Julia's baby, Bk 1 - Oh, Baby! Watty Awards 2012!

Chapter 25 - The real destination, Oliver's plan.

Oliver didn't continue. He seemed to change his mind about telling her, glancing at the door, leg muscles tensing. Was he thinking of running? 

Julia shifted up, scooting legs up so she could lean against the wall, and fixed him with a look. He wasn't getting out of this. The door was locked, Julia took hold of Oliver's hands so he couldn't run, and she put the music on from her phone. Okay. He couldn't escape.

"I shouldn't tell you." Oliver said softly, sitting up too, but she refuesd to release her iron grip on his wrists when he tried to shake her hands free. "Julia, you know-"

"Nothing. I know nothing. I've seen a werewolf change, which was strange, and I know you lied to the others. Now we're going somewhere. Does Panema even have hospitals?" Silly question, maybe, but would he really take her to a country where she'd give birth in a dangerous place? What if it was one of those third world countries? "What if there's a problem with the babies? Because of this diabetes thing? I looked it up online. It said there might be."

A flicker of fear returned but Julia shoved it back. She saw it in Oliver's face too, this tenseness there for a moment in the muscles around his jaw and neck, and wondered if he had even thought of that. He bit his lip for a moment.

"What do you want to know?"

"Where are we going?"

Oliver grinned then. A big grin in the dark, teeth reflecting the dull light of the lamp, and he tried to release her grip on his hands. "I'll show you. Come on. We had this planned for a while."

"We? What?"

"Leaving our land. We had it planned for a while." Oliver admitted. He got up, helping her up with him, and went for the computer. Julia followed and sat in his lap, feeling heavy and strange like this, but he got the computer on and did some sort of weird 'secret browsing thing'.  "We were waiting for you and Beth to graduate before we moved."

"How long?"

"We already knew we weren't going to be safe there. There was already plans to leave." Oliver admitted. "Not everyone wanted to but we couldn't be safe."

"How long, Oliver?"

"Ten years now. My father started the process in secret with the Elders. Marianne was in charge of getting it happening. We were afraid that the Pack would be targeted." Oliver rested his haed on her shoulder as he did something with the Internet, looking through history, trying to find something. "So we sold the business and worked for it instead. Sold the Pack Estate and rented it. Bought something else. Beth's parents were getting the ship ready for this. For leaving. Only, we ...should have left earlier." Something flashed across his face, genuine regret, and Julia's arm slipped around Oliver's shoulder. 

She leaned against him. "Could we have?"

"We didn't need the ship to be fancy again. We just needed some basic furniture. I thought it was better to wait another few years, wait for the two of you to graduate, that the Northern Pack wouldn't attack." Oliver said softly against her shoulder. "And I thought if we were going to be going to be at sea for a long time, we'd want the ship to be restored better."

"It looks okay." It was a bit strange, some of the walls kind of stained, or some holes here and there, but she wasn't sure what was wrong with it. Maybe some more furniture would have been nice. There were large areas of the ship she was sure was supposed to have something in it, a room empty of anything, walls that had 'shadows' where pictures might have hung.  "Where are we going?"

"Here. Australia." Oliver nudged her towards the screen. "This island- Melina's Island. It's been ours for a while now, I've been paying off the morgage for it. The Northern Pack think we owned our Estate." He snorted softly. "I've already let the owner know that there's squatters. They're going to have a lot of trouble and the owner has agreed to send us our belongings, if anything's left."