Contained (Evolution Series Book 5) (7 page)

We transported back to the meadow behind the house. Dusk had settled in and the lights were on in the cottage—apparently, we’d been a little longer than we’d planned. I still expected to hear laughter coming from inside or at least some sort of noise, considering there were three teenagers and two adults who had the energy of teenagers, but the house was silent.

An uneasy feeling crept over me, getting stronger with every step I took closer to the house.

Aiden squeezed my hand. “Something’s wrong isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Gemma and Chelsea are still there but Lucas has gone.”

“That doesn’t make any sense why he would leave Chels alone.”

Taking one extra step, I sucked in a sharp breath as I saw why. “We have to get back to England—now.”

“Why—”

Not having time to allow Aiden to finish his question, I transported us to our room in the Castle. “You need to grab everything that they might be able to use to find out more about us.”

“Who?”

As I turned to head over to my bedside table I stopped. “It doesn’t matter. They’ll know everything anyway.” I looked around the room. “Our DNA is everywhere.”

Aiden grabbed my upper arms. “What are you talking about?”

I opened up my mind to Aiden and watched as realisation hit him. The place he’d grown up and called home since he was born was soon going to be under siege. Gemma had seen a live feed from some friends of Aiden and Lucas who were lapping up the attention while outing their friends. The guy had been going on about how he always knew Aiden and Lucas were different. They were always too perfect, too smart, always able to get themselves and their mates out of any shit they’d gotten into. Teachers never bothered them when they were late. They never got sick. They threw a wicked party where they all felt drunk, but as soon as everyone left, it was as if they’d never touched a drop of alcohol. The list of things went on and on but the worst of all, the guy had told everyone where Aiden and Lucas lived. And by doing that, every reporter within one-hundred miles was rushing to get the scoop on the freaks. But more importantly, the UK government was sending their armed forces to our aid, for protection. Both Aiden and I knew that what they really wanted was to bring us in to study us, so they could become the most powerful country in the world.

“Shit,” Aiden said, pulling out of my mind.

Nodding, I said, “Yeah, shit!”

He ran his hands through his hair. “I guess we just take what we can.”

I followed him into the walk-in robe where he handed me a bag. “Pack enough to do us a few nights at least.”

“Cold? Warm?”

“I don’t know. Both I guess.”

Anna burst into the bedroom. “Aiden? Jade?”

“In here,” Aiden called out.

Anna rushed through the bathroom and into the wardrobe. “Where have you been and why haven’t you turned your phones on.” Before we had a chance to reply, she continued, “Never mind. Just grab your things. We’re leaving in five.”

Hearing the sound of the choppers in the distance and knowing how long it took for the one in Thailand to get closer, I said, “Four actually.”

Anna pulled her eyebrows together.

“We have three, maybe four minutes until the helicopter will get here.” When she opened her mouth to ask what helicopter, I said, “Just trust me.”

She nodded. “We’ll meet you at the lake.”

“Okay,” Aiden said as I got an image of where we were heading.

Anna phased out without her usual optimistic smile. She was acting on instinct alone but I knew that as soon as Anna had time to breath, she was going to break down. Anna loved the castle. She’d raised her family there and now Nathan had taken that away from her, too.

Aiden put his hand on my arm. “Come on.”

Shaking my thoughts away, I got back to packing my necessities as well as some for Chelsea.

Once we were ready, Aiden drew me into his arms with one hand while carrying his bag in the other and transported us to the not so little log house by the lake. Looking around I realised we were in a bedroom. There was a bed against the wall on the right and a closet and bathroom to the left and a large window overlooking the lake.

Downstairs was already buzzing with activity and way too many overactive thoughts. Being in such close proximity to them was getting a little daunting and I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to handle constantly hearing everyone’s thoughts. Living at the castle had been different, the bedrooms were so far apart that even with my extra abilities, it made it easier to ignore.

Aiden took my bag from me, and set it down inside the closet. “You okay?”

Trying to dull the noise in my head, I nodded. “Just a little…”

“Freaked?” Aiden finished.

I smiled nervously. “Freaked.”

Wishing I could once again feel Aiden’s calming abilities, I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my cheek against his chest. I sighed when they never came. Still, being in his embrace comforted me in a way that no other person could, which brought a smile to my face.

