by Jana Leigh
It had been sweet, and even when Vincent had opened the door and glared at them, snapping, “You saw her enough yesterday, didn’t you?” It hadn’t changed their demeanor.
When they had entered the large meeting room where the pack meeting had been taking place, the two had made sure she sat between them. Once again, it was sweet.
“Okay,” Marcus said as he walked to the front of the room and set his large cup of coffee down on the table in front of him and leaned back against the wall. “Cassandra and I have been talking. We know how we feel about the parents right now. We want to hear what you have to say before we tell you what we think. We don’t want anyone to follow our decision, this needs to be made on your own, for each of you. We will tell you that all we ask is to know what your decision is about only your parents, and then we will figure out how to make it happen.”
Everyone was silent, but then Lexie finally cleared her throat and said, “Well, for me. I know we have a prophecy to carry out, and I am fine with that. We know what we are looking for and even if we didn’t, really they have already said they can’t help much because they don’t want to influence us one way or another. I want to find the rest that are missing, bring them home, and figure this stuff out so we can move on. Then, and only then, will I speak to my parents again.” Both of her mates nodded.
Marcus nodded and looked around. Brinn said, “I agree with that as well. The only thing I am worried about is that they will interfere with what we are doing by once again messing with our heads. I don’t appreciate they did it in the first place. You do not mess with people’s memories in order to further any cause as far as I am concerned.” And both her mates nodded.
Marcus once again nodded, and around the room they went, most of them agreeing they didn’t want to see their parents. Especially when Hope shared the fact that they had all watched over them for years. Never making contact, only being a shadow in their lives. Kiki had been the most pissed about that, he wanted to know why his parents would let him live with such a bigoted family when he had come out as gay. They all knew how much they had hurt him when they had wanted to pull the plug on the machines that had been keeping him alive last year.
Rayne and Storm had supported their mate’s decision but said they had a different view for their own parents. They didn’t want to see them, but Sabrina, she did want to at least have a chance to talk to Jaden, Kira, and Dalton. No one disagreed with her decision and most even nodded and said they would do the same.
Sadie was torn, but Stephan and her had a long discussion about her situation, and really she needed a chance to get whole before she could talk to anyone. None of them could understand how or why no one had known they had been switched.
Nian and Reese had listened to everything, heard stories of times they hadn’t been around, and really, even though they knew their parents, they hadn’t seen them in a long time, they just couldn’t go against the people sitting in the room with them. They were what they remembered fully, they could trust them, they knew it so when it came around to them, while they had been talking throughout the whole thing in their heads, they both knew their decision. Nian nodded and looked at Tara who smiled and shrugged. She would support their decision just as they would support hers.
Reese stood and cleared his throat. “I know we are the new kids on the block, but it really doesn’t feel like it. I mean, we know all of you, and even if it was when we were kids, we still feel the connection with you guys. Now, just because we came back now, and not a month from now, or a year from now, but right now, before everyone else is here it doesn’t change a damn thing for us. We do what we have to do and figure out the rest later. It can’t be any other way. If we don’t, we risk that crap bleeding over into ours.”
Marcus nodded and Reese looked at Nian and said, “Um, also. I know this is when we are deciding all of this, but really we need to talk about a few things. If you want to wait, we will, but we don’t want to wait much longer.”
Marcus said, “Since everyone is pretty much done, I will say Cassandra and I feel the same way, we support all of your decisions about this. We do have a job to do, and this other stuff could get in the way. So, Hope agreed to go into town, and deliver our messages to the parents, explain our position.” Everyone nodded and Marcus looked back at Reese. “Okay, lay it on us.”
“Okay, well, can we bring out the family trees for a minute?” he asked and Cassandra frowned and nodded, turning around and hanging them up. “See, I’m not sure how much you all remember about everyone when we were kids. We all had our special gifts when we were young.”
He went on to tell the story of him and Nian when they were young and the room was silent. They explained about their abilities and the girl, and when they were done Cassandra leaned forward and said, “So, you can communicate to people, anyone, in their heads, and also you can see thoughts and project thoughts to them?”
Reese nodded. “Yeah, we can, and no we don’t know why this all happened at that time.”
“The girl?” Simon asked and Lexie’s eyes narrowed at her mate.
“Uh, yeah, the girl, she was about the same age as us I think, I mean I don’t know, I was young. She had an unusual hair color though,” Reese said and Nian nodded.
“Right, I remember that.”
“Can you like show us what she looked like?” Hope asked and Reese looked at Nian who shrugged.
“I suppose, but I have never done it to more than one person at a time, I don’t know if I even can, but I can try,” Reese said and Nian stood. They moved closer together but weren’t touching. They closed their eyes and focused on what they wanted to send, and then began naming the people in the room to each other. Slowly they heard everyone make a noise of surprise. At least it was working.
“Sienna,” Simon whispered and everyone looked at him.
“You know her?” Lexie said, looking confused.
“My sister, Sienna,” Simon said. “She is a Harpy Eagle as well, remember.”
