The Shadow Wolf

by G. Bailey

  “We never left you alone!” she protests. “You were always in the protection of familiars, and we had to move you around in case anyone was trying to track you down. Grandma Pops isn’t just a random foster parent, she was the mother of familiars who died in the war, and she will be coming to live here soon with us. We made a deal with her, and she promised to raise you until you all became familiars.”

  “Then what was your plan?” I question, my head spinning from all the lies. “Leave us in the fucked up Familiar Empire to figure it all out on our own?”

  “That was never the plan!” she argues, stepping closer to me. I should pull away when she wraps me in her arms, holding me tightly, but I don’t move as I burst into tears. “You left us! You left and broke us. Bethany is broken, Phoebe is messed up, and I am so lost. You did this to us.”

  “My Annie,” she sobs, holding me tightly. “I am so sorry. We had to protect you and fight a war here. The barrier is a new addition put up five years ago, but until then, we were under constant attack. This city is celebrating peace, and you can stay here with us. I promise I will keep you safe and get Bethany back. She will understand.”

  I cry out as something sharp pricks my neck, and I shove my mum away. She steps back, tears filling her eyes as she holds a needle in her hand.

  “No, she won’t,” I whisper back, a wave of dizziness knocking me to my knees. “The bab—”

  Chapter 4

  Anastasia

  Nope, that did not just happen.

  “As you can see, she is fine,” dad’s voice drifts to me as I open my eyes and look up at the glass ceiling, seeing nothing but rain clouds in the sky. I’m in a room I don’t know, lying on a double bed with plain sheets. The room is bare; there isn’t a door or a window on the walls, but there are two flat screen TVs on the walls opposite the bed. In one is my dad, and in the other is Alex, Liam and Mason. Mason is holding a random man by the neck like a doll as he struggles to breathe. “Now please put down the guard and let us all talk like adults.”

  “Mason,” I whisper, climbing to my feet, but the second I try to stand, a wave of dizziness threatens to knock me over.

  “She doesn’t look fucking alright to me!” Alex roars. I blink my eyes a few times, holding onto the end of the wooden bed and pulling myself to my feet once more.

  “Why did my mum drug me, and where am I?” I demand, seeing Mason drop the guard, who then crawls out of the room.

  “Are you okay?” Liam softly asks, getting as close to the screen as he can.

  “I think so,” I admit, rubbing the sore spot on my neck. “But I’m confused.”

  “Your mother and I need you as leverage so your men do as they are told,” dad confesses, but he doesn’t look one bit guilty. Figures. “Alex, Mason and Liam and I were just discussing how they are going to travel back to the town you were from, get my younger daughter and everyone they don’t wish dead, and bring them back here. The second they land, you will be free, and I have no intention of hurting you or anyone.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask rather than kidnapping me?” I ask, crossing my arms.

  “There isn’t a chance those three would leave without you, and I will not risk you out there when Bethany is so...angry,” he flatly answers. “I would not leave my Diana for anything. I see how they look at you, and while I don’t agree with your different way of life, I will not let your relationships put you in danger outside the island.”

  “Angry?” I snort, rolling my eyes and looking at my guys. They silently look between each other, no doubt discussing the best course of action before looking back to me.

  “What do you think?” Liam asks, every inch of his body radiating tension. “We will fight our way to you if you ask it.”

  “No, you should go,” I say with a sigh. “My parents are doing things the wrong way, they could have asked, but our family should be here. It is safer than our home.”

  “You better look after our Ana,” Mason warns, staring at the screen. I know he is seeing my dad on the other side from the look my dad gives him. Like a child just warned an adult not to run in the road. “Or we will come back and burn the island to the ground.”

  “Of course. I will visit her now and move her to better accommodations near her mother and me,” my dad replies. “In ten minutes, there will be an escort outside to take you three back to your helicopter. It has been thoroughly cleaned and tested. It will fly you safely back.”

  “Give us ten minutes alone with Ana,” Liam demands. My dad nods, and his screen goes black. I rush closer to the screen, wishing I could be with them.

