He likes the games he plays in his Neverland. Everything he wants, everything he says he needs, it will force us both to lose an innocence we’ll never be able to recover. Never get back. It could change him and this place forever. That is, if what we’ve already done hasn’t already changed us.

Reaching a clearing, he brushes a few large palms out of the way and pulls me closer to his side.

“Look.” His passionate plea breaks me from my thoughts as I glance out across the horizon. “See that?”

“The ocean?”

“Cannibal Cove,” he corrects me. “That’s where I’ll have my ship one day.”

“Ship?”

“Yes, Wendy,” he laughs, “all good pirates have to have their ship.”

Pirates?

“But Peter, why would you want pirates in Neverland?”

He turns to look at me, confusion etched across his handsome face.

“The lost boys and I have played pirates for as long as I can remember,” his brow furrows. “For as long as I remember you, Wendy.”

“But who are you fighting when you play? Who wins?”

“I always win,” his cocky smile takes my breath away. “Who else?”

He grips me around the waist and flies me up on a warm breeze to the tree branch above our heads. My gaze is fixed on him, but he only has eyes for the cove.

“When I am captain of my ship, my crew will call me James…”

“James?” I ask, shocked.

He nods. “Well, Jas for short.”

I shake my head and look out across the way confused. It is beautiful. The sun is setting on the horizon casting shades of gold, yellow, light and dark blue across the water. The beach is now mostly covered in darkness, but I can see the white tips of the waves crest as they crash against the sandy shore.

“I’ll have a first mate named Smee. And if any of the lost boys go against the rules, try to grow up, I’ll thin them out.”

My body goes rigid. Completely still. He doesn’t notice. Only smiles at the view and what I fear is to become of Neverland. As I watch him, my mind can’t keep from wondering what he means. Thin them out?

Instead of asking him a question I don’t think I want the answer to, I foolishly ask, “And… what about me, Peter?” His eyes finally fall back on my worried expression. “Where do I fit into all of this?”

“Wendy,” he laughs. “Silly Darling. You’re what we’re all fighting over. The treasure that’s only ever meant to be mine.”

“I don’t think I’d like that,” I shudder. Not the treasure part. That has my heart melting. The fighting part. My past at home and what I witnessed in Hangman’s Tree, because of what the lost boys did to me, has me very worried.