Pulling back, I said, “At least we have each other, and that’s all that counts.” The moment I finished my sentence, I was thrown into another vision. I was sitting on the bed in a room I’d never seen before and Aiden was at the door with his bag in his hand. He looked back, smiled but didn’t say anything. But that was okay. It was the smile that sent chills down my spine. His smile was forced and the fondness he always looked at me with was absent. It was the same way he looked at Georgia.

The vision faded away and I stood there in a daze. It wasn’t until Aiden brought his lips down over mine that I snapped out of it.

It took a second to realise he hadn’t kissed me out of love, he was trying to bring me out of my state and thought a kiss was better than a slap.

“What happened there?”

Needing a distraction, I stepped back and headed to the closet to unpack. “Nothing. I was just thinking about what’s going to happen.”

Aiden followed me. “That’s a lie and we both know it.”

I fumbled with the zipper. Such a simple task as zipping it from one side to the other proved to be impossible. I was too focused on what I’d seen to do such a mundane task as open my damned suitcase.

“Jade.” He grabbed my shoulders and spun me around.
“Tell me.”

What he imagined I’d seen was terrible, but nothing I couldn’t handle. With Aiden by my side, I knew we could take on the world. But if he was leaving me, which I was sure he was doing in the vision, then what hope did I have? I was a complete mess the last time we split up and I didn’t have it in me to do it again—especially with the world closing in on us.

“Jade,”
he pleaded again.

Sighing, I sent him a replay of the vision. I expected him to at least have the same reaction he’d had when I told him I was going to take his love for me away but all I was met with was a sad smile.

He cupped my jaw in his hand and ran his thumb over my cheek.
“That doesn’t mean what you’re probably thinking. There could be a million reasons why I have to go away. And for all you know, my emotionless eyes are just my way of coping with whatever it was I was leaving the room for. I mean, we could’ve just had a fight and I went to stay in another room. We could’ve been going to do a task that neither one of us wanted to be a part of. I could’ve been going to Italy to give Bernard our laundry, because he and your grandma have decided to move in together; there’s no one around here to do my laundry, I can’t do it, and you’ll refuse to do it because you think it’s something I should learn to do for myself; which is why I wasn’t looking at you as if I wanted to jump you.”

I laughed.

Aiden smiled.
“See. There are millions of reasons why I may leave, and I say may because the future isn’t set in stone. And the biggest reason of all is because I love you. And I never want to live a day of my life without you.”
He put his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me into a hug.
“You and me will always be we. Nothing and no one will ever stand in the way of that.”

Hearing everything he said and seeing the fondness with which he looked at me, I couldn’t imagine Aiden feeling any other way. But, I didn’t feel that any of his explanations were the answer. And as he said, the future wasn’t set in stone and I was going to do everything in my power not to become the person that Aiden would walk away from.

Making our way downstairs, the entire UK clan, including Georgia, fell silent and all eyes turned to us. For a second I wondered if my vision had been of Aiden leaving me for Georgia, but quickly dismissed the idea, not just because it was stupid and I never thought Aiden would go back to her, but because the thoughts of the heavy conversation that was looming had my stomach churning.

“What?” Aiden asked nervously. He glanced at me, his face paled when he saw mine. “What is it?” he asked again.

Anna cleared her throat. “Why don’t you come sit down and we’ll explain what we’re going to do.”

Aiden led me to the couch that Lucas was sitting on and positioned me between the two of them.

“Okay.” Dave sat forward and clasped his hands together. “We’ve been talking and we think we need to organise a get-together with some other next gens.”

“Why?” Aiden asked. “Is this because we’ve had to leave home?”

Dave shook his head. “Since those video’s were posted showing the terminally ill, and more so the baby with his chest held together by tape, a few of our kind have come forward and have tried to do what they were asking of Jade.”

Aiden’s eyes widened as his thoughts mirrored mine. These other next gens were acting out of compassion, but they had no idea what they could potentially be getting themselves into, and more to the point, we didn’t know what a normal next gen’s blood would do to a human. I wasn’t normal and neither was my blood. Nathan had done something to Aiden and me, and none of those others would carry the same abilities. For all we knew, these next gens stepping forward could’ve been signing the death sentences of the people they were trying to save. But so far, that wasn’t happening.

The babies were still in their isolation cribs and the terminally ill weren’t feeling any better, but were holding high hopes that they just needed to give it more time to work. Whether that was true, was beyond me; but it didn’t bode well for me, or anyone in the room; including Georgia. Even though she had it in for me, she didn’t want to potentially have another mad man on the loose. She feared that all it would take was for, one crazy person with bad intentions to somehow get hold of my blood, then we’d have world war three on our hands.

