Chapter 96 96
Annabeth's POV:
Marcus said we had maximum three days to prepare. Three days of training from dawn until our bodies gave out, of memorizing escape routes and backup plans and emergency protocols. Three days that felt like both an eternity and nothing at all.
Marlen took the planning more seriously than I expected. She sat at the kitchen table with maps spread out around her, marking points with a red Sharpie and muttering coordinates under her breath like she was studying for an exam. When I asked her about it she looked at me with those sharp eyes that were so much like Kaelen's and said, "If we have to run, I'm not going to be the one who gets us caught because I forgot which direction the river was."
She was thirteen. Thirteen and already planning her escape route from men who wanted to use her blood for experiments. I wanted to hug her and also punch every single person who had ever made her life this way.
Lucian was different. He trained without complaining for once, throwing punches at the bag Marcus had set up behind the cabin until his knuckles split and bled through the wraps. When Kaelen tried to tell him to take a break he just shook his head and kept going, this weird focused intensity in his face that didn't match the goofy kid I'd gotten used to.
"He's scared," Kaelen said to me that night while we lay in my bed, our bodies tangled, but totally dressed up. We didn’t have much time or mind now to think about sex. Through the bond I could feel his worry, this constant low hum underneath everything else. "He's pretending he's not but I can tell. He hasn't slept right in two days."
"Neither have you."
"That's different."
"How?"
He didn't answer. Just pulled me closer and buried his face in my hair, breathing me in like I might disappear if he stopped paying attention for a second.
The bond was a weird thing to get used to. Sometimes it felt like having another heartbeat in my chest, steady and reassuring. Other times it was overwhelming, his emotions flooding into mine until I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. During training we were perfectly synchronized, moving together like we'd practiced for years instead of days. But at night, when his nightmares bled into mine and I woke up screaming in a language I didn't speak, it was harder to see the upside.
On the third night Marcus called a meeting at the kitchen table.
"Tomorrow I'm meeting with my contact again," he said, his voice flat in that way it got when he was saying something he didn't like. "He says he has information about their approach route. If he's telling the truth, we'll have warning before they move."
"And if he's lying?" Kaelen asked.
Marcus didn't answer. He didn't need to.
After the meeting broke up, after Marlen had triple-checked her maps and Lucian had finally gone to bed and Marcus had disappeared into the woods for his nightly perimeter check, Kaelen and I sat on the back porch in the dark. The air smelled like pine and smoke and that weird electricity that comes before a storm, even though the sky was clear.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Anything."
"If something happens tomorrow—"
"Nothing's going to happen."
"Kaelen."
He went quiet. Through the bond I felt his resistance, this wall he was trying to put up between his fear and mine. It wasn't working. I could feel everything anyway, the terror he wouldn't admit, the guilt that he'd somehow brought this on all of us, the desperate need to protect everyone and the knowledge that he might not be able to.
"If something happens," I said again, slower this time, "I need you to take care of Marlen and Lucian first. Not me. Them."
"That's not—"
"Promise me."
"I can't promise you that."
"Why not?"
He turned to look at me, and even in the dark I could see the gold bleeding into his eyes, that dragon shine that came when his emotions ran hot. "Because I physically cannot put anyone before you. The bond doesn't work that way. If you're in danger my body will move to protect you whether my brain agrees or not. It's not a choice anymore, Annabeth. It's instinct."
I should have been scared by that. Maybe I was, a little. But mostly I just felt sad, because I understood exactly what he meant. If something happened to him tomorrow I wouldn't be able to stand back and let it play out either. I'd throw myself into the fire trying to save him, literally, and probably get us both killed in the process.
"So we're both screwed," I said.
"Pretty much."
"Great."
We sat there for a while longer, not talking, just existing together in the dark. I could hear the forest around us, all those night sounds that I'd gotten used to over the past days. Crickets, an owl somewhere, the wind moving through the trees like it was looking for something.
"I used to think about the future a lot," Kaelen said quietly. "Before my parents disappeared. I'd make these stupid plans, you know? College, career, maybe living in a city someday where I could just be a person, a great professional, even a writer, instead of hiding all the time. And then everything went to shit and I stopped. Because what was the point? Any plan I made could fall apart overnight. I just kept transferring to new schools every time we had to run, losing credits, sometimes losing whole semesters because when you disappear overnight you can't exactly ask for your transcripts. I stopped taking it seriously because it could all be over in just hours. And it did..."
"And now?"
"Now I think about it again." He reached over and took my hand, his fingers warm against mine. "Stupid things. Like waking up next to you in a place that's actually ours. Or watching you argue with Marlen about something ridiculous while Lucian makes breakfast and burns it like he always does. Or just... being old together. Sitting on some porch somewhere when we're eighty and complaining about our backs."
My throat got tight. "That sounds nice."
"Yeah." His thumb traced circles on my palm. "It does."
I leaned over and kissed him. Not desperate like we'd been doing lately, but soft, almost gentle. The kind of kiss that said something I couldn't put into words. He kissed me back the same way, one hand coming up to cup my face like I was something precious, something worth protecting.
When we pulled apart he pressed his forehead against mine, both of us breathing the same air, both of us feeling what the other felt through that connection that had become as natural as my own heartbeat.
"Whatever happens tomorrow or the days to come," he said, "I love you. I need you to know that. I love you and I'm not going to stop, not ever, not even if—"
"I know." I cut him off because I couldn't hear the rest of that sentence. Couldn't let him finish it. "I love you too."
We went to bed after that. He was not sleeping in the couch anymore, but with me. We just kissed, like it might be the last time even though neither of us said that out loud. And then we lay there in the dark, his arms around me, my head on his chest, listening to each other breathe.
I fell asleep thinking that tomorrow everything would be fine.
Marcus would meet his contact. We'd get the information we needed. We'd have time to prepare, to plan, to figure out how to fight back.
Everything would be fine.
But I was wrong.