Chapter 115 115
Kaelen's POV:
The corridors were total chaos, smoke and red emergency lights and people screaming somewhere in the distance. I didn't know where I was going exactly, just followed the bond, that warm pull in my chest that said she's this way, she's close, keep moving.
Two guards came around a corner and I didn't slow down. Just threw fire at them, golden flames that sent them stumbling back with their uniforms on fire, and kept running. My chest hurt, the wound from the harpoon still not fully healed, but I didn't care. Nothing mattered except getting to her.
And then I felt it.
Through the bond, something... shifted. Changed. Grew. It was like watching a candle turn into a bonfire, this massive surge of power that hit me so hard I actually stumbled, had to catch myself against the wall.
What the hell?
Pain came next, sharp and overwhelming, and it wasn't mine. It was hers. Annabeth was in pain, real pain, the kind that made you want to scream, and I couldn't do anything except stand there and feel it with her.
And then... and then something impossible happened.
I felt her transform.
Not partial, not the little bursts of fire and heat that hybrids could manage, but a full transformation, the kind that only purebloods could do, bones reshaping and scales pushing through skin and wings bursting from her back. I felt all of it through the bond, every crack and tear and moment of agony, and I couldn't breathe because this wasn't possible, hybrids couldn't transform, everyone knew that, it was basic dragon biology.
But she was doing it anyway.
Pride hit me so hard it almost knocked me over. My mate. My girl. She was doing the impossible, she was becoming something no one thought she could be, and even through the pain I could feel her fierce satisfaction, her righteous anger, her absolute refusal to be weak or small or helpless.
That was my girl. God, that was my fucking girl.
It only lasted for some minutes in which I could barely move, overwhelmed by her emotions, and then the transformation ended. I then felt her shrink back down, felt the exhaustion and pain that came with it, and I pushed off the wall and started running again. Faster now, because she was hurt and tired and I needed to be there.
More guards. Three of them this time, coming from a side corridor, and I didn't even think about it. Just let the fire build in my hands and threw it at them, watched them scatter and scream, didn't stop to see if they got back up. I could feel my eyes burning gold, could feel the dragon form right there under my skin, but I didn't transform. Couldn't afford the time it would take.
The bond pulled me left, then right, down a set of stairs, through a set of double doors that had been melted open, the handles nothing but slag on the floor.
And then I saw it.
The corridor ahead was destroyed. Walls cracked and crumbling, ceiling partially collapsed, and bodies everywhere. Guards, or what was left of them. Some burned beyond recognition. Some just... broken.
She did this. Annabeth did this.
I stepped over a body and kept moving, following the bond, and that's when I heard voices. Her voice.
"Let's go."
I turned a corner and there she was.
She was wearing a guard's uniform, way too big for her, the pants rolled up at the ankles and the vest hanging loose on her shoulders. Her hair was a mess, tangled and dirty, and there was blood on her face, on her hands, on everything. She looked exhausted and beat up and absolutely, impossibly beautiful.
"Annabeth," I said, and my voice came out rough, broken.
She spun around. Her eyes went wide, and for a second she just stared at me, like she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"Kaelen?" Her voice cracked on my name. "You're... you're alive, you're actually..."
I crossed the distance between us in three steps and grabbed her, pulled her against my chest and held on so tight I was probably hurting her but I couldn't make myself let go. She was real. She was HERE. She was alive and warm and solid in my arms and I could feel her heart beating against mine, feel the bond singing between us, and I wanted to cry but I was too busy holding her to bother with tears.
"I thought you were dead," she was saying into my chest, her words muffled against my shirt. "I felt your heart stop, I felt you die, I thought—"
"I know." I pressed my face into her hair, breathed her in, smoke and sweat and blood and underneath it all just HER. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Don't you ever do that to me again." She pulled back just enough to look at my face, and her eyes were wet, red-rimmed, furious. "Don't you EVER—"
I kissed her. Couldn't help it. Just grabbed her face and kissed her hard, desperate, trying to pour everything I couldn't say into it. I love you. I missed you. I thought I'd never see you again. I'm here now. I'm not leaving.