“So, how do you plan on getting… however many next gens together?” Aiden asked.

“Well, that’s the hard bit,” Dave said. “We don’t know how many of us there are in the world and we don’t have a database to pull up in cases of emergencies to organise a next gen meeting, so we’re going to have to go public.”

Aiden slung his arm over my shoulder and pulled my back against his chest in a protective embrace. He didn’t like the sound of what his father had to say and he could sense that neither did I. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Well, here’s where it gets even trickier. We’re going to have to have a prior location set up, and do a live feed so we can get a message across to the other next gens, telling them we want to meet. We’re going to have to act very fast, because I don’t think it will take long for someone to work out they just need to slow down the speed on replay and they’ll know where we are. Once we have everyone there, we can have Jade transport us all to another, safer, location where we’ll have time to discuss things in more detail, without having time constraints. But in order for all of this to happen and have as many next gens as possible seeing this initial feed, we’re going to have to get major coverage. We’re going to have to send a feed out, advising everyone that we are willing to talk.”

“And by we you mean us, don’t you,” I asked referring to Aiden and me. We had been the faces Nathan made sure the world had focused on.

Aiden’s grip on me tightened subconsciously. He was trying to think of a way that I would agree to letting him do this without me. But of course he came up blank. I was in this. I may not have been directly responsible for the situation we were in, but it was my father who put us there and I was going to take responsibility for his actions.

“I don’t like this,” Anna said to Dave.

Sighing, he put his hand on her knee. “Jade and Aiden will get the most attention which means they will be able to draw in as many of our kind as possible.”

“When do you want us to do this?” I asked.

Dave looked to Kai.

“Give me thirty minutes. That should give you enough time to fill your mum in on what we’re going to do, and I’m guessing they’ll want to come on board.”

Knowing my mother, the answer was yes. She had been a lot of things, and a couple of weeks ago I would’ve had a completely different opinion, but I didn’t know the real her then. And now I did, and I’d learned that she was not one to shy away from her responsibilities, either.

Lucas nudged my arm. “I’m going to go back to Italy to keep an eye on everyone there. And I’ll bring Chelsea and Gemma here once you get in contact with your mum.”

I nodded. “Thanks.” Chelsea and Gemma were safe in Italy. They were in the middle of nowhere and no one knew the identity of Marie or Grandma. But Lucas didn’t feel comfortable leaving Chelsea alone and I was thankful I had someone who was not only willing, but wanting, to help take care of her and was happy to keep an eye on Gemma as well.

“I’ll have my phone on if you need me,” Lucas said.

“Ahh, can’t they track that?” Aiden asked.

Kai leaned over the armrest, retrieved a bag and pulled out two phones. “Which is why I’ve got us all new ones.” He handed Aiden and me a phone each. “Everyone’s new number is already programmed in and they won’t be able to trace them back to us.”

“Do you want me to take Mum’s lot to her?” I asked Kai, knowing he had thought to organise new ones for them, as well.

“Yeah, that’ll be good.” Kai handed me the bag. He’d already dropped off a new phone to Gemma and Chelsea, as Gemma was the first priority. She was always surfing one social media site or another, which Kai thought was how the military discovered us in Thailand.

Putting the bag on my lap, I said, “So, I guess we’d better get going.”

Kai slouched back in his usual carefree manner. “Transport to me rather than back here when you’re finished up with your mum, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll see you soon.”

Aiden’s grasp remained tight as we transported to my mother. She was no longer in her place in the US. Instead, we were standing in a cabin with a magical view of snow-capped mountains in the distance and nothing but trees, rocks and snow up close.

Mum was in the lounge, going through some paperwork. “Hi, sweetheart. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” she said, no longer freaking out when I appeared somewhere I shouldn’t, but she did wonder why Aiden was holding me so tightly against him. A second later her eyes widened, fearing the worst. “Is something wrong with Gemma?”

“No, Mum, Gemma’s fine,” I said with a smile. If she wasn’t worrying about me, she was worrying about her non-adopted daughter. “We just need to talk to you about something.”

“Oh.” She put down the papers in her hand, giving us her full attention.

