Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Seraphina
The ride to Lake Renegade was nice. We stopped a few times to stretch and grab some drinks. But we’re finally here. We pull into the parking lot of the hotel and park.
MATE. My snake is throwing herself around as she chants ‘mate.’ I told her she needs to calm the fuck down. We need to find out who he is. I look over to the bakery and see a huge guy standing there staring at us. My snake gets even more excited when we see him. MATE. She screams again.
“Are you okay, Phee?” Archer asks.
“Mate,” I whisper to him.
“Holy shit. Where? Who?”
“Him. Across the street.”
“Are you sure?”
I nod. We grew up hearing our parents tell us what happened when they met.
How the mate bond snapped into place the moment they were near each other.
This man is my mate. I know this deep inside me and I have to admit I’m a little afraid.
I watch as another guy joins him then runs back into the café.
He comes back out with a woman. And now they’re all staring at us.
“We need to go over there,” I hear Oliver say.
Archer and Oliver both take my hands and I can see my mate frowning. The three of us walk over to them.
“We’re with you no matter what happens,” Oliver says to me.
“I love you both. So much,” I say to them.
I can hear my mate growling and I have no idea why.
Apollo
I feel like my feet are cemented to the sidewalk. I watch the two guys with my mate take her hands. What the fuck.
“They could be her brothers,” I hear my mamá say. “They look alike.”
I can’t help the growl that comes out of me, my bear is stomping his feet and telling me to claim her. And to make the two guys stop touching her. I tell him that mamá could be right. They might be her brothers.
I finally get my feet to cooperate and I meet her halfway. I look at her and smile, I can feel our bond. It’s taking everything in me not to grab her and hold her in my arms.
“Hi,” she says softly as she looks up at me.
“Hi. I’m Apollo.”
“I’m Seraphina. These are my brothers, Oliver and Archer.”
The relief that floods me is crazy. I hear someone clear their throat beside me.
“We’re standing in the middle of the road. I’m thinking it’s not the best place to do this. Ow,” Adonis says as Mamá smacks him.
“I’m Athena Athanasiou, I’m Apollo’s mamá. I apologize for my other son, Adonis, but we really should get out of the street.” Mamá smiles at Seraphina and her brothers. We all follow her back onto the sidewalk.
I haven’t taken my eyes off her, my next step is getting her brothers to let her go so I can hold her. It’s like she heard me, she drops her brothers’ hands and comes to me. I put my hand out and she puts hers in mine. My bear is dancing, I’ve never seen him dance before.
“Did you say your last name is Athanasiou?” Archer asks my mamá.
I look over at Adonis and we move to stand in front of our mamá, I pull Seraphina with me.
“We don’t mean any harm. We’re here to talk to your family and the Nikolaidis family,” Archer says as he puts his hands up.
“And now that we know that you’re Phee’s mate, I don’t think she’d let us hurt any of you,” Oliver adds.
Mamá pushes her way through us and looks at Archer and Oliver.
“I have five sons and they’re all protective of me—”
“You don’t need to explain why they did that, we were like that with our mom.”
“Go get Stella,” Mamá says to Adonis, who nods and heads into the café. “You said ‘were’? Where are your parents?”
I watch the looks on all three of their faces.
“W-we lost them a few days ago,” Seraphina says softly.
I pull her close and hug her. I feel like something else happened for them to be here so soon after losing their parents. Stella comes out with Adonis and my mamá introduces her.
“We’d really like to sit down and talk with all of you,” Oliver says.
“Let me call my husband. We have a council for our families and I have a feeling this is something you’ll want them all to hear. Why don’t you two take them to the clubhouse, we’ll meet you there,” Mamá says.
“We need to check into the hotel first,” Seraphina says to everyone.
“Oh, you won’t be staying at the hotel,” I say as I look at her.
“But we’re going to lose the money for our reservations.” She frowns at me. “When we made them, they said full refunds are only done as long as it’s twenty-four hours in advance.”