Lexie leaned forward and put her head on her mate’s shoulder and comforted him and whispered, “If she is a serial killer too it won’t matter one bit, we will get her the best care available.”
Phillip rolled his eyes and then whispered, “Really, do we need to keep going there, this is a sensitive situation.”
“Come on,” Lexie snapped and said, “Do you think I don’t know that? I do, but my brain it doesn’t process shit like this it is just…too many feelings…cannot compute.”
Anthony nodded. “She has never been good with feelings.”
“She is our mate, for the last time you really don’t need to tell me anything about my mate,” Simon ground out.
Anthony leaned backwards and mouthed to Lexie, ‘GRUMPY!’ Lexie nodded and then rested her head on his shoulder again.
Everyone was silent and then finally Tamera laughed. “She has gray hair.”
Simon nodded and said, “Yeah, Mom and Dads were like shocked when she would throw a temper tantrum, her hair would spike on the top.”
“So she was close to where you were raised?” Simon asked and Reese nodded.
“Yeah,” Nian said and then stood up to and walked to the family trees. “When we were talking yesterday and you all said you didn’t know how the parents could give up their kids and not keep track, only the firefighter, the one who helped us, Drake, he was a shifter, we just never found out what, we asked but he told us it was more about us figuring out how to use our power than anything. After talking to Tara last night, we were talking and laughing about the crap we did when we were young. It took me a minute to remember, I mean we were young, and I am assuming that whatever spell they put on us, it blocked it until we focused. It was Lagon, our protector.”
Pilar and Phillip looked at each other and then back at Nian and Reese. “Dad?”
“Just throwing that out there, I mean, it’s not a lot but it is what it is,” Reese said and then he looked at Marcus. “When we were held at the Prentiss, the
guards, they didn’t know much, but when they talked about Rebekka, the head chick, she apparently was in charge of the people in some facility. We saw her like once, and honestly we need to at least have a few minutes to look into people’s heads if we want answers. The guards didn’t even know we were kids of the Chosen, they just labeled us enemies of the government. So, just saying, they are hiding a lot of crap around that place. Anyway, we saw her, and I could see a building, but I couldn’t place it,” Reese said and then Nian took a deep breath.
“We also saw some people, and I don’t know, but now I think maybe they are important, the part that sucks is they were being tortured and we don’t know for sure, because it was a glance but it looked like someone was hurt, badly.”
Everyone in the room sucked in a collective breath and Marcus said, “Do you know what they look like?”
“We do, but it doesn’t work like that. If we want to share something with you, we need to see the person physically. And we didn’t. I don’t want to guess one way or another about the whole thing, because it could be sucky,” Reese said carefully. He really didn’t want to presume that whomever they saw was dead, although they looked dead, but with the whole Sabrina and Sadie running around, things weren’t so black and white.
“What if…” Cassandra began and Marcus shook his head.
“Nope, we are not going there,” Marcus said firmly. “Not until we have the facts, and we don’t have the facts so we are not going to borrow trouble yet. So for now, we agree that Nian and Reese will share the information they have as long as we can confirm who it is.”
“You expect us to wait to find out if one of our own is hurt severely?” Simon snapped and Marcus sighed.
“No, listen, I expect with this information we all work together harder to get the others back here, find them all and bring them home and fast. That way we will then be able to get the correct information. This sucks, I know it does, but think of it this way. Do you want to potentially morn someone who is still alive? Would you stop looking? Would you exhaust every lead?” Marcus whispered and Cassandra put a hand on his shoulder and Nian and Reese closed their eyes. They knew this was gonna suck, they knew it, and yet they had a right to know that someone may potentially not be found.
“Then what do we do, because there is no way I am waiting to find my sister and brothers anymore. We need a plan and we need one now,” Simon growled and everyone in the room nodded.
“Tara, tell us about the family trees, let’s see how many we need to find,” Marcus said and she nodded and stood and walked to the wall.
“Alrighty then,” she said and watched as her mates walked to the table she had just left and sat down. They looked terrible, and she knew it had taken its toll on them to tell everyone what they had. She respected them for that. “So here we go. On the Chosen, we have…”
Chapter Ten
Cami walked around the outside of their cottage and looked around. Where in the hell was he? Kira and Dalton had left more than an hour ago, they had said they would call when they found Jaden and nothing. He had never been gone from home this long. Quin was worried, she was worried, and most of all the pack was worried. After everything they had been through, some of them being captured, a few were still healing from their rescue a few weeks ago, just before the kids had come home. But this, the whole thing threatened to rip their family apart.
She heard a twig break and she swung around, ready to protect herself. She saw Jaden in wolf form and she sighed. Kira and Dalton followed slower but when they finally reached the front of the cabin, Dalton said, “We, uh, haven’t had time to talk yet, it took us a while to find him and convince him to leave the compound. Are Quin and Blaine inside?”
Cami nodded slowly and she said, “Come on, let’s go inside. We asked everyone for just the afternoon to give us some time to deal with all this.”
