Chapter 2193

As time passed, Thalia gave up on trying to win Louise's affection or protection through crying and begging. In her eyes, she was no longer her mother but the untouchable Ruler of Foxes. … As Thalia spoke, Louise seemed to fall into her own memories. Her eyes lowered slightly, and after a long silence, she finally confessed, "I left because something happened in the clan." She had thought it would be resolved quickly, but when she returned to the clan, she found that things weren't as simple as she had imagined. It was never her intention to abandon her family, nor did she ever consider that, for a fox's life that spanned thousands of years, five short years would feel like an eternity to a human. Thalia watched her intently, wanting to understand what kind of event could have kept her mother away for five years, and why, during that time, she hadn't even sent a single word back. If she had sent a single message, Edmund would've stayed in the mountains and waited for her. It seemed Louise understood the question lingering in her heart, and this time, she chose not to hide the truth from her. "A man named Vlad Grimshaw had infiltrated our clan and controlled some of our members." Louise's words made Thalia widen her eyes in shock. "Vlad?" How could it be him again? Also, why had she never heard of this among the clan all these years? Louise continued, "It took quite a considerable amount of time to locate and eliminate those clan members, but we still couldn't purge them completely." Vlad's malice was intangible. It was hard to detect before the host revealed any obvious malice. Louise wasn't sure how many more of their clan members had been corrupted, and she couldn't risk exposing Edmund or Thalia to such dangers. In the end, she still failed to protect them. Edmund was just an ordinary man, after all. The reason Louise had never told Thalia over the years was that she knew all too well that Edmund's death had been orchestrated by the corrupted clan members under Vlad's control. In other words, he'd died because of her. Having learned that painful lesson once, Louise dared not expose another one of her vulnerabilities to the public. Maybe it was because of the way she had kept her distance from Thalia, or maybe because Thalia, as a half-demon, was the most likely to bear a child with an ancestral bloodline—either way, for all these years, those hidden within the Wynthorpe clan never made another move. Though they appeared dormant, Louise knew they were merely lying in wait, concealed and patient, waiting for the right moment to strike again. In fact, she could feel it in her bones that Vlad would appear again once Shannon had successfully manifested her tenth tail. … The mountain wind howled softly as it passed. Not far from the large red gates of Wynthorpe Manor, Adam stood leaning against the car, waiting quietly. The wind sung his eyes from time to time. His chauffeur-assistant, Flynn, stepped down from the vehicle and gestured to him. "Mr. Jensen, why don't you wait in the car?" Adam casually took a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, then looked at the tightly shut gate before him and shook his head. "It's fine." It was bad enough that he couldn't go in with her; he wasn't about to sit comfortably in the car while she suffered inside. Instead, he would stand there, plain in sight, where every member of the Wynthorpe clan could see him. Flynn opened his mouth, about to say more, but a fresh breeze swept past once again. The next moment, something landed silently on top of the car. Feeling it instantly, Adam turned his head and saw a pair of feet standing on the car roof.