“Okay listen,” Brooks said firmly and looked at Phillip and Pilar. “If I can weaken the spell and you both use your dragon magic as well to break the locks, it may just work.”
“Possibly, we may want to think about this,” Reese said and they kept ignoring them.
“If you are gonna do that, we should move into an open space, like maybe the training field, it would be best, just in case.” Kade nodded and Brooks sighed and shook his head.
“Yeah, we really should move. I would hate for anyone else to lose their heads if something happens,” Brooks said and Nian held up his hand.
“Really, I think we should leave them on until someone else figures out how to get them off safely. Maybe someone could, you know, make some calls or something,” Nian said nervously.
Pilar tilted her head and shook it. “No, I think we can handle this. Brooks and I used to run the Drekinn, we know what the Prentiss is capable of, and trust me, we will think things through before we do them. But they are right, if for some reason those are attached to something that is reading your DNA, or copying it, maybe that’s how they were figuring out who we were. We need to make sure they are undamaged when we remove them. We could find out a lot from studying them.”
Rissa popped up around Kade’s shoulder and glared at the Nian and Reese. “Yeah, and give me your fingerprints, I need to run them against my database. If you are anywhere in the system, I can find you.”
“But we know who we are,” Reese said.
“Yeah, okay, whatever, keep up the rouse with everyone, I know you are not human. I can see it in your eyes,” she said and both men shook their heads.
“You know, Aunt Casey really should have not let you watch those old movies,” Reese said and then covered his mouth quickly when Rissa stepped out from around Kade.
“What?” she whispered and looked at Reese intently.
“Fuck, I am sorry, I don’t know where shit like that comes from, it’s like suddenly I remember and just say shit.”
“Baby, it is okay,” Phillip said and went to her side. “We are going to figure this out.”
“Casey?” Rissa said slowly and then looked at Calli who had just walked into the room with the mothers. Brenda froze when she heard the name, Casey. And Rissa’s eyes narrowed and she calmly walked to where her mother was standing and looked at her closely.
Then she looked at Vivi and Shelly as well. Her eyes came back to Brenda and she shook her head and said, “Really?”
Brenda paled and she licked her lips and said, “Honey, please, let me…”
Rissa held up a hand and then looked back at the rest of the Drekinn and said, “I am going for a walk. I really can’t deal with this shit right now. I get this is important, and I get that on some level I really need to be here to hear this and shit, but honestly, I don’t think I can stomach it, at all.”
Cherri walked up to Rissa’s side and she looked at Shelly who already had tears in her eyes and she stared intently and then took her friend’s hand. She pulled Rissa back a few steps and then Calli joined them, standing slightly in front of them, as if she were guarding them. Vivi paused and for the first time since any of them could remember, they saw her hesitate. Vivi never hesitated, ever. But this time she did.
Kade cleared his throat and said, “Maybe it would be best if we talked in the conference room.”
Vivi looked at Kade and began nodding and she said, “It probably would.”
“Hey,” Trina said from the doorway, holding up another sheet of paper. Sabrina was right behind her, most of the children of the Chosen and Senate who they had found so far were. They were in different places in the room, but they were all paying close attention to what was going on.
“Yeah, well for some of you,” Calli whispered. “You know we have always put up with your crazy, even when we your young and we didn’t get why we were doing the things we were doing. And now, I am standing here with my best friends looking at you and I realize you don’t know me, you don’t know them, and you certainly will not know our children. Why? Because we don’t know you at all. We thought we did. We put our trust in you, all of it, and yet it was all a lie. The whole fucking thing, our lives, what we did, who we saw, the people we hung out with. None of it was real. I have no idea how you can stand there and even look at us. I mean, we have found our mates, we are all happy, starting families, and yet we know this was something important. This was something we would have to deal with come what may, so we do. We put this ahead of even ourselves because it was the right thing to do, for everyone, our pack. But looking at you right this second, I would give anything to say I was not your child. My friends, the ones we have made, Kiki, Pilar, Mak, Hope, Stephan, Trina, Sabrina, Sadie, Brooks, Calix, Simon, Phillip, Thomas, Nik, Gio, and Syd. How are they supposed to look at you either, and believe a damn thing coming from your mouth? Where are their parents? Explain to us why we had the benefit of having you since we were young, but the rest of them? Nothing? How in the hell are you going to explain that? You disgust me.”
