of the Coldclaw situation and send them to intimidate the orphanage directors. Fine them royally, then threaten them with being shut down

had been one of the children who was, unbeknownst to her, thrust into this corrupt system. Those adoptive parents of

it sounded, Audrey was actually one of the lucky ones. I loathed to imagine what some of the other kids

problem from the source," I mused, dragging a hand through my hair. "But we also can't just shut down the orphanages, because we'll be displacing too many

arrest the orphanage directors and appoint new ones,"

nodded. "That's a

1. We'll

"As

of warriors and get as many of the corrupt directors into

after the

for the directors' replacements?"

my eyes for a

couldn't just hire strangers, not this quickly. We'd need time to get the

and background checks on the candidates, which could

I finally said. "Ask Silverbite for help, too. Claudia will likely oversee it if need be. She'll want to know, anyway, since her own daughter was part of the f the system." Charles nodded solemnly and rose from his chair. The mention of Audrey was enough to set us both on edge. "You're

teeth and nodded. "I have no choice. She deserves

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