But where would we go? And how?
Atos can never leave and I refuse to leave without him. I've never even set foot outside of the island and it isn't as if I know how the outside world functions. Things are different here. My family is here. My future is supposed to be here.
There is a spot waiting for me at the temple, but now with this secret there is no way they would ever allow me to pass the tests. They would never allow me to join the Order, not with our child. The child that was never supposed to be even possible.
Atos himself couldn't understand how this happened, but I know that he suspects something and I know he is as scared for her as I am. I can see it in his eyes. I can feel it in his touch.
But I refuse to regret creating this little life with him, no matter how wrong it is for everyone else. She is the best thing that could ever happen to us and I will find a way.
We will find a way no matter what.
Atos? "Who the fuck was Atos, Mom?" I said out loud, my eyes going over her words written on the paper. And what was she so afraid of?
November 15th,1996
Nevermere Island is no longer safe, and not just for us.
The three sisters have seen it. They saw what I saw in my dream and everyone has been living in fear ever since they announced it. Atos said I should stay calm, but how could I stay calm when the future of our child hung in balance with everything else that's been going on?
He had asked for a favor from Hayden, but I didn't want him to owe anything to him.
Alyana asked me about Atos the other day and the secret I've been carrying, but I denied everything, and I was sure sheknew I was lying. The older she gets the stronger she becomes, and Alyana isn't someone I can continue lying to for much longer. She sees more than I do. She probably sees more than any of our other sisters from the Order, and while I am proud of her, I don't want her to know about this.
I don't want her to be in danger because of me. I would rather kill myself than allow them to torture my sister for any kind of information.Healways found a way and he always figured things out even before the rest of us.
Atos told me it was time to leave the Nevermere, but I can't even fathom leaving him behind. I saw what was waiting for him and I dreaded it even more than my own fate.
Our friend Benjamin knew I needed to leave, but he didn't know why. At least not yet. Atos refused to let me leave all alone, and Benjamin didn't grow up on the island. His family was more connected to the mainland than mine, and he could help me navigate the world a bit better. But the knowledge of him going with me does not appease the turmoil within me, because the man I love, the man who is a father of my unborn child, would never be able to leave with us.
Atos would never be able to see his daughter grow. He would never hold her. He would never sing to her. He would never be able to show her the world through his eyes.
"Oh. My. God," I said out loud, rereading the last paragraph, before focusing on the rest of the entry.
The Keres started following me a couple of weeks ago, and I knew it was the favor Atos had already asked Hayden for, which I didn't like, not even a little bit, for more reasons than one, but I understood it. The Keres were volatile, but they could help if they got their orders directly from him and having Hayden in our corner is better than going through this all alone.
Atos always defended him even when everybody else said he was the worst thing to happen to the island, and I could never understand why. Hayden Raev is cold, calculating, a fucking asshole to most, but I can't deny the fact that he looks like half the man he should have been. And I understood why.
I understood, but I didn't like the strings of fate that were pulling us all together. Hayden had no idea about her, about our baby girl, and I wanted it to stay that way.
My baby, my Kaira, she isn't meant for this world.
I didn't want her to have the same fate as her father would, so I will leave. I'll leave the island and never come back here even if it means leaving everything I know behind.
My heart was racing as I kept reading over and over and fucking over the part where she wrote who my father was. Where she admitted who my real father was.
"She lied to me," I whispered to an empty room, my brain trying to connect the dots. "She fucking lied to me."
Benjamin Harley, the dark-haired man I knew my entire life. The man who taught me how to ride a bike and the man who went with me to my first father-daughter dance, wasn't my father at all.
They all lied to me my entire life.
This man, Atos, if that was even his real name, was my biological father. I didn't need to read ten more entries from her journals to realize that.
I grew up with Benjamin, thinking this whole time he was my biological father. I never suspected he wasn't, especially because he and my mother seemed so in love with each other. They were best friends. They were finishing each other's sentences, but…
"Holy shit."
My eyes kept on scanning over her words, over her messy handwriting and the names she dropped, but none of them seemed familiar to me. She had never mentioned any otherfamily. She had never mentioned she had a sister or that I had an aunt. She never even mentioned Nevermere Island.