Vivi flinched at the words her daughter said to her. Tears were already running down her face and Brenda and Shelly were in even worse shape. The tension in the room was intense. Vivi opened her mouth and Calli raised her hand.
“Don’t bother, right now, I will not believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”
She turned when they heard a sharp voice coming from the doorway, everyone looked toward the doorway and at the two people who stood there. A man and a woman, both of them from the town, both of them they had seen before, and both of them were walking into their compound like they knew exactly where they were going.
“Do not talk to them like that,” the woman snapped.
Calli narrowed her eyes, she felt the Alpha waves coming off the duo. Kade stepped to her side and put a hand on her forearm to make sure she didn’t lunge at the woman who was daring to come into their pack home and speak to them like that.
Hope moved then and stepped beside Kade and then said to the man and woman, “Really, this isn’t a good time for you to be here.”
The man frowned and looked at Hope, then at Kade and said, “You will listen to what I am saying.”
Hope sighed. “Daddy, really? That voice worked on us for like a minute when we were young. But now we are grown up, and we aren’t members of your pack anymore, we are part of the Drekinn, all of us. So if we say now is not a good time, then you need to respect that or we are going to have a problem.”
The woman who had been standing at the doorway moved to stand in front of Vivi, Brenda, and Shelly before she spoke, “First, it seems we can cut the shit with the made up names now. But first let me make one thing perfectly clear to all of you. This? All of this, is fucked up, we know it, and still we did it, but we did it in order to make sure you survived.”
“Such bullshit, Aunt Cami,” Rissa whispered and she looked at her mom and shook her head. “All of this is such bullshit, isn’t it, Mom or should I say Brenda, or should I say Casey? You come into our home, one we had to flee to in order to remain safe because we have all been doing your bidding since the beginning. All of this, you could have told us before the Prentiss took the Drekinn over and made us all run. You could have told us when we were on the run and almost were killed trying to rescue our families for gods’ sake. Do any of you, Aunt Cami, Aunt Jo, Aunt Cloe, or even you, Mom, have an ounce of morals in your bodies at all? How can you even stand there right this second and look us in the eyes and say it was all done for our own good.” She stepped forward a little bit and looked at her mother. “I saw the family tree, you know? I saw it, with my own two eyes. I was an only child remember. But really I wasn’t, there is Anthony, my brother, and I had no fucking clue he was even my brother when he came to the Drekinn; him, Cameron, Tamera, and Vince, they are all children of the Chosen. But nothing, I didn’t realize it until I saw you, how many times have you made us forget? How many times did I know Anthony was close and I still ignored him? He is
out there, you know, they all are, they don’t remember either, they couldn’t or they would have said something. I don’t even know who is older. Was I supposed to be the big sister, the one who protected their kid brother from girls. Or was I supposed to have a big brother, one that wouldn’t let me go on dates until he approved. All of it, I missed all of it. How could you do that? How could you choose to keep one of your children and not the other. How is that even possible?
“And stop using the names, really? Hey, why not? Maybe that will make even more come back to us, especially since we are finally not having our heads messed with. I can go back to Lexie, Calli can go back to Cassandra, Kade back to Marcus, Trina back to Tara, Cherri back to Brinn, Declan back to Alexander, Sydney back to Malia. Did I miss anyone, Mother? Because gods know we want it all to be easy for all of you!”
“Christian,” Calli whispered and looked at her mom, who looked down to the ground and cried even harder. The woman could go by Vivi or Jo, she didn’t care. They had all cost them so much. “Oh my gods, I’m not Calli, I am Cassandra and I have a twin brother. How could I forget him. My twin, you kept me from my twin.”