“Don’t worry about that. You won’t be charged.”
Adonis and I walk over to the hotel with them. He goes inside to talk to whoever is working the front desk.
“Okay, all taken care of. Just follow us back to the property.”
“Whatever happened, we’re going to help you fix it,” I say to her as I hug her.
I feel her body mold to mine and my bear is purring. I don’t know who hurt Seraphina and her brothers. But I’ll make them regret it.
When we get to the Cimaruta clubhouse, my baba and Enea Mancini are standing outside.
“Your mamá said you found your mate, congratulations,” Baba says as he and Enea hug me.
“Thank you.” I smile as Seraphina and her brothers park their bikes.
Giacomo Bastianini, president of the MC comes out to join us.
“Looks like they’re going to fit right in.” He laughs.
I take Seraphina’s hand and introduce her and her brothers to them.
“Are you the council that Athena told us about?” Archer asks as he shakes their hands.
“We’re part of it, there are seven of us. The others are on their way now,” Enea answers.
We make small talk for a few minutes while we wait for the others to join us. We have a big family here in Lake Renegade and every one of us is nosy and in each other’s business. Today’s no different.
“I don’t think I’m going to remember everyone’s names.” Seraphina giggles.
“It’s okay, our family is big, but you can count on every single one of us. For anything you need.”
Again I see the sad look in her eyes. I need to know what happened to her family. Finally everyone’s here and we head inside the clubhouse to talk. The council introduces themselves to the siblings.
“I apologize if I get names wrong. There’s a lot of you.” Archer chuckles as everyone laughs.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get to know all of us in time,” my baba says as he smiles.
“You said you needed to talk to us, what’s happened? First of all, where are you from?” Leonardo Mancini asks.
“We’re from Brisbane, Australia. We heard about the four families in Lake Renegade and how you took down group of people that were experimenting on shifters.
Our parents planned on coming here to talk to you themselves, but we were waiting for our visas because we didn’t know how long we’d be here.
But before we could get everything together, we were taken.
That was about two months ago,” Oliver says as he looks at everyone.
My stomach has knots in it as we listen to Oliver.
“We should also tell you that we’re Taipan snake shifters,” Archer adds.
“Holy crap. That’s fucking cool,” Eros says. He gets a look from our baba. “What? They’re the deadliest snakes in the world. Wait. If you bite one of us, will we die?”
Baba sighs. “I’m sorry for my son.”
Archer and Oliver laugh.
“We have two separate venom glands. But no, if we bit you, you would get really sick.”
“But we won’t die?” Adonis asks.
“Not from our lighter venom…” Seraphina smiles.
“I don’t like that smile. That’s an evil smile. Apollo, you need to watch out.” Sebastiano Mancini laughs.
“I’m not worried.” I chuckle as I hold Seraphina closer.
“Please continue.” My baba sighs at all of us.
“We were at the beach and all of a sudden, we were in nets. We were put into an apartment-style place and kept there. There was just enough room for all of us.” Archer takes a deep breath.
“They would force us to shift and then they’d milk us for our venom.
Our parents kept trying to figure out how to get away, but it was hard because there was seven of us. ”
The room gets silent as I watch the three siblings. Fuck, there were seven of them, which means that they lost not only their parents, but two siblings too. I don’t know how I would cope if I lost my parents and two siblings.
“Did you hear any names while you were there?” Panagiotis asks.
“They were careful about not saying names. It was always the same people that came to get us. But they didn’t talk a lot, only to threaten us.”
“I heard them say a name once. That Paul would be pissed if they didn’t get enough venom from us. The problem is, they didn’t know that we have two different venom sacs. So we would give them the non lethal venom instead of our lethal one.” Seraphina says.
We all pause when we hear the name Paul.
“We need to stop for a bit. Ares, go and get Satoshi and Hanako, they need to hear this too.”
