“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, but 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
