Chapter 105 105
Kaelen's POV:
I stared at him. In all the time I'd known Marcus, he'd never talked about his past. Never explained how he knew the things he knew, how he'd become the person he was. I'd assumed it was just experience, years of running and fighting. But this...
"A year," I repeated.
"Eleven months." His voice was flat. "They kept me in a cell underground. Concrete walls, fluorescent lights that never turned off, no windows. They drained my blood every three days, ran tests, tried to figure out what made red dragons different from the others." He finished with me and sat back. "I was young. Thought I was invincible. Thought I could take on the whole Order by myself and win."
"How did you get out?"
"I waited." He stood up and walked a few steps away, looking out at the darkness gathering between the trees. "I watched. I learned their patterns, their weaknesses, the things they didn't think I could see from inside a cell. The guards got careless after a few months. Started treating me like furniture instead of a threat."
He turned to face me, and in the dim light, his eyes looked cold and old and absolutely lethal.
"One night, a guard left a door unlocked. Routine check, probably did it a thousand times without thinking. But that one time, he forgot." Marcus's voice didn't waver. "I killed him first. Then the one at the end of the hall. Then every single person who got between me and the exit. Fourteen people, by the time I walked out the front door."
Jesus. I'd known Marcus was dangerous. You couldn't spend five minutes with the man without feeling it, that predator energy that made the air feel heavier whenever he walked into a room. But I'd never understood why until now.
This was why. This was how he'd become... this.
"That's why they call you legendary," I said slowly, remembering when Annabeth told me about the Order approaching her and calling her father that. It all made sense now. "Why they tracked you across three continents. You're not just a red dragon they want to capture. You're the one who got out."
"I'm the one who got out and made them pay for every day I spent in that cell." He crossed his arms. "After I escaped, I spent years running. Hiding. Learning how to disappear so completely that even the Order couldn't find me. And then I met Sammy by accident."
Something in his face changed when he said her name. That hardness cracking just a little.
"She was everything I wasn't. Light where I was dark. Open where I was closed. She made me feel like maybe I could have something normal. Something real." His jaw tightened. "We had almost two years together before the Order found me again. And I had to choose between staying with her while she was pregnant and leading them straight to her and the baby, or leaving and hoping they'd follow me instead of searching for what I left behind."
"You left to protect them."
"Yes. I had no choice." His voice got rougher. "Sammy was pregnant. Six months along with my daughter, dying from carrying a red dragon baby, and I couldn't go near her. Couldn't touch her. Couldn't be there when my child was born because the Order was still hunting me and I would have gotten them both killed."
I thought about my own parents. About the five years I'd spent thinking they were dead, mourning them, raising my siblings alone. About the choices people make when they love someone too much to risk their safety.
"I couldn't be with the love of my life the day she took her last breath. And I've spent eighteen years of being a ghost in my own daughter's life because the alternative was painting a target on her back," he said in a very bitter tone. "And look at what happened now. At the end, I failed them both..."
And so had I... I'd failed to protect Annabeth. And probably, just as to Marcus, that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
The night was getting colder. Somewhere nearby, an owl called. Marlen shifted in her sleep, murmuring something I couldn't hear.
"The facility where they kept you," I said slowly. "Are you sure that’s where they took Annabeth?"
"It's the most likely location. It's their main operation, where they take all the high-value captures, the ones they want to keep alive for extraction." He met my eyes. "It's also where they would have taken your parents. If they were captured instead of killed."
My heart stopped.
"What? You think they... can be alive..." The words came out barely above a whisper.
"I think it's possible. The Order doesn't waste valuable assets, and golden dragons are valuable. Your parents' healing abilities alone would make them worth keeping alive for years." He didn't finish the implication.
He didn't have to.
"But they... they just let me die and didn't even go after my siblings. Do you really think that—"
"Kaelen." Marcus's voice cut through the spiral forming in my mind. "I don't know for certain. I'm telling you it's possible, nothing more. They left you to die because they were looking for a more valuable target at the moment. It doesn't mean that they won't come back for your siblings eventually. But right now, our priority is Annabeth. We get her out first. Everything else comes after."
"I know." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Annabeth first."
"Good." He crouched down so we were eye level. "The facility is heavily fortified. Underground, multiple levels, security systems that have gotten a lot better since I was there. We can't assault it directly, not with just the four of us. We need a plan, we need time to prepare, and we need you healthy enough to fight."
"How long?"
"A few days. Maybe a week."
A week. Annabeth would be in that place for a week while I sat here recovering. The thought made me want to punch something, or scream, or transform again and burn down everything in my path until I found her.
"She's valuable to them," Marcus said, reading my face. "They won't kill her. They'll keep her alive because damaged goods aren't worth as much. She's a red dragon hybrid, probably the only one they've ever captured. They'll want to study her, not destroy her."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not meant to be. It's meant to be true." He stood up. "Rest. Heal. We start planning tomorrow."
He walked to the edge of our makeshift camp and stood there, keeping watch, his silhouette dark against the fading light.
I closed my eyes and tried to rest. Tried not to think about Annabeth in a cell somewhere underground, scared and alone, thinking I was dead. Tried not to think about my parents, if they were even still alive after years of captivity.
Tried and failed.
But I stayed still anyway. Because Marcus was right. I needed to heal. I needed to be ready.
When I walked into that facility, I was going to tear it apart from the inside.
And if my parents were there, if they were still alive after all this time...
I was bringing everyone home.