Jo finally said, “You...you don’t understand, none of you, you don’t. If you would just listen and let us explain.”
Cassandra shook her head and turned back to her mate and said, “I am with Ris, I mean, Lexie, I can’t deal with this shit. I can’t, right now, all I want to do is rip their throats out.”
“Please, Cal—” Jo whispered and Cassandra turned back and glared at her, cutting her off.
“You’ve played this part so well that even you have a hard time remembering my real name, it’s not Calli, it’s Cassandra. Don’t forget, your alpha wants the fake names dropped.” Cassandra shook her head in disgust, then said, “Do not ever ask me for a damn thing again. Ever. The only thing I want from you is to be told where my brother is. I want the location of my twin before you walk out of this fucking door for the last time today. Because after this, I don’t ever want to see you again. I know we are going to need to complete what we have started, I know it, so do the rest of the Drekinn, but that will not negate the fact that right now, we are done. I will not change my mind about this, ever. Trina, excuse me, Tara, leave the papers on the table, they can fill them out with what we need to know and we can go from there. And you had better make sure it is all there, because this is the last fucking time you will see us until this is over. The last time. You are no longer welcome on our compound.”
Quin stepped forward. “This is the Denver Pack compound.”
“Not anymore,” Hope whispered and shook her head. “I seriously kept thinking I was nuts, I knew more than the others, I got my memories back, well partially. I went along with this because I really thought that when push came to shove, it would all make sense, but it doesn’t—none of it. I trusted you, our alpha, and you let me down. You let us all down.”
“No,” Cami said and shook her head. “I get this is going to be difficult.”
“You think, Mom; you think this is going to be difficult,” Stephan yelled and they jumped. “Let me think for a second, were you held captive, were you experimented on like Calix, drugged like I was. Were you collared and threatened, did you have dreams that were so fucking real that you woke up and thought you were going mad when you didn’t have a sister or brothers like you thought. You played god with our lives, OURS. You made us forget, time and time again, when we would remember something, did you have that planned as well, who was watching us?”
“Stephan,” Cami said softly and held out her hands. The man shook his head and then walked to the doorway where Tara and Sabrina were still standing, watching. He took Sabrina’s hand and said gently, “Come on, sis.”
The woman nodded slowly and then looked at Stephan who then looked back into the room and said, “Did you know we had another sister? We do, this is her, her name is Sabrina. I don’t know if you knew or didn’t, and really it doesn’t matter because we have all been on our own for years, and we will be on our own again. We don’t need you, apparently, we never did.”
“Stephan!” Quin yelled and he ignored his father and kept right on walking.
Kiki stepped forward, Malia/Sydney was hanging on to his hand and Thomas was on the other side of her. “Did you know how I grew up?” Kiki whispered and pointed behind him to Rayne and Storm who were standing with Sadie just waiting for them. “For years I would pray that I would have someone who understood me, who would accept me for who I was, not what they thought I should be like. You wiped it all from my mind, all of it. My brothers didn’t even blink when they met me. The people you left me with, that you picked to take care of me, were awful, they wanted to kill me. Did you know that? If Cherri slash Brinn, Calli slash Cassandra, and Rissa slash Lexie hadn’t been there, they would have pulled the plug. Then what? Would you even have known? Would you even have cared? You threw us away like we were yesterday’s newspaper. How can you look at yourself in a mirror is beyond me. But I don’t need to waste my time anymore with people who never cared enough to make sure I was okay. So thank you, thank you for fucking your own shit up, so that in the end we are fixing it, but only because in all of this fucked up shit, I am certain if you had fulfilled your destiny already, you wouldn’t have had any use for us to begin with. At least I have my brothers, my mates, and my friends, because I don’t need parents. I never have.”
Malia leaned forward and whispered, “Shame on you, on all of you. The damage you have done will never be undone,” while Thomas shook his head in disgust.
The trio turned. Rayne and Storm waited for their brother and then hugged him as he reached them. When they were done, they left without looking back.
“Enough,” Cami yelled as the others began to move toward the door. Only Kade/Marcus and Hope stood there facing their elders.