  “I don’t like this,” Alex growls. “Make sure you demand Shadow gets to be with you. At least you will have him to protect you.”

  “I will,” I say, knowing I feel the same kind of nerves they do. We don’t know my parents anymore, and so far, it isn’t looking good. “A part of me wants you not to bring everyone here, and just leave. I don’t think they will hurt me, but I also don’t think I could get out.”

  “We aren’t leaving you for long, Ana. Not now, not ever.” Alex’s statement hangs in the air between us four. The words mean so much more, they mean everything. And no one disagrees. Our love isn’t simple, it isn’t written about in romance books, it isn’t something I can even explain to most people.

  Our love story is carved into my soul, dug so deep that no one could understand it except for the three men that share my heart.

  “I will be okay. I’m strong, remember?” I say, straightening my back. “And it won’t be long. Go and get our family.”

  “We know you’re strong, or we wouldn’t leave,” Mason softly tells me. “What do you want us to say to Phoebe?”

  “Nothing and everything. I don’t know,” I admit, rubbing my arms. “How do you tell a little girl her parents aren’t dead, they just left her as a baby?”

  “I will tell her if you would allow me to. Phoebe likes me,” Alex suggests, his eyes meeting mine. “I know something about abandonment to tell her the truth and make sure she understands it isn’t about her.”

  “Okay,” I agree, knowing it’s not a good idea for her to be shell-shocked like I was when I landed on this island. I just hope Phoebe doesn’t get too upset. “Tell her I love her...and I love you all. You know that, right?”

  “We’ve always known it. It was our cooking and the dirty socks stuffed under the couch you kept finding that sold you on us, wasn’t it?” Liam jokes, and I chuckle. The socks were not part of the reason, and he knows it.

  “No, it was that—” I stop as the screen goes blank, and clearly our time is up. Anger bubbles up inside me as an actual wall slides to the side like a door. My dad steps into the room, followed by my mum, and I’ve had enough.

  “What the hell is wrong with you both?” I question, and they halt. “I’m pregnant and you pumped me with enough drugs to knock me out. I need a doctor! Now! And if anything happens to my baby, it will be your fault.”

  “We didn’t know—” mum whispers, looking with guilt. Dad kisses her hand, trying to comfort her.

  “We will get you a doctor right away. Would you, dear?”

  “I will go right now.” Mum rushes from the room. Dad steps out for a moment as I sit back on the bed, rubbing my hands as he comes back in.

  “You must be hungry. I’ve ordered a selection of food for you,” he tells me, pulling out a single chair from the corner of the room. “Once we have eaten, you can choose a real room in our house.”

  “I want to go back to the hut by the sea, with Shadow,” I counter. “And I don’t want to be locked in.”

  “Fine,” he agrees super quickly, putting me on edge. “In return, you will help us by telling me about Bethany and her plans.”

  “Bethany and Aunt Courtney want the humans to bow down and give up their cities, for familiars to be treated as the superior race,” I explain to him. “She will make the world drown in blood and pain to get her end goal. She is searching for acceptance and love, bu
t she won’t get that with war. She should have gotten that from you both if you didn’t leave her.”

  “We are not a superior race, but we are different. It will be many, many years until humans can accept us. The peace we have with them is fragile,” he tells me, but it’s what I already know.

  “If it helps, Bethany will go after me and the familiars first. She wants complete control, and I’m a threat to her. She also wants Phoebe.”

  Dad goes to say something when two young men in suits push in a rolling table filled with plates of steaming food. My stomach immediately says “well, hello there,” and my brain wonders if there are drugs in the food after mum’s whole needle stabbing moment. When I don’t pick up anything, dad sighs.

  “We wanted you here without a fight, and Shadow would have fought us. Your mum’s cat couldn’t fight off a shapeshifting wolf,” he says, reminding me of her familiar I haven’t seen yet but I’m sure is around. “Please know we don’t mean you harm.”

