Mia
“Dad!” The boys called out in surprise as we all turned to stare at Albert.
I couldn’t tell if he didn’t hear us or intentionally ignored us as he didn’t reply and just raced into the house.
We looked at each other, wondering what was wrong with him and without hesitation, we all ran after him.
That wasn’t a normal expression on his face. The Albert I knew was calm and wouldn’t have run inside like that. Being without my mum was another reason something was wrong with him.
“Dad, is there anything wrong with you?” Quinn asked, even as we all raced after him.
Where was he going? What was he looking for?
He ran to the cave, not even stopping in shock at the sight of the open door as we all did when we saw it.
He ran straight ahead till we got to the cage where the dark wizard was kept.
“No!” He screamed, going down on his knees as he stared at the open cage. “I knew it and hoped that I was wrong.”
The triplets looked at one another. They couldn’t even talk. If I hadn’t been here before and attacked by the dark wizard, I would have wondered what was going on here and wouldn’t have understood the gravity of what had just happened.
But I knew. I had been here and I knew why Albert was in so much pain. I wanted to turn away but I wasn’t bold enough to do that. I didn’t think I could watch him kneeling down there and heaving out his breaths in pained grunts.
The Albert I knew was a confident man and watching him break down like this like a man who had lost his perfect treasure was breaking my heart.
He slowly raised his head up and glared at us. “What just happened here?”
I swallowed. Albert’s eyes were narrowed into slits as he looked at us and I could see sparkles of red in there.
This was no Albert that I knew. This was not the retired officer that my mum had gotten married to and the man who was sweet to me, this was the alpha of the silver moon pack.
I looked at the triplets and noticed how their skin paled and their eyes widened in fright.
With the way he looked at us, we would be stupid to not know that we were in trouble.
Jack
We were in trouble.
That was a given.
I gulped as I stared at dad. He was mad not at us but at himself. It was only a matter of how fast the dynamics of that would change and he would get mad at us.
I hadn’t been expecting dad at all. We hadn’t been expecting to see him today and not for the next two weeks. He had called us early this morning to apologize that he would miss our birthday party and wish us greetings. He had told us to have all the fun that we could, while not forgetting to watch over our sister.
He had promised to take us all out on treat if he came back and I had been gladly looking up to that. Of all the activities that I had planned for today which were having fun with my friends at the party and tormenting Mia by making sure she was with us all day, I hadn’t thought seeing my dad would be part of it.
If he hadn’t rushed into the house, I would have thought he had lied to us and wanted to give us a delightful shock but that hadn’t been the case. The way he had rushed in was enough to tell me that he didn’t plan to be here.
He had run to the cave immediately he got into the house and ignored all our attempts to get him to talk to us. Even if he hadn’t done that, I would have known that something was amiss. I could smell his panic all the way from the gate as he had rushed in and I knew that my brothers would have sensed it too.
I knew immediately what that was when we got in and saw the door to the cave open in a way that left no doubt that someone had gone in or the prisoner inside had left.
I picked up my pace after my father as my brothers did. I knew we had gotten ourselves into trouble when dad screamed and went down on the floor.
The trouble we were in started then when dad found the cave the dark wizard had left the cage he was barred in and not when he looked at his with those fiery angry red eyes.
“What just happened here?”
I looked at my brothers, asking with my gaze if they would be the one to tell dad what had happened. I didn’t think I had any answer to that and none of them seemed to as well as they both had blank looks on their faces.
I was scared of dad even if he didn’t have his alpha eyes shining at us.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” He snapped at us, his eyes looking at each of us as he spoke. “I knew something was wrong the moment he escaped even though I was miles away. I was lucky that I could get a plane to board as fast as I did.”
“You knew about his escape the moment it happened because he is connected to you. You are the one who bound him here.” Quinn explained. “You can’t blame us for not having a sense of awareness of him.”
“Let’s not forget that we had a party here, dad.” I added quickly, hoping that would let dad be pacified.
I hated it when he was mad at us. It was our birthday, I didn’t want it to end on bad note though it seemed like there was no way we could avoid that now.
“The dark wizard has left.” Dad announced as if we already didn’t know of that and started crying.
I didn’t think that I had ever seen dad cry and watching him do that broke my heart more than I felt when Mia always insisted that she hated us.
I sighed, looking at my brothers wondering if they were thinking the same thing that I was.
The escape of the dark wizard meant that there was fire on the mountain and we didn’t need dad to start crying about it. We needed him to be strong because we had no hope of fighting against the dark wizard if dad got himself weak from weariness.