Chapter 11 11
Kaelen's POV:
I broke at least three traffic laws getting home, my hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.
Someone was in the house. While my siblings were at school, while I was with Annabeth pretending everything was normal, someone had violated the one place we were supposed to be safe.
I pulled into the driveway too fast, not even bothering to park properly, and ran for the front door.
It opened before I reached it.
Marlen stood there, her face pale but composed, that scary calm she got when she was actually terrified. Lucian was right behind her, bouncing on his feet like he wanted to hit something.
"You're okay," I said, pulling Marlen into a hug. She clung to me harder than usual. "Both of you."
"We're fine," she said into my shoulder. "Shaken up but fine."
I released her and looked at Lucian. "What happened?"
"We got home from school around three-thirty," he said, his voice tight. "Door was locked like normal. But when we went inside... things were off. Like, small things that you wouldn't notice unless you lived here."
"Show me."
They led me through the house. In the living room, the couch cushions were slightly askew. In the kitchen, one drawer was open a crack when we always kept them closed. In my room, my desk drawers had been opened and not quite closed all the way, the papers inside rifled through.
"They were looking for something," Marlen said. "But I can't figure out what. They didn't take anything obvious. Laptops are still here, Lucian's gaming system, your wallet was still in your room."
"Did you call the police?"
"No." She looked at me like I'd suggested we set ourselves on fire. "And bring attention to us? Let strangers ask questions we can't answer? No way."
She was right, of course. We couldn't involve authorities. We'd been avoiding them for years.
"Okay. Did you check the windows? The back door?"
"Everything was locked from the outside. Whoever it was picked the lock or had a key."
Which meant they knew what they were doing. Professional.
I walked through every room again, checking closets and under beds and anywhere someone could hide. Nothing. The house was empty except for us. But the violation was everywhere, in every slightly-wrong detail that screamed someone else had been here, touching our things, invading our space.
We gathered in the living room. Marlen sat on the couch, her arms wrapped around herself. Lucian paced.
"We need to leave," Marlen said. "Tonight. Pack what we can fit in the car and just go."
"Run again?" Lucian stopped pacing. "We just got here. We just started to settle in. I finally have friends at school and you want to just disappear?"
"I want to stay alive."
"We don't even know who it was. Could've been regular thieves."
"Regular thieves take stuff, Lucian. This was someone looking for information. Looking for us."
He turned to me. "Kael, you can't seriously be considering running again. We've been doing this for five years. Five years. When does it stop?"
"When we're safe," Marlen said.
"We'll never be safe! Not if we keep running. Maybe... maybe we need to fight."
"Fight who? We don't even know who's after us for sure. Could be the Order, could be someone else, could be—"
"It doesn't matter who!" Lucian's voice was rising. "I'm tired of being scared. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder every second. I'm tired of not having a home."
"You'll be really tired when you're dead."
"Enough." My voice cut through their argument. They both looked at me. "Fighting each other doesn't help anything."
"So what do we do?" Lucian asked.
I sat down heavily on the armchair, my mind racing through options. Run and be safe but lose everything we'd started to build here. Stay and risk whoever did this coming back, but at least we'd have some control over the situation.
And then there was Annabeth. If we left now, I'd never know for sure what she was. Never be able to help her if she needed it. Never...
I pushed that thought away. This wasn't about her. This was about keeping my family alive.
"We stay," I said. "But we're careful. Extremely careful."
"Kaelen—" Marlen started.
"Hear me out. If we run every time something happens, we'll spend the rest of our lives running. And Lucian's right, we'll never be safe that way either. But if we stay, we can prepare. We can set up defenses, establish escape routes, keep watch. We have control here."
"Or we have a target on our backs."
"We always have a target on our backs, Mar. At least here we know the territory."
She didn't look convinced but she didn't argue either.
"New locks," I continued. "The heavy-duty kind that are harder to pick. We establish patterns—someone's always home, we text when we leave and when we arrive. We keep go-bags ready by the doors. And we take shifts watching at night."
"You really think that's enough?" Lucian asked.
"I think it's better than running blind."
Marlen stood up. "Fine. We stay. For now. But the second I think we're in real danger, we're gone. No arguments, no hesitation. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Lucian?"
He nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. Okay."
"Good. I'm going to start packing a go-bag. You two should do the same."
She headed to their shared room, her footsteps quick and determined. Lucian flopped down on the couch.
"This is messed up," he said.
"I know."
"You think it was really the Order?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"What if they know about Annabeth?"
My blood went cold. "They don't."
"But what if they do? What if that's why they were here, looking for information about her?"
"Lucian, stop."
"I'm just saying, if you're getting close to her and they're watching—"
"They're not watching. And even if they were, they wouldn't know about her. We've been careful."
He looked at me with those eyes that were too old for fifteen. "Have we?"
I didn't answer.
After he went to the room, I did another sweep of the house, this time looking for things my siblings might have missed. I checked every window frame, every door jamb, every place someone might have left evidence of their presence.
That's when I found it.
On the back door, barely visible unless you knew what to look for, someone had scratched a small symbol into the wood just below the handle. It was crude but unmistakable: a circle with three lines radiating out from the center, ending in arrow points.
I'd seen it before. In my mother's books, in the research my father had done before they disappeared.
The mark of the Order.
They hadn't just been in our house looking for information. They'd left a message. "We know where you are. We know what you are. We're coming."
My hand shook as I traced the symbol with my finger.
Five years. We'd been running for five years and they'd finally caught up.
I could tell Marlen and Lucian. Should tell them. This changed everything.
But if I told them, Marlen would insist we leave tonight. And Lucian... Lucian would want to fight, would do something reckless and stupid and brave.
I couldn't let either of those things happen. Not yet.
Not until I figured out how to protect them both, and maybe, if I was being honest with myself, protect Annabeth too.
I grabbed a kitchen knife and scratched over the symbol, destroying it, the wood splintering under the blade. When I was done, it just looked like damage from the break-in, nothing significant.
Then I went to my room to pack my own go-bag, the weight of that destroyed symbol pressing on my chest like a stone.
The Order knew we were here.
And I had no idea how much time we had left.