Chapter 98 98
Annabeth's POV:
I'd imagined it before. In dreams, in those shared visions where we flew together through moonlit skies. I thought I knew what Kaelen looked like as a dragon.
I was so wrong.
Nothing could have prepared me for this.
One second he was human, pinned to the floor by three operatives with a device pressed against his neck. The next second everything changed. His skin started to glow, actually glow, this golden light radiating from somewhere deep inside him. The men holding him stumbled back, their gloves smoking, and I heard one of them scream as his tactical vest caught fire.
And then Kaelen... exploded.
That's the only word for it. His body expanded outward so fast that the cabin couldn't contain it. Walls flew apart like cardboard. The roof tore open. I threw myself to the ground and covered my head as debris rained down around me, wood and glass and chunks of plaster crashing everywhere.
When I looked up, there was a dragon where Kaelen had been.
God... Oh my god...
He was enormous. Bigger than I'd ever imagined, bigger than anything had a right to be. Thirty feet from nose to tail, maybe more, his body coiled and powerful and terrifying. His scales were the color of sunrise, gold and amber and copper all mixed together, gleaming through the smoke like he was made of pure light. His wings stretched wide enough to block out the sky, the membrane thin enough to see the sun through, ribbed with bones that looked like burnished metal.
His eyes were still his. That was the part that made my breath catch. Those same golden eyes I knew so well, now set in a face built for nightmares or fairytales, ancient and terrible and beautiful beyond anything I'd ever seen.
He was magnificent. He was destruction incarnate. And he was mine.
The operatives who'd been dragging me toward the van had frozen when the cabin exploded. Now they ran, abandoning me in the dirt, screaming into their radios. And Kaelen, God, I watched him hunt them down.
The first three died before they could even raise their weapons. His claws went through their tactical gear like it was paper, bodies falling, blood spraying across the pine needles in bright red arcs. The fourth one managed to get a shot off with his sonic device, but it bounced off Kaelen's scales without effect, designed for hybrid fire, not a full dragon in battle form.
Kaelen's fire hit him a second later, this torrent of golden flames that didn't just burn the man but erased him. One second he was there, solid and real. The next he was ash drifting on the morning breeze.
The ones who had been holding me dropped me and ran. Smart. Not smart enough.
Kaelen caught them in his jaws before they made it ten feet. I heard the crunch of bones, saw the bodies go limp, watched him toss them aside like they were nothing.
I should have been horrified. Part of me was, maybe, some small human part that still understood what it meant to watch people die. But mostly I just felt safe. For the first time since the windows shattered, I felt completely and utterly safe.
Because nothing could hurt me now. Nothing could touch me with him standing between me and the world, thirty feet of scales and teeth and golden fire.
He killed them all.
Every single one who hadn't run fast enough, who'd been stupid enough to stay and fight instead of fleeing into the forest. Bodies everywhere, burning and broken, and Kaelen standing over the carnage with his wings spread wide, roaring at the sky like he was daring anyone else to try.
Through the bond I felt him. Not human thoughts, not exactly, but something older and fiercer. Protect. Mine. Kill anything that threatens what is mine.
It should have been terrifying. It wasn't. It was just him. The part of him he'd been hiding for so long, finally free.
"KAELEN!" I screamed.
His massive head swung toward me. That golden eye, bigger than my whole torso, focused on my face with an intensity that made my heart stutter. I could see myself reflected in it, tiny and fragile and human, but he looked at me like I was the most precious thing in the entire world.
I got to my feet. My legs were shaking, my whole body was shaking, but I walked toward him anyway. Toward the dragon. Toward Kaelen.
He lowered his head as I approached, bringing his snout down to my level. Up close, his scales were even more beautiful, each one perfectly formed, warm to the touch when I finally reached out and pressed my palm against him.
Through the bond I sent everything I felt. Love. Wonder. Gratitude. You saved me. You beautiful, terrifying, magnificent creature, you saved me.
He made a sound, something between a purr and a rumble, the vibration traveling through his whole body and into my hand and down into my bones. His eye half-closed and I felt his emotions shift through the bond, from killing rage to something gentler. Something that wrapped around me like an embrace.
We won, I thought. We actually won. They came for us with their weapons and their numbers and we—
The sound came first.
A whistle. High and thin, cutting through the smoke and the crackling flames. I didn't understand what it was, didn't recognize it, but Kaelen's head snapped up and through the bond I felt his spike of alarm.
And then the impact.
The harpoon came from the trees. Massive, black, barbed, fired from somewhere I couldn't see. It punched through his back just below the left wing joint, angled downward, and I watched the tip explode out through his chest in a spray of red.
Red. His blood was red, bright arterial red, and there was so much of it.
Everything after that happened in fragments. Broken pieces of a moment that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Kaelen screaming. Not a roar, not the sound a dragon makes. A scream. High and broken and wrong, the sound of something dying.
The bond flooding with his pain. So much pain that my own legs gave out, that I fell to my knees in the dirt because it felt like the harpoon had gone through me too.