“I will go and get Cameron, Tamera, Vincent, and Anthony,” Phillip said. “They should be training along with the rest of the pack.”
“Vincent, my brother,” Tara whispered and the two men she didn’t know, but who were her mates, came to her side as if to comfort her. She was confused, so she didn’t even flinch when they took her arm and pulled her from the room.
Nik was shaking his head and holding onto Cherri/Brinn and Declan/Alexander as they moved out of the room. “I knew there was something about Sydney, I felt it. She is Malia and I didn’t even recognize her. Tamera and Malia, they are my sisters,” said Nik.
“Oh, honey,” Brinn said and she took his hand, shaking her head at her mother, Cloe/Shelly, refusing to give her any type of acknowledgement. “Let’s go catch up with Kiki, Thomas, and Malia and then we can go find Tamera.”
“Do you see what you have done?” Hope snapped at Casey, Cloe, and Jo as she pointed at the last of the Drekinn as they left the room without looking back. “Do you? Siblings who don’t know one another, families ripped apart, all of this, for what? Some stupid prophecy, which at this point doesn’t even matter. We are all alive, and we would have been alive if you would have kept us together. What were you thinking? Aunt Casey, Aunt Jo, Aunt Cloe, how could you be involved?”
“Really?” Cloe snapped and looked at the two. “Did you really think we would ever leave all of our children. I get you kids are pissed, and you have a right to be, but don’t you ever think in all of this, we didn’t work together. Over the years, all of us have moved and switched places, keeping track of you, all of us, Lacy cloaked us, used spells. We knew what we were doing, we knew it was fucked up, but we had to. Each of us had a skill, each of us needed to make sure you were okay. You foolish little girl, grow up. Do you think you are the only ones who have done without, made sacrifices. Some of us have mates missing. Do you see us whining? No, because we were doing what was necessary to make sure there was any place, any place, for you to grow up. There is a lot more going on here than just this, we have always been more than just the Chosen. It isn’t something we asked for but we dealt with it. It killed us all to do t
his, watch from afar while you grew up. It wasn’t until recently when suddenly what we had been doing for years stopped working. We don’t know why, we don’t know how, we only know something changed.”
Hope laughed loudly. “Great, we are the whiny little brats who are pissed because our parents made a decision that affected all of our lives. Respect? You want respect? Then show it, because everything you did to train us, everything you sacrificed ended up hurting us even more. While I am so glad to know you didn’t abandon us completely, it still doesn’t change the facts, and right now, everyone needs a break. Everyone. We need to process this crap, regroup, and figure out what we are missing.”
“If you would all just listen for a second you would understand, none of that will matter, none of it. When all is said and done, and we complete our destiny,” Cami yelled at her daughter.
“You know, I think I have had my fill of destiny and shit running my life for today,” Hope said and shook her head and Kade/Marcus stood beside her.
“This is still my compound and I…” Quin snapped and looked between his children.
Marcus shook his head and said, “Haven’t you heard, Dad, the Chosen are dead.”
Chapter Four
Trina/Tara walked with the two men silently as she led them to the open field where many of the Drekinn were training. They stood on the side, watching as they all moved gracefully around, training for something none of them understood anymore. She saw Vincent, her brother, and she sucked in a breath. Would he know her? Was she the only one who would remember?
Tamera paused and held up her hand high and the rest of the field stopped as well. The woman turned and looked at the Drekinn as they all began to gather on the sidelines slowly. Tamera tilted her head and she looked at them all slowly. Recognition began to appear on her face when Nik and Malia walked to the edge of the field.
Tamera shook her head slowly, and looked at the others on the field. Cameron, Vincent, Anthony, they all stepped forward while the rest watched in fascination as slowly Tamera began to and till she broke into a run. Then Lexie flew through the crowd toward her brother. Cameron moved and grinned at Mak who laughed and moved and hugged his childhood friend. Tara was rooted into the same spot, she couldn’t move, and yet she wanted to. Finally, her brother took a step, one step was all it took and then she began to run.