She kissed me back just as hard, her hands fisting in my shirt, and for a moment nothing else existed except the two of us, standing in a destroyed corridor surrounded by bodies, alive and together.
And then someone behind her made a sound. A small, choked noise that made me pull back from the kiss and look up.
A woman was standing there. Thin and worn, with blond hair streaked with gray and eyes that were... that were gold. The same gold as mine in that moment. The same gold as Marlen's and Lucian's.
My brain stopped working.
"Kaelen?" the woman said, and her voice was shaking. "Kaelen, baby, is that you?"
I couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything except stare at her face, at the features I'd been trying to remember for five years, at the eyes that used to watch me do homework and tuck me into bed and tell me everything was going to be okay.
"Mom...?" The word came out like a question, like I wasn't sure, like maybe I was hallucinating or dreaming or dying and this was some kind of final vision before the end.
But she was real. She was HERE. She was walking toward me with tears streaming down her face and her arms opening, and I let go of Annabeth and stepped forward and then my mother was hugging me, holding me, and she smelled wrong, like chemicals and concrete and years of captivity, but she was still my mom. Still the woman who'd raised me, who'd taught me to control my fire when I was six and terrified of hurting someone, who'd sung me to sleep when I had nightmares.
My mom... I was with my mom again...
"My baby," she kept saying, her voice breaking. "My baby, my boy, oh god, they told me you were dead, they said they killed you, I thought—"
"I'm okay." I was crying now, couldn't help it, tears running down my face and soaking into her hair. "I'm okay, Mom, I'm here, I'm alive."
"Five years." She pulled back to look at my face, her hands on my cheeks, her thumbs wiping at my tears. "Five years, Kaelen. You got so big. You're a man now. My little boy is a man."
"I'm twenty-two," I said, and it came out like a laugh and a sob at the same time.
"I know. I counted every birthday. Every single one." Her face crumpled. "I missed all of them. I missed everything. Marlen and Lucian, are they—"
"They're fine. They're outside, waiting. They're gonna..." I had to stop, swallow, try again. "They're gonna be so happy to see you."
She hugged me again, tight and desperate, and I held her back and let myself feel it, let myself have this moment even though we were in the middle of an enemy facility with alarms still wailing and explosions still shaking the building.
My mother was alive. She was RIGHT HERE. And I was never letting anyone take her away again.
"Hey." Annabeth's voice, gentle but firm. "I hate to interrupt, but we still have to get Erik. And there are probably more guards coming."
Right. Erik. My father, who I hadn't seen in five years either, who was somewhere in this building waiting to be rescued.
I pulled back from my mom, wiped my face with the back of my hand, tried to get myself together. "Where is he?"
"East wing," Mom said. "They keep mates separated. He's..." She stopped, looked at me with something new in her eyes. Not just love, not just relief. Curiosity. "Kaelen. Your bond. I can feel it, you're bonded to her, you're actually—"
"Yeah." I looked at Annabeth, at this impossible girl who'd transformed into a dragon and burned her way through an army to save my mother. "She's my mate."
"She transformed." Mom's voice was quiet now, awed. "I saw it. Kaelen, she's a hybrid. Hybrids can't—"
"I know." I couldn't help the smile that spread across my face, even with everything else going on. "She did it anyway. That's kind of her thing. Doing impossible shit."
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here," Annabeth said, but she was smiling too, just a little.
Mom looked between us, and something in her face softened. "She came for me. She didn't even know me, and she came for me."
"She's stubborn like that." I reached out and took Annabeth's hand, laced our fingers together. "We can do the family reunion thing properly later. Right now we need to find Dad."
"This way," Mom said, wiping her own face and straightening up. "It's not far. And Kaelen... your father is going to cry when he sees you. Just so you're prepared."
I squeezed Annabeth's hand and followed my mother down the corridor. My chest hurt, my eyes were still burning from crying, and somewhere above us I could hear Marcus tearing the building apart.
But for the first time in days, maybe for the first time in years, I felt like everything might actually be okay.