"So, are you going to let this old couple hang without telling us what happened?" Alex asked quietly, his focus already away from the TV and his sisters. Alex, obviously knew that his sisters had fallen into Brad’s trap, but he was more interested in what had happened to Ian and Shelby than what his troubleso sisters were doing or facing.
Ian didn’t answer right away. He sat still, swirling the deep red wine in his glass, eyes unfocused—as though he were watching mories unfurl on the surface. The soft clink of the liquid against glass was the only sound in the room for a long mont.
Even Brad turned his full attention to Ian as well, as though they were all very curious as to the events of the past few months.
Finally, Ian exhaled and slowly set the glass down with a faint clink and leaned back, folding his hands in his lap.
"You might not believe ," he began, voice low, almost hoarse. "It sounds like sothing pulled out of a novel... but it’s the truth."
Ian chose to start that way, for he was unsure of how much his parents would believe his words.
Alex and Geneva exchanged a glance but said nothing. Sothing about the gravity in his tone silenced all doubts, but they had a hunch that it would be that grave ... whatever it was that had occurred.
Ian wasn’t just recounting facts—he was about to open a part of himself they had never seen before.... a part that mainly Geneva had suspected before that confirmation from Currey, and then all those supernatural world issues. Even if they had refused to believe, Aliya had made that world readily available to them through her actions in the few months that she had ’taken over.’
Ian recounted a lot from his childhood days as a premise, and how he had been able to survive as a species of both worlds with no one to rely on, except for Currey back then.
As he spoke, his voice steadied. The tale he told wove betrayal and loyalty, secrets hidden in plain sight, years of silence, and the shocking truth about the people they thought they knew and so many other things.
Though Geneva wanted him to skip to what had happened most recently, she held back, clasping her hands tightly.
At so point, Alex also leaned forward, his expression unreadable—but his eyes, for once, betrayed his inner turmoil.
It wasn’t just the content of the story that gripped them. It was the way Ian spoke. With raw honesty. Without shields. For the first ti, they weren’t talking to their son the executive, or the clever strategist—they were talking to their boy.
Brad dropped all jests and just listened with rapt attention.
And though the story sounded almost fantastical—fragnts of things they had suspected, feared, or refused to consider—it rang true. Every word. It coincided perfectly with what Currey had already told them. Their emotions ran through a roller coaster by the ti Ian was done.
One thing remained certain for them, though: they believed every single word.
When Ian finally fell silent, the room was still again, heavy with unspoken emotions.
Alex swallowed.
"So, you an that you’ve only been in that world for a few days?"
This ti, it was Shelby who answered from afar,
"Yes, Dad. I only left there on the fifth day."
Alex nodded quietly, assimilating all that he had heard, "You’re not hard, are you?"
Sohow, these words of concern seed heavier than the entire tale that ca before them, but it made Ian feel light at the sa ti. He smiled,
"No one can touch us, old man!"
"... says the man who went into a coma!" Alex said bitterly, and that made Ian shut up. However, this earned Alex a smack from Geneva.
"Didn’t you hear him? He is linked to Shelby, and anything that happens to her links back to him!"
"Ouch! Geneva!"
"What?!"
While the adults bickered, Brad remained quiet, lost in thought. The enormity of everything he had learned about the Fae was overwhelming. Despite all he had been through since discovering this world, the whole thing still sounded far-fetched to him.
However, Brad also knew that Ian was a factual person and there was no way he would spin such tales. Ian had no ti for anything like that.
Brad finally spoke, this ti with a note of awe, almost disbelief.
"So... you really saw that Fae land?"
Ian gave a slight nod, his eyes distant for a mont, as though seeing it all again—the glittering trees that humd, the sky that pulsed with magic, the whispers in a language no human had spoken in centuries. At so point in the conversation, Gabriel had left his mother’s side and co over to Ian.
He had sohow found his way onto Ian’s lap and was listening intently. This was when Ian had started describing and talking about the events that happened on the Fae land and its details. They fascinated the young boy so much.
"It’s real," Ian said quietly. "Beautiful. Terrifying. Powerful beyond belief. You don’t just visit the Fae lands. You feel them. They leave so sort of a mark on you."
This sounded even more incredible, coming from Ian. He was a first-tir there as well, but Ian had been more worried about his Elfin to even think of the eerie beauty of the strange land that had felt so foreign, yet so much like ho to him.
His parents exchanged a long look.
"Dad?"
"Hmmmmm."
Ian ruffled Gabriel’s hair and leaned back on the couch so that Gabriel could find a comfortable position on his lap.
"Can I go there too?"
It took a mont of silence before Ian responded,
"Soday, you will!"
"Mmmmmm," Gabriel nodded vigorously, enthused.
"Dad?"
"Hmmm...."
Ian seed to indulge everything that the children did, especially Gabriel, who had no foresight about physical boundaries.
"So, you’re like a real king? How cool!"
Ian started to refute Gabriel, but the boy was too ecstatic and Ian did not have the heart to douse his good mood.
Just at that ti, Geneva’s expression shifted—sothing in her softened and tensed all at once.
"Wait..." she began slowly, interrupting the father-son mont. "The baby. Is the baby going to be okay?"
The question made everyone pause.
They had not even had ti to celebrate the baby yet. With all the pressing and near-fatal occurrences since Ian and Shelby had returned, who would have thought too much of that? But though they loved the other three adopted children as their own, this was their first real descendant by blood—and that would make anyone excited.
Aliya was detested, but her children had found a special place in the hearts of everyone in the ho, and they were all absolutely sure that all would so love the new child... assuming the child made it.
"If Shelby’s only been in the Fae-land for a few days," Geneva continued, trying to reason it out, "but the pregnancy progressed rapidly after returning here... wouldn’t that affect the child? That kind of magical distortion, that ti-warped growth... what does it an?"
This ti, even Ian’s heart clenched, because this was the very question that haunted him when they had returned, and that was why he had insisted on the hospital checkup.
"We don’t know," Ian said. "No one does. The doctor has reassured us that the child was growing strong and progressing as expected. She did not notice anything amiss when we went there earlier in the day.
Geneva covered her mouth with trembling fingers, and even Alex, who had stood up at a point, sat down slowly, visibly shaken.
This also brought Brad out of his stupor,
The room fell into silence again—but this ti, it was laced with dread.
"Don’t worry, my Elfin and the child are very much okay. Though I don’t know the implications of that phenonon, I know that the baby in there is full of vigour and strength. After all, wasn’t this child the one who saved his mother back then, when that foul woman tried to harm her?"
Though Ian used ’foul woman’, even Brad understood the implications, but it was a few hours later before Brad pieced together the dots.
After another bout of silence, Ian turned to Geneva,
"So, Mum, about Roman ....."
This brought the room back to a standstill again. At a point, Samantha had tried to sneak out as she felt that all of this was too much for their ears, but Shelby had pulled her firmly back onto the bed.
"This is a family discussion. If we did not want you here, we would have asked you to go...."
"But this is only for adults?"
This comnt made Shelby laugh, but she replied, "The information is for whoever we say it’s for, so don’t fret."
"What about him?" Geneva asked quietly. His na still gave her a numb feeling that she had never gotten over.
"Roman kept his promise.... He never left you. When you told us that story back then... about how you had t?"
Geneva exchanged a glance with Alex and then waited for Ian to go on.
"I knew sothing was off. Faes never lie, and they would never break a promise. If he gave you a keepsake and promised to return, then he would have. Also, Faes of his calibre would have known that a child of his existed, so only one reason remained after my analogy..."
"You – you an.... He ...."
"Yes, Mum."
*********
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