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
