New Generation List
Dmitri (son of Victoria and Bastien – half human and half werewolf)
Elonora “Lenny” (daughter of Ash and Ruby – vampire-sentry)
Varga (son of Ash and Ruby – vampire-sentry)
Kailani “Kale” (daughter of Brock and Arwen / granddaughter of Corrine and Ibrahim – witch)
Hunter (Sofia’s adoptive brother / adopted son of Aiden and Kailyn – werewolf)
Vesta (daughter of Idris and Rayna – water fae)
Family tree
If you’d like to check out the Novaks’ family tree, visit: www.forrestbooks.com/tree
Derek
Everything was going from bad to maybe better, then horribly worse.
Ta’Zan had Sofia in a glass box, in his private quarters, while the rest of us were stuck in the diamond dome. He was going ahead with the creation of his new line of Arch-Perfects, with rebuilding the starships and comms blocker towers that our outside crew had destroyed, and with his plan to raise his armies and turn them against the universe.
Yes, he was delusional in his genetics obsession, but he had the power and the resources to force it down our throats. He would be able to take his Perfects out into the vast cosmos and conquer the In-Between, one planet at a time. We were the only ones who could stop him before he took flight—not because we were superior to his winged warriors. We weren’t. But because we were here, and we could do something about it, or die trying.
But the stakes had reached a new high. Our outside crew, led by my children, Ben and Rose, had succeeded in stealing devil-vipers from the colosseum’s animal sanctuary, as well as kidnapping Amal. Without his prime scientist, Ta’Zan was seething and bordering on brutally vicious.
He had Cassiel drag Floren Pyris, a fire fae lieutenant, out of our group, and executed him right in front of us. It was his ultimatum: either the outside crew surrendered, or he’d continue to kill one of us every twelve hours. That wasn’t even the worst part. The next prisoner on his kill list was my wife.
Pain spread through my stomach, like red-hot knives cutting through my entrails, as I tried to think clearly and come up with some kind of strategy to stop Ta’Zan from killing Sofia and more of our people. Rose and Ben’s crew couldn’t surrender—it would mean the end of our effort to stop him. Abandoning the In-Between and letting it fall under Ta’Zan’s bloody rule was not an option. Billions of lives were at stake.
Rose assured me that they had this under control, but she didn’t immediately give me details. She’d said she needed to confer with the rest of her crew. They weren’t going to let twelve hours pass without something to at least stall Ta’Zan from going ahead with his next execution. My heart was twisted and tiny and in permanent agony, separated from Sofia and worried sick about her, about the outcome of all this. I couldn’t even imagine a world without her. None of us could.
The founders and I sat in a circle, unable to formulate a coherent thought for the better part of an hour. Nothing we said had any value in the absence of details regarding Ben and Rose’s plan to stop Ta’Zan from killing Sofia. The angst was almost palpable.
“Have you heard from Rose yet?” Lucas asked, pointing at my earpiece.
I shook my head. “I’m sure I will, the moment they have a clear and detailed plan,” I answered. “I’m on the edge of my seat, though.”
“Tell me about it,” Aiden said, a muscle twitching nervously in his jaw. “If anything happens to Sofia, I swear I’ll—”
“We won’t let anything happen,” I said, cutting him off.
His collar was probably hot already. We couldn’t talk much about fighting the Perfects and Ta’Zan, since the shock collars were wired to react to our brainwaves. They were able to interpret what we said and what we intended to do—which was why they released an electric shock whenever we tried to attack Ta’Zan or one of his underlings. We’d been testing their limits, but this wasn’t the time to get ourselves zapped.
“I’m not liking this silence. It reeks of doom,” Corrine said, her concern for Kailani more than obvious.
“Let’s wait for the kids to get back to us, Corrine,” I replied. “We may be helpless in here, but I know they won’t let anything happen to Sofia.”
“So, then, what? They surrender?” Claudia shot back, equally shaken. She had a lot to lose here, since Elonora and Varga were both in that group, and we’d already gone to great lengths to get Varga out of the prisoner dome, in the first place.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. All I can say is that I trust Ben and Rose to come up with something smart. We’ve come too far to let Ta’Zan win this.”
“I get that, but what about our kids?” Aiden sighed. “Hunter is out there… If he and the others end up in here, it’s all over. If they don’t surrender, Sofia dies. If this isn’t that space between a rock and a hard place, I don’t know what is.”
We had everything to lose if Rose and Ben’s crew surrendered. If they didn’t, my wife, their mother, was going to die. How the hell are we getting ourselves out of this one?
“If Kailani gets captured, Ta’Zan will want access to all that raw, untapped power of hers,” Ibrahim muttered, his brow furrowed. “And I’m talking about the Word here. About her swamp witch skills. They may be learned and not genetic, but he won’t care. Ta’Zan will dissect her like a frog and turn her inside out if he has to. He’ll do whatever it takes until he somehow gets what he wants out of her or he kills her.”
“Don’t even say it out loud!” Corrine snapped, running her hands through her messy curls. “I can’t… No, I can’t even imagine what that’ll be like. She can’t come here.”
“If I know Ta’Zan well enough, I’d bank on him threatening Kailani to kill Corrine or Ibrahim, or anyone else he knows she’s close to,” I said. “He’ll try every other avenue before proceeding to… you know.”
Corrine exhaled sharply, her eyes tightly shut for a moment.
“Think about Lumi, too,” Vivienne said. “Thanks to Cassiel, Ta’Zan surely knows about her, about Taeral—”
“Oh, crap, Bogdana as well,” Xavier murmured, his eyes wide. He understood the damage that a surrender could do. “Jeez.”
“Well, at least he doesn’t know that Bogdana is his surrogate mother,” Cameron answered, raising an eyebrow. “I doubt the crew will come out all at once, anyway.”
It was my turn to frown. “What do you mean?”
Cameron and Liana exchanged glances, then smiled at me. “You know Ben and Rose are way too sharp to simply succumb to Ta’Zan’s request. I mean, come on… Rose didn’t tell you she’s got this covered simply to console you, Derek. She’s a lot like you, remember?”
I couldn’t help but chuckle lightly. “You have a point there.”
“If they do opt for a surrender, it’ll be controlled, and with an endgame,” Cameron added. “They won’t all come out at once. We’ll probably see Rose and Ben’s crew first. They’ll maybe claim the others are gone. They won’t drag their allies into it, and Ta’Zan won’t be able to go back on his word. He said he wants the outsiders, not all the rebels. They’ll hold him to it, and, if he cheats, it won’t look good for him in front of his Perfects.”
