A Time for Change (15 page)

“Word of advice, never tell a shifter to follow the rules when their family is in danger. Their shifter side tends to take over and they cannot control it until they get them back. Remember what happened when you found your parents just a few days ago. If it wasn’t for Aishe, you might have killed them all,” Ace said before going after Chelsea to calm her down.

James knew Ace was right, but it still didn’t stop him from wanting to protect his mate. He didn’t care if she didn’t talk to him for a while, just as long as he knew she was safe. James knew he was going to always protect her even when she thought she didn’t need it. He wasn’t going to let what happened to his parents happen to either of his mates.

Chelsea was pissed. She didn’t like being thought of as fragile. She climbed into the car and slammed the door then she closed her eyes and leaned her head back as they made their way to Tate’s house to find her Uncle Jasper. Chelsea wondered how Tate was able to fight the spell he was under as they turned the corner to Tate’s home.

Chelsea opened her eyes when they finally pulled up to the front of Tate’s house. She was the first one out of the car with Ace and James right behind her. They could see the curtains moving as they walked up the walkway.

The door opened before they could even knock.

“All of you hurry up and get in here,” Tate said, as he stood halfway behind the door.

James stepped ahead of Chelsea when she tried to enter first. She growled at him as she entered Tate’s home directly behind him.

“I know why you all are here. He is in my bedroom sleeping off whatever they made me give him,” Tate said when the door to his home closed.

“What happened? Did the spell wear off of you?” Ace asked.

“No, I have the power of antidote, which means any potion or spell wears off me quickly,” Tate answered.

“Well how were you still under the spell from Ursula all those years?” Chelsea asked

“When Aishe gave me a reading after the Alpha Battle, she found out Misty was feeding me the spell each day through my food. So I was under the spell every day but sometimes it wore off. Like that night Jadelyn went to see Liberty and Misty was there with her instead of her being alone. I had followed them when they left my house. Somehow, I knew something wasn’t right and I hid in the shadows in the alley. I froze time around Misty and Liberty until Eli disappeared with you when I saw them with the orbs,” Tate said.

“Thanks,” Jadelyn and Eli said.

“Aishe said something to me after my reading that I didn’t understand until now. For some reason I am supposed to stay close to the nine of you when and until the time is right, whatever that means,” Tate said.

‘If Aishe thinks he should stay close to us for a
while, we are going to need him for something,’
Chelsea spoke into her mates and friends heads.

‘Do you guys trust him?’
James asked
.

‘Yes, if Aishe trusts him, we all trust him.
She would never steer us wrong. She must have had a vision and in the vision we will need him or his destiny is somehow intertwined with ours,’
Ace answered and every shifter they were mind speaking with agreed.

“Tate, I will leave two Enforcers with you while you are packing your clothes and everything else you will need. Meet us at the Alpha’s house in twenty minutes or else I will send backup to your house just in case. Ace and James, carry Jasper out to the car so we can get that stuff out of him,” Chelsea said before making her way to the front door.

“Bossy little thing, isn’t she?” laughed Ace as he slapped James on his back.

“I am turned on!” replied James as they walked to the SUV.

Chelsea drove her uncle straight to Aishe’s house where his mate and Aishe were waiting for them. Aishe was standing in the driveway with Cornelius and Gabe when they pulled up. Cornelius and Gabe took Jasper out of the car and carried him into Aishe’s house with Aishe following directly behind them, where he would be cleansed of all the poison still in his system, which would take a couple of hours.

‘We have him now, go home and get some rest before school tomorrow, and remember to keep Tate with all of you at all times,’
Aishe said to all of them when they were in the car.

Chelsea drove off after hearing Aishe say that. By the time they pulled up to the Alpha’s house, Tate and the two Enforcers were there as well. Chelsea, James, and Ace made their way to their bedroom while Jadelyn directed Tate to an empty bedroom on the first floor.

Chapter Nine

Chelsea was shocked when her and her mates walked into the kitchen the next morning since breakfast was already on the table. A holograph note was levitating above the table. Chelsea and her mates waited until the others were in the kitchen with them eating before playing the note.

Rose’s face was floating in the air when Chelsea pressed play.

“I decided to make a congratulatory breakfast for all of you, just for this morning, so don’t get used to it,” Rose said.

Everyone quickly chatted over breakfast since they had to be at the school in fifteen minutes. They knew the students wouldn’t be arriving for another half hour. Through the conversation, they found out Tate studied the history of both humans and shifters in college. When they learned this, Chelsea and her mates asked Tate to come work at their school.

Tate agreed since he didn’t like how the school system was, especially when he was in school. All the different species of shifters went to the same school when they were on the human side. He wanted them to all come together on the Isle and learn to accept the different type of shifter the others were. Tate knew he was going to help them bring everyone together, he just didn’t know how yet.

“Tate, you can ride with us since everyone else will be on their motorcycles,” Charity said as she climbed into Trevor’s silver sports car.

Trevor pressed the turbo button on his car, causing a light spark of fire to zing out of his pipes.

His car took off faster than the speed of light, knocking the passengers onto their headrests.

“I need to add some speed to my bike like that,” James said with a chuckle, as he climbed onto his trike while watching Trevor’s car take off.

“Ha, you’re too old for something like that,” Chelsea said as she climbed onto her side.

“Do you know traveling that fast in a nice car is every man’s dream?” James said as he shook his head and took off toward the school.

***

The school blended in with the woods so well it was going to be hard to find it if you weren’t supposed to. As they got closer to the school, Chelsea noticed her family had made different types of shifter statues out of glass and placed them in the front.