  I watch him eat some of the food before I take some of the pancakes, bacon and eggs onto my plate. I lather my food with maple syrup before digging in, and god they are good cooks. The bacon especially tastes really nice.

  “I do love you and your mother. I never let myself get close to anyone in my long life; I always ran away,” he randomly tells me, making me pause mid chew. “Losing you three was heartbreaking in a way I had never felt before. I’m a god, and I failed protecting you when you were in my arms. The scar on Bethany’s leg is from a knife that narrowly missed her. The right choice was to leave, but there hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought of you three girls. My babies.”

  “I don’t know how to forgive you anymore,” I admit.

  “Then don’t. Why can’t we start over?” he asks me. “Ask me anything you wish. Learn my life as I learn yours.”

  “What is it like to be immortal? To live forever?” I question. “Will Phoebe slowly die? Will I have to watch everyone but me and my mates and you die?”

  “To live forever is a curse and a blessing. The best lesson I can teach you about immortality is to be good. Anything bad you do, you will forever remember. The good blurs together, but it doesn’t make you stay up at night.” He pauses as I wonder what he did. “Phoebe has my blood and will live an immortal life just like you, starting at eighteen when she turns into a familiar and most likely will have a unique animal. Anyone you give your blood to will live as long as you do if it bonds.”

  “Bonds?”

  “Magic. There is magic in our blood like no other,” he cautions me. “And when they turned your men into gods, it was chosen. Just like you were.”

  “It was luck,” I counter.

  “No such thing in our world. We believe life repeats itself, as in the stories we tell our children. I can see one story repeating itself that I never told you. I see it when you are with your three mates,” he tells me, “and one of my daughters is going to pay a dear price. Living with that will be impossible for me.”

  “We can try to save Bethany,” I counter. “I mean, she is my sister. There is good in her, but she is lost and scared.”

  “Bethany was never the child to get lost in the crowd. She was the one that tried to boss the crowd around,” he tells me.

  “And what was I?” I question.

  “You’re the child the crowd followed, even when you didn’t want them to follow you. A natural-born leader.”

  I watch my dad as I tuck back into my food, thinking his words over, knowing somewhere in them, he has admitted he has given up on Bethany. But I have not.

  I’m going to save my sister.

  Chapter 5

  Liam

  Two hands, two babies.

  “Liam, hold this one for me,” Raine commands, struggling to hold the twins in some strange baby holder contraption on her chest. One of the twins is strapped to her chest, fast asleep on her shoulder, and the polar bear pups are in a cat-carrier-type netted carrier on the floor by her feet. The other twin baby is wide awake and looking grumpy. “Blondie here is a little restless, and I haven’t slept yet. I was going to have a nap on the helicopter while everyone else gets on board.”

  Even though I’m meant to be checking the surgery to make sure the last of the town is on one of the helicopters, I sigh and hold my hands out. “I’m not good with babies.”

  “Neither was I until recently. You’ll get it,” she tells me, and I don’t have much time to learn because the small baby, who is so much lighter than she looks, is in my arms and snuggled to my chest. Raine picks up the polar bears’ carrier and walks towards the last helicopter to be ready on the runway where Alex and Mason are packing up the final boxes of people’s things. Many of our people decided to take cars across the UK and into the highlands of Scotland, towards where we showed them is easy to cross, including my mum, who said they needed a leader and packed her things, leaving before I could tell her to come with us. The stubborn woman is not easy to argue with. We plan to go and get them from our planned meeting area in a week.

  Twenty of us are left to go in the last of ten helicopters lined up around the empire, all of us ready to take off dead on two o’clock, and they will follow us to the island. The island where we had to leave Ana with her crazy-ass parents and hope for the best. Alex, Phoebe and Skye are sitting on the seats in the helicopter, and Raine is in the back part, strapped in with one of the babies with the rest of our people that have gone ahead. I’m driving this bad boy with Hugh’s help, whenever he decides to get his ass here.

  “Didn’t have you down as a guy who likes children,” Alex says, lifting one of the bags into the helicopter, and Phoebe takes it, pushing it under her seat. “Thanks, kid.” Phoebe shrugs. Alex and I look between each other, and he nods his head away from them, indicating we go talk.

