Authors: Marquaylla Lorette
“Will we ever be able come back to the Isle?” Katarina asked.
“No, but your children will and my grandson and the Alpha’s daughter will be at the airport to meet them. I will stay in contact with you two as much as I can and tell the Alpha where you are so he will not worry,” Aishe said before teleporting Zuri and Katarina into the plane right before takeoff.
Chapter One
James was slipping on his jacket when his sister started banging on his door.
“James, hurry up, my friends are already at the bar waiting on us,” his little sister, Charity, yelled out. “James!” Charity yelled, again when he didn’t answer.
“Alright, Charity, I will be out in a minute,” James yelled back as he made his way to the mirror.
“James, hurry it up in there!” Charity yelled out again.
James chuckled as he listened to his younger sister mumble on the other side of the door. Today was her twenty-fifth birthday and they were headed to the bar to meet her friends. His parents, Zuri and Katarina, never let either of them go anywhere alone and why he was crashing her party, as Charity’s friends would say. He didn’t mind tagging along everywhere his sister went after his parents told them what happened to them on the Isle of Paradise. Ever since then, he never complained when Charity had to tag along with him and Eli or vice versa.
Damn, I wish Eli was still out here so we could
celebrate making detective, and I wouldn’t be the only male with Charity and her friends tonight,
James thought as he grabbed Charity’s birthday gift.
It was a charm bracelet he had custom made. On one side of the charm was a lion and on the other side was a wolf. Looking at the wolf side of the charm brought him back to the first time he shifted. A week after his sixteenth birthday, his parents and Eli’s father took him and Eli to a secured location where their parents helped them shift into their wolf form. What he never told Eli was he had been shifting into his lion form for a week already. He hated having to keep a secret about who he truly was from his best friend. It felt as though he wasn’t proud of his lion self when he learned he couldn’t tell Eli. He would have told him if his parents’ and sister’s lives weren’t on the line. For some reason his mother never trusted Eli’s parents’ tri-mate, Ella.
James smiled as he made his way to the door. James had found out he made detective at the end of his shift yesterday. His Chief gave him the rest of the week off to prepare for his new job title. Being detective was his dream job, he loved analyzing the evidence before reacting. When he was on the streets, sometimes reacting before you got all the evidence was the difference between life and death. He couldn’t wait a whole two weeks when he and Charity were on the Isle to tell Eli he finally made detective, so he decided to call him instead, when he made it back to the house. Something they both were working for until Eli’s father became too ill to stay on the human side.
“James!” Charity yelled again as she pounded on his door.
James chuckled at his sister’s impatience as he made his way to his bedroom door and opened it. Charity grabbed James’s hand as soon as his door was opened wide enough and pulled him down the hall and stairs.
“We’ll be back in a few hours, Mom and Dad,” James yelled to his parents as Charity pulled him out the front door.
“Come on, short stuff. We are taking my trike,” James said as he made his way toward his bike. James admired his golden motorcycle, which was called a trike since it had three wheels, before climbing on. His bike also had three seats as well. Eli and his sister had made fun of him for buying a three-seated motorcycle at the dealership. At the back of his bike was an open backseat, where the back end of his bike split into two. His bike could fit four if the fourth person sat in the middle part, which separated the two backseats. He had no clue what possessed him to buy a three-seated motorcycle or why on the right side of the back seat he had a golden-brown wolf painted on it and a dark-brown wolf on the left side.
He waited until his sister climbed on to the backseat and snapped her seatbelt and helmet on before driving off. He hated wearing a helmet but had to unless he wanted a ticket and that would be bad seeing as though he was on the police force.
James and Charity pulled up to the bar twenty minutes later. The bar looked as though it was empty when they entered until many of both Charity’s friends and James’s coworkers jumped out of several different places yelling.
“Congratulation and Happy Birthday!”
James looked around the room confused, thinking only Charity’s friends would be here. Besides, he only had one friend, Eli; everyone else on the police force were just his associates. Without even looking at her, he knew it was Charity’s best friend who invited them, knowing she always over-stepped her bounds with him and everyone around her.
“Sorry, James, I didn’t know she would do this after I told her not to,” Charity said before walking toward her friends. Charity knew he really wasn’t much of a crowd person or maybe it was just the human crowd. He always felt anxious in a large crowd unless another shifter was around him.
James made his way to the bar. He needed at least one shot of Patron if he was going to deal with this crowd. As he took his shot from the bartender, he told him not to serve him again, no matter what he said. James wanted to be sober by the time they left the bar so he could drive his sister home. He would never put anyone in harm’s way by being a drunk driver.
James turned around on the barstool and scanned the crowd. Many people thought it was an occupational hazard but for James it was something more. Ever since his parents told him about what happened to them on the Isle, he tended to scan the room he was in and plan every exit strategy he could see. He searched the room for any signs of danger before turning his attention elsewhere.
James slid off the stool and headed to a quiet corner where he could see everyone, but they couldn’t see him. He leaned back against the wall into the shadows and let his thoughts consume him. Ever since he could remember, James always felt different from everyone around him, even before he knew about shifters. His parents waited until he was eight before telling Charity and himself anything about shape shifters and who they truly were. It was then that they also told them why they had to leave the Isle as well. James couldn’t understand why it was a problem for two people to love the person they were meant for, even if they came from different species.
The violence that was cast upon his parents because they loved someone others didn’t approve of, was one of the reasons he went into the police force. James wanted to protect others from violent acts and jail those behind the violent attacks on others. He wanted to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves from the danger others brought forth.
