Chapter 72 72
Annabeth's POV:
Kaelen was crouched beside the bed with his hands up, palms out, not touching me. Smart. He'd learned not to grab someone coming out of a nightmare, or maybe he'd just figured out that I'd swing first and ask questions later.
My chest was heaving. My shirt was soaked with sweat, stuck to my back and my stomach, and my hands were shaking so hard the blanket I was gripping was vibrating. The room was dark except for the faint light from the hallway through the open door.
"You're okay," he said. His voice was steady but I could see his face in the dim light and it was anything but steady. "You're at Mill Road. Marcus's place. Nobody's here except me. You're safe."
"The needle," I said, and my voice came out as this broken thing that didn't sound like me. "They had the needle and I couldn't... my fire wasn't—"
"I know. It was a dream. Just a dream."
"It wasn't just a dream." I was shaking harder now, not less, my whole body trembling like it was thirty below zero and not just a November night in a heated safe house. "They held me down and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't fight back. They just... they took everything and I couldn't stop them."
"I know." He was still crouching, still not touching me. Waiting. The way you wait for a hurt animal to decide you're not a threat.
"I punched you," I realized. My right hand was throbbing. "Shit. Did I punch you?"
"Clipped my jaw. It's fine, already healed."
"Sorry."
"Don't be."
I was still shaking. The sweat was cooling on my skin and making everything worse, this clammy disgusting feeling that reminded me of the hotel, of the drug hitting my system, of my body going cold. I pulled the blanket tighter around myself but it didn't help. Nothing was helping. The shaking was getting worse, not better, and my breathing was doing that thing where it sped up and got shallow and I knew if I didn't get it under control I was going to hyperventilate.
"Can I touch you?" Kaelen asked. Quiet. Careful. "Just your hand. To help you breathe."
I nodded. Couldn't speak because my jaw was clenched so tight my teeth hurt.
He took my hand. Just one. His fingers wrapped around mine and the warmth was immediate, not healing this time, just him, just the natural heat of a golden dragon's body that ran fifteen degrees hotter than human.
I focused on that warmth. On his fingers, solid and real, not the hands from the dream, not the ones that pinned and held and grabbed. These hands were different. These hands had broken down a door for me.
"Breathe with me," he said. "In... and out. Slow. In... and out."
I tried. The first breath came out shaky, stuttered, more sob than breath. The second was better. The third almost normal.
"Good," he said. "Keep going."
In. Out. In. Out. His thumb was doing that thing again, that small stroke across my knuckles, and this time it wasn't subtle or unconscious. It was deliberate. Grounding. Something to focus on besides the ice in my veins that wasn't really there anymore.
"They grabbed my hair," I said. I don't know why that detail was the one that broke me. Not the needle, not the device, not being surrounded by eight men who wanted to drain my blood. The hair. Someone grabbing a fistful of it and yanking my head back like I was nothing, like I was a thing to be moved and positioned and stuck with needles.
"I know," Kaelen said again. And his voice was doing something, cracking at the edges in a way he was clearly trying to control.
"I couldn't do anything." The tears started and I couldn't stop them. "I'm supposed to be this powerful red dragon, the rarest lineage in existence, and they grabbed my hair and stuck a needle in my neck and I couldn't do a single fucking thing about it."
"You fought. You burned half of them before they—"
"It wasn't enough."
"Annabeth..."
"It wasn't enough." I was crying now, really crying, the kind where your face goes ugly and your nose runs and you can't breathe through it. "And my fire's still gone and I'm sitting in this house and I can't even... I can't even shower without getting dizzy. I'm useless. I'm completely useless and they're going to come back and next time you might not be there and—"
I grabbed him.
Didn't plan it, didn't think about it. One second I was sitting on the bed crying with his hand in mine and the next I had fistfuls of his shirt and I was pulling him toward me, or pulling myself toward him, I wasn't sure which, and then his arms were around me and my face was buried in his chest and I was sobbing so hard my ribs hurt.
He held me. Didn't say anything stupid like it's okay or it'll be fine or you're strong. Just held me, both arms tight around my back, one hand cradling the back of my head, his chin resting on top of my hair. I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt, fast but steady, and his breathing, deliberate, controlled, the way he breathed when he was trying to keep himself together for my sake.
I cried for a long time. I don't know how long. Long enough that his shirt was soaked through, long enough that my throat was raw and my eyes felt swollen shut. He held me through all of it, barely moving, his hand making slow circles on my back. Not healing. Just being there.
When the tears finally slowed I became aware of things. His smell, the real one under the cheap soap, that cedar-cinnamon thing that had become the smell of safety in my brain whether I wanted it to or not. The way my fingers were cramped from gripping his shirt so hard. The fact that I was basically in his lap at this point, my legs curled under me and his arms wrapped around me and zero distance between our bodies.
I should move.
I should definitely move. Pull back, wipe my face, say sorry, thank him, put the distance back where it belonged. That was the plan. That had been the plan for weeks: keep the wall up, don't let him back in, stay angry because angry was safer than whatever this was.
But my body didn't get the memo. My fingers wouldn't unclench from his shirt. My face wouldn't lift from his chest. My legs wouldn't unfold and carry me back to my side of the bed. Everything in me, every cell, every instinct, every dragon thing that lived in my blood, was saying stay. Just stay.
So I did.
His arms tightened, just a fraction, like he'd been waiting for me to pull away and when I didn't, some tension in him released. Not all of it. Not even most of it. But some. His chin was still on top of my head and I could feel his breath in my hair, warm and unsteady.
"I'm scared," I whispered into his chest. The fabric muffled my voice but I knew he heard it.
"Me too."
"Not just of the Order. Of everything. Of my fire coming back wrong, of them finding us here, of..." I swallowed. "Of this. Of you."
His hand stopped making circles on my back. Just rested there, warm and still.
"I know," he said. His voice was rough. "You should be. I lied to you and I killed people and I'm holding you right now like I have any right to and I—"
"Shut up." I pressed my face harder against his chest. "Just... shut up for a minute. I don't want to hear about rights. I don't want to talk about who deserves what. I just want to not shake for five minutes."
He shut up.
The shaking slowed. Not stopped, but slowed, each breath coming easier, each wave of trembling less intense than the last. His warmth seeped through my skin, through my muscles, into whatever cold terrified place the nightmare had left inside me.
The room was quiet except for our breathing and the wind outside and the faint hum of the fridge in the kitchen, that annoying rattling sound it made every few seconds. Normal sounds. Safe sounds. The sounds of a crappy house where nothing was trying to kill me.
I don't know when I fell asleep. One second I was there, awake, pressed against his chest with my fists in his shirt and his arms around me, and the next second I wasn't. Just... gone. Sliding under without a fight, like my body had decided that this, right here, was safe enough to let go.
I didn't dream anymore.