  “Stay here. I mean it,” Alex warns the girls, and Skye sticks her tongue out at him, making him smile before he hides it. I rock the baby as she gets a little grumpy, walking away a good distance before we stop. I place the little girl on my shoulder, patting her back.

  “I never thought much of having my own, but they are cute,” I finally answer his question. “Can you do the final check? I can’t right now.”

  “Yeah, you got it, man,” Alex says and whistles low. Ki-Ki cracks several branches as she appears out of the bushes near the clearing.

  “Did you get a chance to talk to Phoebe?”

  “Yeah, and she went silent super quick. I don’t know what she is feeling, and Ana is likely the only one who can get through to her. Look, we have some time until take off, make sure those two don’t go anywhere. Mason and Hugh will be back in a minute,” he explains to me. “Stay safe and take off if anything goes wrong.”

  “Good luck,” I pat his shoulder, and Alex walks up to Ki-Ki. Not giving a shit about the many people looking out of the helicopter windows, he uses his powers to change her into a black wolf who looks like Shadow, reminding me of Ana. He jumps on Ki-Ki’s back, and they both run off into the trees to do their run. Sensing Silver nearby, I turn in her direction as she gracefully jumps off a nearby rock. Huffing, she eyes the little girl on my chest with confusion.

  “Babies are cute, not scary, Silver. Come here, girl,” I say, placing my hand on her head. I push my power into her, turning her into a silver hawk with a whoosh of purple energy. She spreads her wings and runs a few steps around me before taking off into the sky, getting ready to follow us. Thankfully, our animals can travel through the human world and make their way to us, no matter how far, no matter if they can shift or not. Even the bears will swim through the sea to get to their owners and make sure humans don’t see them. Our animals are nothing like normal animals in the world; they are far more intelligent, possibly more than we could ever be. Rubbing the baby’s back, I head back to the helicopter, just as I feel a sense of dread smack right into my chest. I run to the helicopter, knowing there is only one reason I would feel this way: Silver is telling me something dangerous is coming. The baby cries in
my arms, and I try to comfort her as I climb onto the helicopter and hand her to Estelle, who is climbing up on the other side. Her wide eyes meet mine in confusion.

  “Something is coming. Everyone strap up. Now!” I urgently shout, pulling the one door behind me shut. “Estelle, make sure the girls are strapped in.”

  “Ok-kay!” she replies, fear in her voice mixing with the cries of the poor little baby girl. I jump into the front seat, flicking the switches on as the feeling of dread only gets worse. I shove my headphones on, hoping the girls have done the same so it doesn’t hurt their ears. Alarm bells blast from the centre of town, meaning the walls have been breached, and there is only one person who would do that. Bethany. Fuck. All the other helicopters, with their drivers who came with the helicopters Clive sent, immediately start their engines and take off.

  My hand hovers on the lever to take the helicopter up as I search the clearing. Where the fuck are Mason, Alex and Hugh? Alex and Mason could fly on their familiars, but Hugh needs to be on this fucking helicopter.

  “Take us up, Liam!” Estelle shouts at me through the headphone speaker system, and I look back to see her holding the baby to her chest, the tiny headphones stuck over her ears. I check the girls behind me, seeing they are strapped in and headphones are on.

  “One minute!” I say back in the attached microphone by my lips. I desperately search the clearing. What the fuck do I do?

  I have to get the girls and my people to safety, even if it means leaving some behind. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “There!” Skye cries out, and I look left to see Mason and Alex carrying Hugh between them. They run fast to the helicopter, and the second they are on board, I send us to the skies.

  “Hold on, everyone!” I shout as I get higher, seeing a dark cloud of familiar birds not too far away. Turning the helicopter around, I floor it as fast as I can away from them, knowing there is no fucking way we can get caught in that. I look back to see Silver, Ki-Ki and Hex make a line behind us. The swarm of birds just stops. Just stop in the air and turn around.