Page 5 of Stolen Choices

The memories were always fresh in his mind, and talking about them brought them even closer to the surface.

“By giving Katia to the brothel owner, Weston, he’ll stay loyal to our cause. We need as many supporters as we can get. Plus, Ciaran can’t complete his magic without the herbs Weston has promised to give him. They’re vital.”

“Ciaran has more magic than Weston. Surely if we go in en masse, we can take what we want. This doesn’t sit at all well with me. Weston may be a wizard, but he allows the humans to use shifters for pleasure. Surely that goes against everything we’re fighting for.”

Nuka smirked. “And that is how we’ll get our revenge on Weston for trying to control us. His clientele will be gone once Ciaran has wiped all the humans from the face of the earth. He’ll lose his business and will come groveling back to me as his ruler, and I can then put him in his place. It’s all part of my plan.”

“I don’t know—this just seems wrong. That whole club felt off. I love sex as much as the next man, but I’d rather the woman was willing like Lynx.”

Nuka took a step back and bowed his head as Ciaran got to his feet next and came over to Jackson.

“You’re a good man, Jackson, but now is not the time for morals. Doing this is going to hurt me more than it will you.” Ciaran placed his hand on Jackson’s forehead, and before the blank panther shifter had a chance to move, a great pain slammed into him and everything went dark.

He was traveling quickly—dates, times and places from his past were flashing through his mind until he landed in the moment he always wanted to forget. Ciaran and Nuka stood beside him as all three of them watched his younger self, little more than eight years old, come into view.

He’d been holding his parents’ hands, and they’d been walking happily down the road together. He still remembered why—he’d gotten full marks on a spelling test at school, and his mother and father said he could go and buy the biggest steak he could find at the butchers as a reward for doing so well. He’d been beyond excited at pleasing his parents and vowed to always endeavor to get one-hundred percent from then on. In fact, he’d been determined to start on his spellings for the next week when he got home.

“Why are we here?” Jackson asked.

“Because you’ve forgotten. You’re a good man, and I don’t want to do this, but I must. Katia is the key to our plans, and you’ve been given the task to retrieve her,” Ciaran replied.

Jackson shut his eyes when the humans with baseball bats came around the corner. But the druid forced them open, so he had to watch what happened next.

The community they lived in was small, and the previous week, his father had been caught shifting. The humans were scared. They didn’t go to the authorities—that would have been too simple. No, this was a backward part of the world where mob justice ruled, particularly against anything that was different.

Jackson winced as the first blow landed. It broke his father’s arm as he tried to protect himself. His father repeated in almost a chant that he wasn’t a threat, and he’d never hurt them. The humans continued to beat him. Jackson’s mother tried to intervene, but she was also accused of being a demon, and that’s when they started attacking her too. The younger Jackson stood there watching, tears tumbling down his cheeks. His mother begged his father to shift and save them, but his father refused. He would never harm a human. The beating continued with the whack of the hard wooden bats against the soft shifter bodies until his parents were no longer moving, and everyone fell silent. The humans stood back and allowed young Jackson to see the sight that had haunted him ever since that day—his parents’ broken and battered bodies laying in a pool of blood. Jackson had loved them so much. It’d been a happy occasion that ended in tragedy…it had changed him forever.

Present day Jackson’s legs gave way, and he fell to the floor as he watched the humans turn on his younger self, bearing down on him with their bats raised. Out of nowhere, a huge polar bear, a younger Nuka, appeared. Its teeth bared and snarling a stark warning of retribution. A flash of energy snaked through the air, and a younger version of Ciaran joined the scene before him. The humans’ eyes went wide, and they moved their attention from the younger version of himself to Nuka and Ciaran.

Jackson watched on as Nuka and Ciaran ripped apart and burned alive the humans who’d been responsible for killing his mother and father. He turned his attention to his younger self, the small boy’s eyes were wide open, watching the horror unfold before him. Eventually everything went silent. Younger Nuka transformed into his human self and held his hand out to young Jackson.

“I’m sorry we didn’t arrive sooner,” both Nukas, younger and older, said at the same time.

“My parents?” young Jackson asked.

Older Jackson whispered, “Dead.”

“We’ll bury them in a special place where you can visit them always.” Young Nuka knelt down in front of young Jackson.

“What will happen to me now?”

“You can come and live with me. I’ll protect you, and you can help me get rid of the evil humans like those ones.”

“Not all humans are evil—my mummy said.”

Young Nuka looked over to the remains of the dead humans and then to his parents.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid your mummy got it wrong. They all want to see us dead. We need to stop that from happening.”

“Ok.” Young Jackson looked at his dead parents, and the tears started to fall from his eyes. “They were going to get me a steak for doing well in my spelling. I wanted to make them happy.”

“You will when we avenge their deaths.”

Present day Jackson turned to the older versions of Nuka and Ciaran.

“I don’t need to see anymore.”

He was flung through time again until he landed back in Nuka’s office. He felt sick to the stomach but not from whatever magic Ciaran had performed—it was from those memories being brought alive again. Ciaran stepped away from him and swirled a magical ball of energy around in his hands.

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