Kira smiled and held out her hand and Cami gripped it. She was actually a little nervous, after all this time, and everything they had been through, it was a little disconcerting to know that right now, her mate didn’t belong to her. He belonged to Kira, Dalton, and Sabrina, it was fine, it was fine, she chanted to herself. There wasn’t anything in the rule book about this, she had no idea what to do, and really that wasn’t like her.
Jaden trotted in the cabin and disappeared in their room. Cami walked to the study and knocked on the door and said, “Jaden, Kira, and Dalton are here. They want to talk with everyone.”
The door opened immediately and Quin and Blaine appeared looking somber. She nodded and then turned and walked back to the kitchen. “Let just get something to drink.”
“Scotch,” Quin said and Blaine muttered in approval, then Dalton agreed and finally Kira said wine. It was gonna be a long afternoon, Cami thought as she nodded and began to fill glasses. When Jaden walked out of the bedroom he looked like shit, she carried the glasses in the living room and set them on the table. My gods, she had never in her life felt this uncomfortable but right now, she really didn’t feel like she knew any of these people. This was so not going to do.
“Come on, people, grab a drink, slam it down, fill it back up and let’s get down to it. There is no reason for us to be drama queens here. It’s not like you fucked each other.”
Kira laughed loudly and grabbed her glass shaking her head. “I love you,” she said to Cami who rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said and then looked at Jaden who hadn’t moved. “Honey, we gotta get this out, get it out and let it go. Move on, she is here, she is safe, and we will make sure she stays that way.”
“And if they come for her,” he whispered and looked at her and Quin who both looked surprised.
Quin said, “We will defend her with our lives, you know that.”
“And if there are more?” he said and Cami nodded slowly.
“The same, the only one to blame is those motherfuckers who think they can play gods with you, with us, with our children. They cannot, and they will not, win this battle. I don’t give two shits one way or another about what they try to do. We will find a way to fix this, we will find a way to help her, and we will find a way to make sure she survives the end of this.”
Jaden nodded and looked at Kira and Dalton who had been silent. “Have you?”
“Seen her?” Kira whispered and she nodded. “Dalton um, popped us in and out a few times, I really didn’t want to leave her there, but we didn’t have a choice. Until we sort this we need to make sure she is safe, the best place is the compound.”
Dalton leaned back. “Regardless of anything, she is ours, I will never deny a child.”
“So,” Tara said and looked around the room. “As you can see, we have right around forty of the children still missing. If you look at the bottom and also take into account that Nian and Reese both saw Sienna in their town, which was Boston, and we look at where we were all at, which was New York, the areas around there with the most population are major cities, it could take a long time searching. But we should be able to whittle them down a little. The notations, the dates, and the singular letters are all clues. I had to ask Lexie to check so we could make sure.”
Lexie nodded. “She is right and I might add, for personal reference. Since I am now one of TWO brilliant minds who you are all graced with being friends with, I asked Anthony last night to help me verify and check my assumptions in the equation I used to formulate the data on the trees, and we were able to confirm most if not all of the places we all spent on the average between eight and nine years of our childhood. When you look at some of the stuff, like the oldest of us, which is Hope.”
“Really? We needed to point this out why?” Hope said dryly.
“Because you are a cougar,” Lexie said with a straight face.
Marcus put his hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing out loud and Stephan snickered. “She is right, you know, you are the one who was born first, so you are the oldest.”
“Enough,” Hope snapped and glared at Lexie.
“Bitch.”
“Yep,” she said and then began talking again. “Anyway, so it would also appear that some of us were placed and for some reason moved. I can’t be sure about it until we can get more information, but it does appear that we, the children, were hunted, and hunted hard. I would guess, that although some of our places weren’t ideal because of the people who we ended up with, but um, there appears to be a pattern in the moving of some of the children, we are still looking at it.”
Anthony nodded. “What Lexie is trying to say gently, is that our parents may have had a plan to protect us, so when shit went down, we were safe. But the wars and everything that was going on at the time, it looks like there was someone on the inside of the Denver Pack that was shuffling information on the papers, changing it slightly. We are missing a few more papers, as well as the rest of the books, which apparently there are copies somewhere around this place and we haven’t found them.”
“Well it looks like we are going to need to speak to…” Cassandra muttered and Marcus shook his head.
“No,” he said. “We knew last night when we made our decision. We knew there would be times when we would regret this. But it’s not going to help us in the end. They said the spell was lifted, they said all it would take is to see our siblings and we would remember, we need to hold onto that, and be patient. We are here, we know who we need to find, and we cannot have the parents help us right now because somehow, someway, they were betrayed and because of that, they lost track of some of us. Good, bad, or indifferent, we are going to find everyone who had access to the documents, and we will get answers for ourselves. Like I said, we made a decision and we will stick by it. I know it is gonna suck, because we all would like to see our parents, make sure they are good as well but in this town there are more than just the Denver Pack, and there are more people coming every day. This is where they have been told to come, here. So it stands to reason, whoever was involved in this is either already here, or they are coming. Which means we are all in danger again. Until we get everyone, and figure out what the Chosen were missing, which obviously is something big.”