James envied his coworker, Dan, and watched as he left the bar earlier than everyone else. Not because he was leaving the bar early but because of the family he had. James had attended Dan’s wedding sixteen months ago and now he and his wife had a two-month-old daughter. James wanted what Dan had, a mate to grow old with and a couple of kids running around. He had girlfriends and even boyfriends over the years, but none of them gave him that spark he was looking for. James was looking for someone who made him feel complete inside, but he couldn’t seem to find that person anywhere. Eli had told him it was because they weren’t his mates.
James had broken up with his last girlfriend over three months ago after only four weeks of dating and hadn’t been with anyone else since then. He felt lonely even when he was with her and knew that wasn’t how he was supposed to feel. So instead of stringing her along he decided to call it quits. When he was younger, he could stay with his boyfriend or girlfriend for months on end knowing it wouldn’t lead to anything. Now that he wanted that lifelong relationship, he couldn’t stay. Finding his mates was another reason he was going to the Isle to visit Eli in two weeks. He felt as though it was time to seek his other halves and start the family he had been dreaming about for the last four years. James was ready to take the next step in life;
shit, he wasn’t getting any younger
.
Charity looked around for James and when she couldn’t find him, she began to panic. Until she tapped into her shifter powers and followed his scent with her nose to the shadows in the room. She felt bad for her brother having to follow her around because of the shifters on the Isle looking for their parents. She knew James wasn’t a crowd person and hated being around a crowd of people he felt as though he was lying to, since he couldn’t be his true self around them and tell them he was a shifter.
Charity felt just as trapped as her brother did. She didn’t want to hide who she was inside—and it was killing her. To tell the truth she didn’t even want to be at the bar, she would have been happy with just a small dinner with her family, but she felt as though this was what everyone expected of her. Charity hated letting others down even if it was at her own expense. That was where she admired her brother even though he was sometimes too serious and a beyond scary perfectionist. He never let anything get in the way of what he truly wanted to do and be.
She just wanted to be herself sometimes, she felt as though she didn’t even truly know who she was any more. From pretending to be someone others thought she was for so long, Charity had lost herself somewhere inside. She was tired of compromising her own life and what she wanted because her friends disapproved of it. Like when she had told them she was ready to find her mate, settle down, and maybe have some kids in a year or two after. Her friends had looked at her as though she was crazy and told her she wasn’t ready. Instead of arguing with them, she agreed since she wasn’t the type to argue. She always had either James or Eli to stand up for her. She knew it was time for her to stand on her own and grow a pair.
Charity was tired of everyone thinking they could walk all over her and knew it was time to stand up for herself. Even though she was surrounded by her friends, she still felt as though she was standing there alone. She couldn’t wait to visit the Isle and see what it brought her. Nothing in her life was going right on the human side. She was losing her teaching job because of budget cuts and that was the last thing holding her back from moving to the Isle, besides her parents. Once she convinced her parents to move back to the Isle, she was leaving the human side for good.
It is time for me to take control of my life,
Charity thought, as she sipped on the same beer she had since she walked through the door.
***
Three hours later, James felt the need to hurry home. It was as if an unseen force was pulling his mind home. Charity must have felt it as well since she suddenly shot out of her seat and made her way toward him in a hurry.
“Come on, James, we have to go home,” Charity whispered in his ear so he could hear her over the music as she pulled him out of his seat.
James’s coworkers had left over an hour ago and it was just a few of Charity’s friends still in the bar. Being the cop he was, James made sure Charity’s friends that were still in the bar all had a ride home before they left.
Ten minutes later, instead of the usual twenty it took since there was no traffic, they pulled up to their home. James noticed their front door was wide opened when he pulled up to the front of the house and immediately went into police mode.
“Stay here, Charity, until I come back and get you,” James said as he reached for his backup guns locked on his trike.
“Do you remember how to use this?” James asked Charity as he handed her a gun.
“Yes, you take me to the gun range twice a week, why wouldn’t I?” Charity answered.
“Okay, shoot if it isn’t me, mom, or dad who walks out of the house or approaches you, got it? I am going to check on mom and dad now,” James said before he cautiously approached the front door.
He could hear muffled screams coming from the living room and ran straight there. James could see a few cat and wolf shifters ripping their parents’ bodies apart with their teeth. James immediately shifted into his lion form since it was larger than his wolf form and attacked the closest shifter. He ripped apart shifter after shifter until an unknown voice in his head halted him in his tracks.
‘
James, get out of there now,
more shifters are on their way. If you don’t leave now, both you and your sister will be killed. Don’t worry, you can trust me, I am Eli’s grandmother, Aishe, I helped your parents before. Two bottles of emergency potion I sent your parents years ago are in the pot on the porch. The Alpha of the Isle of Paradise has a secret airplane only you and your sister can see waiting at the airport for you both. Call Eli to meet you at the airport on your way there for help, just in case the shifters follow you. Have him bring his father’s Enforcers and I will be there as well
.’
James followed all of Aishe’s directions. He would do whatever he had to protect Charity now, even if it was listening to a voice in his head. He knew who Aishe was from listening to the stories from Eli and his parents, and knew without a doubt that it was she.
James left their home, grabbed the potions from the pot on the porch, and headed for his trike and Charity. Once he reached Charity, he quickly explained what they needed to do and the urgency they needed to do it in. Charity didn’t question, just obeyed, and they took off. James grabbed his phone, there was a call he needed to make.
***
“Eli, my parents are dead, I don’t know what is going on, but I have to get my sister, Charity, away from here until I do. We are on our way to the secret airport on this side of the world. I need you to meet us at the airport on the Isle of Paradise. Bring backup with you, I think whoever killed my parents are now after Charity and me. Come quick, we are almost there.” James left the message on Eli’s voicemail, hoping Eli would check his messages before James and Charity made it to the airport.