Ares nods and goes to get his in-laws.
“They were part of the group that was taking shifters here in Chicago. Satoshi is a researcher and he was forced to help the leader, Samantha. She used their children, Haruki and Sakura, against them. Sakura is Ares’ wife.
That’s how we found all of this out. I’ll let them tell you their full story. ”
“While we wait, I really need to know the difference between your venoms,” I say to Seraphina.
“Our lethal one will kill a human within thirty minutes to an hour. And the other will make them sick. It’s the same for shifters, except that you’d need to kill them while the toxic venom is in them,” she explains.
“That’s terrifying.” Eros blinks at her.
Ares comes in and introduces everyone.
“This is my wife, Sakura. Her twin, Haruki, and their parents, Satoshi and Hanako Minamoto. This is Seraphina, Oliver and Archer…”
“Crawford.” Seraphina smiles at them.
“I’d like you all to tell each other what’s happened to you. I think that it’s the same group of people that is at the head of both situations.”
Seraphina tells them what they’ve told us so far and each of the Minamotos tell their stories. Each of them had a different experience. Haruki and Sakura were separated from each other and their parents for eleven years.
“Two days ago, we lost our parents and baby siblings. We never saw any other shifters. I could smell other shifters, but I couldn’t tell you what they were or how many there were in the building,” Oliver tells us.
“Did you know other shifter families growing up?” Enea asks.
“We knew a few of them, mostly snake shifters. But snake families are solitary. We would have dinner with a few of them once in a while. But none of our families lived together or even near each other. So when we were taken, they wouldn’t have wondered about us.
Maybe after a longer time, they might have. ”
“Did they tell you what they needed from you?” Satoshi asked.
“Not really. The only thing that I heard was that they were trying to synthesize our venom. But like we were telling the others, we have two different venoms. And we can choose which to use. Even if they stress us out, which they did often, we can still choose. So none of us ever gave them the toxic venom.”
“I know this is going to be hard. But we need you to tell us about the day that you lost your family,” my baba says to them.
“Oliver, Archer and I were taken first. It was just like every other day. Then they took Colby and Isla, they’re our twin siblings, they had just turned fourteen. As soon as they came back, they took our parents. That was our routine everyday,” Seraphina says as she sniffles.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her. I’m going to kill whoever did this to her and her family.
“We didn’t have a way to know what time it was.
There were no clocks in our apartment. And no windows either.
So when we say we were in there for two months, we only figured that out after we escaped.
After they brought our parents back, we all sat around and watched the TV.
It only showed us movies. We couldn’t choose anything else.
Isla was the first to get sick. She started throwing up, none of us had ever had any weird reactions to anything.
Then, one by one, Colby and our parents started throwing up too,” Oliver says softly.
“We lost Colby first. We tried CPR and everything we could think of. No one came to help us, even though we were screaming into the intercom. They finally came when we told them everyone was gone. But before they got to our room, we made a plan,” Archer adds.
“How did you escape?” I ask.
“We shifted and waited in the bathrooms. Hoping that we were right and there were no cameras in there. There were six of them that came in. We waited until they were near the bathrooms and we attacked. We each took two of them down. Then we headed to the door that Oliver saw, it lead to the loading dock. That’s how we escaped.
Our parents had a secret stash in case anything ever happened.
So we knew where we were headed. The worst part is that we don’t know what they did with our family’s bodies.
And that’s killing me. I hate that we left them there,” Seraphina says as her tears fall.
“We knew that our parents planned to come here, to Lake Renegade. They wanted to try and talk to you about the rumors we were hearing. About the shifter that was experimenting on other shifters. But we were taken before we could get here,” Oliver says as he holds Seraphina’s hand.
The bond I see between Seraphina and her brothers reminds me of mine with my siblings. I’m going to make sure we help them get revenge. Especially if Paul’s involved in this, he’s going to fucking die.