“Ah, first of all, I have something for you.” I dug through the bag, found the phone marked in her name and handed it to her. “Kai asked me to give you this so no one can track us, and they’re already preloaded with everyone’s contact number so you don’t need to worry about hooking them up to a computer first.”

She turned it on. “Well, that was very thoughtful of him. Tell him thanks.”

“Will do.”

Mum drew her eyebrows together. “I’m not trying to be rude, but Aiden, why are you holding on to my daughter like that?”

Aiden released his death grip on me. “Ah… sorry.” He hadn’t realised he’d been so overprotective. Nothing was going to happen to us, but it was what was coming that had him wanting to keep me safe.

“That’s what we have to talk to you about.”

The hairs on the back of my mother’s neck stood up. She knew how protective of me Aiden was, which was a huge part of the reason why she had pushed for him to stay with me when she wasn’t around. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Stop worrying, Mum. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Then why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like whatever it is you’re going to tell me?”

“It’s fine. Seriously,” I said, walking over to the couch.

Aiden sat beside me then Mum took a seat on the sofa opposite.

“Remember those video’s Harry showed me about the normal’s asking to heal their loved ones and those babies…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Just thinking about those little ones going through the hell they were in was too much.

“Yeah,” she said wondering where I was leading.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I continued, “Some next gens have stepped forward to try and help heal them.”

Mum sat there expressionless, but her mind was going in a million directions. Nobody knew what would happen if a normal next gen gave a human their blood. I was the only one to ever try it, that we knew of, and I wasn’t normal by any standards. She and my father had made sure of that. “So what’s their plan?” she eventually asked.

“They want to hold a next gen convention of some sort, warning people that we can’t save anyone until we’ve done further testing.”

“Well, I think that’s a good idea.”

“And so do I.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Taking a deep breath, I braced myself for Mums reaction and blurted, “Because Aiden’s and my face are the ones the world has seen, Dave thinks we should be the ones to go public with the message.” Mums eyes flared with a mixture of anger and fear, so I quickly continued before she had a chance to say what was on her mind. “Kai’s assured us that we won’t be in any danger and do you really think Dave and Anna would agree to it if we were?”

She looked out the window as she thought about what I’d said. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “But I want to be there.”

“Nobody knows you’re one of us, so I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Well, I’m going to this convention.”

“Of course. I think the Scotts would appreciate as much help as possible.”

Jack appeared in the room. He looked from Aiden and me to my mum. “What’s wrong?” He phased out and appeared on the seat beside Mum. “Is Gemma okay?”

Mum put her hand on his thigh then quickly withdrew it when she remembered I was there. “She’s fine. Jade was just telling me about a plan the Scotts have come up with.”

“The one to get as many next gens together as possible?”

Mum raised an eyebrow. “You knew about this?”

“Not for long. Dave was tossing around the idea while we were checking in on Nathan.” Ignoring Mum’s death stare, he turned to Aiden and me. “So, when are we going to do this?”

“Kai wants us to go see him to set up an initial feed letting everyone know we’ll be reappearing at a certain time, wait for it to go viral, which he’s anticipating will only take minutes, and then do a live feed where we slow everything down so we can get another message out to the next gens,” Aiden said.

“Right.” Jack rubbed his hands together. “Sounds like a good idea.” He put his hand on Mum’s back. “And it will also give us a chance to see what the agendas are of more next gens than we’ve ever encountered.”

Mum whipped her head around to look at Jack. “Ah, no, no, no. We are not going to use Jade like that.”

“We won’t be using her for anything. All I’m saying is that she will be able to get an inside knowledge to see if there are any other next gens that have negative motives like Nathan.” When Mum kept up her stare, he added, “She’s already doing it now, so it’s not as if I’m asking her to do anything new or dangerous.”

Mum held a hell of a lot of guilt toward me. All the things I’d said to her when I was finding out everything that she’d been hiding from me was tearing her up. The fact that she was unable to protect me from my father, and in the end, I was the one to bring him down, was a little too much for her. She felt I was her responsibility and although I’d wished to hear those words from her ever since I could remember, I was no longer that girl. I didn’t need protecting. The roles had been reversed and it was my responsibility to protect them. “It’s okay, Mum. I want to do this. Besides, Jack’s right. My mind is already littered with everyone’s thoughts, so why not use it for the greater good?”

She smiled sadly, thinking how much her little girl had grown up and wished she had been able to spend more time with me when I needed her. “Just be careful.”

“Always.”