Chelsea and her mates looked up in time to see five school buses coming through the trees. At first, it was only supposed to be one bus with Rose driving and three Enforcers on the bus with her and the pups. That was before Chelsea’s, Ace’s, Eli’s, and Greg’s parents volunteered to help as well. They said since they were going to be stepping back in order for them to take on their new titles, they needed something else to occupy their time since they were not ready to fully retire yet. Each bus went to a different shifter side of the Isle and picked up a different species of shifter.

Chelsea smiled when she saw a red haired child around seven run down the stairs of the wolf shifter bus and over to the lion shifter bus. The child started jumping from one leg to the other until a blonde haired child dashed off the lion shifter bus. She ran straight for the redheaded child and leaped into her arms knocking them both to the ground. Before Chelsea knew it, a bear shifter child around the same age ran over to them squealing the entire way there. She jumped on top of the lion and wolf shifter children as they all rolled around laughing. Chelsea continued to watch as the girls linked arms together and skipped toward her. Chelsea, Ace, and James looked down at the smiling faces of the three little girls.

“We wanted to say thank you for putting this school together, so I could go to school with my two best friends. At first we only got to see each other on the weekends, but now we can see each other every day,” the red haired wolf shifter pup said.

“Okay, if all three of you promise to do your work, I will put you in the same class,” Chelsea said.

“We promise,” the small voices sang in unison.

Ace waved his mothers over to them. “Girls, these are my mothers and they will be your teachers. How about you three take both my mothers to get twenty-seven more different shifters,” Ace said twenty-seven so there would be a total of thirty students and each of his mothers would only have fifteen students each.

“Chelsea, our twin brothers can be in your mother’s class and help them pick their students,” the lion shifter pup said as she pointed at the male versions of herself and the twin to each of her friends as they wrestled in the grass.

Chelsea nodded her head at the little girls, letting them know it was okay with her. She could tell they didn’t want to be in the same class as their brothers. Chelsea liked the new rules they had come up with when they learned their parents wanted to be a part of the changes of the Isle. Now only the upper level students who came in the afternoon would have different teachers and classes. The lower level students would have the same teachers all day and have certain extracurricular activities on different days and times.

When everyone had their fifteen students, they all lined up with the teachers in front of the students. Ace was in the front of the huge line while Chelsea was in the middle and James was in the back of the line. All the rest of the teachers were scattered throughout the line with their students.

Ace opened the door for the decoy school and led everyone through it. James scanned the outside area making sure no one was left behind before closing and locking the door of the decoy school. Ace led them down the long hallway, down the stairs, and through a coded steel door. Through the steel door was a tunnel leading to the real school, which was made of glass.

The students were mesmerized at how they could look outside through the walls and not just the windows. The only room made of steel was the bathroom and basement. They had a basement made of reinforcement steel to protect the pups just in case they had an attack.

Ace walked them down a long hallway on the first floor. There were no classrooms on the first floor, just glass lockers on either side of the wall. The glass for the lockers were so thick no one could see threw them. Ace assigned the lower level pups the lockers on the right and showed them how to use them. The pups loved opening them since they were voice activated.

After giving them some time to get acquainted with the lockers, Ace led them upstairs where the classrooms were. Each teacher’s name was engraved on the side of his or her classroom doorframe. The teachers stepped out of line with their students as they passed the classroom with their names on it.

James, Ace, and Chelsea’s classroom was the last classroom at the end of the hall and the largest one in the building since they had forty-five students all together. Their classroom was separated into three equal parts, one for each of them and their fifteen students.

James, Ace, and Chelsea were bringing their students together for story time when they heard yelling coming down the hallway. Chelsea ushered all their students into the panic room in their classroom with the Enforcer who was guarding their classroom. When Ace and his mates made it to the middle of the hallway, they could see Serenity running toward them.

“Mom, what is wrong?” Chelsea asked.

“The students were in the middle of tracing their letters when one student disappeared into thin air. I ran and tried to catch him before he fully disappeared when I noticed what was happening but couldn’t get a full grasp on him,” Serenity said with a worried look on her face.

Chelsea and her mates didn’t know what was going on, especially since their students’ parents were the only ones who knew the other school was a decoy school. They knew if the shifters behind everything else were trying to kidnap a student then they would have come up empty handed. None of them knew how the boy disappeared, but they were going to find out.

Ace was just about to say something when the three male children from earlier ran out of the classroom.

“We have something to tell you,” the blonde haired male lion cub said.

“You know you guys can tell us anything,” Ace said when he saw the three little male shifters looking at each other in concern.

“When Miss Serenity and Faith were writing at the chalkboard, we heard Sean talking and no one was around him. He was saying, ‘no mom and dad, I don’t want to go home with you, I want to stay at school, leave me alone.’ He kept saying, ‘let me go, no, leave me alone,’ but he was whispering it,” the brown haired bear cub said.

One of the other boys raised his hand until Ace told him it was okay to speak. “I heard a man and lady saying, ‘we don’t care what you want. We do not want you at this school with all these different kind of shifters and if we kidnap you and make it look like someone else did, everyone will think the school is unsafe and pull their pups out of there.’”

“What does that mean?” the red haired male wolf pup asked.

“How do you know what was said if you guys couldn’t see them?” Chelsea regretted asking when she saw the look on the little one’s faces.

“My brother and I have a power and he thinks people would think we are crazy if we tell them about it, but I don’t care. I can see dead shifters and shifters who are alive but in their spirit form. My brother can talk to them and hear them, but he can’t see them. I can see them, but I can’t talk to them. Sorry, I am out of my class, but my brother called me through his head,” the red haired pup from earlier said, with her friends standing right behind them.

James walked over to the red haired girl’s twin since he was looking down at the floor. “What is your name?”