Invincible (The Aerling Series Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

up to make sure everyone else is okay.
    Olivia is bent over, but grinning at her
accomplishment. Poor Sloane looks a bit freaked out, but otherwise okay. Fittingly,
Robin seems to have had the worst time. I don’t do anything to help her as she
rolls around on the ground struggling to breathe. Neither does anyone else. I
stare at her wondering how in the world we’re going to manage tracking down
Hayden and the Mother with her trailing behind us everywhere we go.
    “Where are we?” Sloane asks.
    Olivia straightens and takes in our
surroundings with a smile. “My backyard. We’re home.”
    “Not for long, though,” I remind everyone.
I was a little worried we’d end up coming back to Earth up on the cliff above
the reservoir where we fought the Sentinels, but somehow Olivia managed to
bring us straight home. I’m about to suggest we get out of the open, but a
crash from the porch yanks all our attention toward the noise.
    The screen door bangs back against the
frame behind an utterly shocked Evie. “What… where… Mason? Olivia?” She glances
at an awkward looking Robin, looking even more confused. A second later she
tosses it all away and bolts down the steps to throw herself into her sister’s
arms. “Olivia!” she cries with abandon. “I thought I’d never see you again!”
    Nobody says anything while Olivia holds
her sobbing sister. It’s only when I hear little feet pounding down the hall
that I turn away and open my arms to Molly flying out of the house and straight
into my arms. She’s too hysterical to say anything, so I pick her up and wiggle
her legs back and forth as I squeeze her in a massive hug. Olivia’s parents
appear somewhere in between all that, and the next thing I know, we’re all
being scooped up by them.
    “Who are all these people?” Sloane finally
asks, a panicked look on her face.
    Laughing, Olivia struggles away from her
family and begins the introductions. “Sloane, these are my parents and my
little sister Evie. Molly, over there with Mason, is his little sister.”
Gesturing to Sloane, now, she tells her family, “I know you guys can’t actually
see her, but we brought back someone to help us. This is Sloane, Levi’s sister.
She volunteered to help us save Hayden and find the Mother.”
    That simple sentence inspires a whole host
of questions. They all start shooting out of people’s mouths at once. Chief on
the list is what happened to Hayden. “His parents have been inconsolable,”
Olivia’s mom says. “We’ve tried to help them as much as we can, but not knowing
what happened to him has been tearing them apart.”
    “Wait,” I say. Something doesn’t seem
quite right about what they’re saying. We’ve only been gone a few hours at the
most, right? Suddenly the worn out, run down way everyone is carrying
themselves clicks. “How long have we been gone?”
    Olivia’s dad sounds nearing breaking as he
says, “Three days.”
    Looking over at Olivia, I don’t know why I
expect her to have an answer, but I can’t help hoping. When she only shrugs, I
feel lost. Traveling there and back was excruciating, but it only seemed to
last a few seconds. Could it really have taken so long? Or does time flow
differently in the Aerling world than it does here?
    I realize there might be someone more
knowledgeable to answer this question and turn to Sloane. “Do you understand
what happened? Why we’ve been gone so long when it only felt like a few hours?”
    “I’m not sure,” she says, “I remember when
my Escort took me home, to the Aerlings, it was the day after my birthday when
I got there, even though I was transported early in the morning.”
    Olivia looks concerned. “I don’t know if
this will affect what we’re doing, but we might want to keep it in mind just in
case.” She shakes her head, putting aside that problem for the time being. “Mom
and Dad, I’m sorry, but we can’t stay. We have to figure out where the
Sentinels are holding Hayden and