Chapter 27 The Departure
Aurora:
It feels wrong to pack your life into boxes when the world hasn’t ended yet.
Clothes, toys, files, memories, all crammed into two suitcases and one question I can’t stop asking myself.
What am I doing?
The twins think it’s a trip. Lior keeps calling it an adventure. Aria just hums that same soft tune again, the one that makes the air feel charged.
“Are we going far?” she asks, holding her stuffed fox.
“Not far,” I lie. “Just for a little while.”
“Ninety days?” she says, testing the number like it means something.
My stomach twists. “Something like that.”
She nods solemnly, as if ninety days is forever.
Levi arrives before dawn.
I hear him before I see him, the quiet knock, the calm presence that somehow fills every inch of air.
When I open the door, he’s dressed in black again, dry this time, composed.
Behind him, the city looks half-asleep, still wrapped in fog.
“You’re early,” I say.
“You didn’t sleep.”
“How would you know?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
Lucas appears behind him, tall, quiet, carrying more luggage than I packed.
“Morning,” he says mildly. “Ready for your relocation vacation?”
I glare at him. “Do you always make kidnapping sound so polite?”
Levi shoots him a look. “Enough.”
Lucas just smirks and starts loading the suitcases into a black SUV parked at the curb.
The twins peek from behind my legs, curious but calm.
Levi crouches to their level, voice low, measured. “Hi.”
Lior waves. “Hi, rain man.”
Aria giggles. “You came back.”
Levi freezes, something flickering across his face, surprise, maybe awe. “I promised I would.”
“Do you have cookies?” Lior asks.
He glances at me, a smile ghosting his mouth. “Not yet. But we can fix that.”
And just like that, my children trust him more than I do.
The car ride is quiet. Seattle rolls past, all glass and gray light, the hum of early morning traffic.
I keep my arms crossed, watching raindrops race down the window.
Levi sits beside me, hands steady on the wheel, focus sharp.
Every few minutes, his phone buzzes. He ignores it.
“You can drop us anywhere,” I say finally. “We don’t need...”
“You do,” he says softly.
“You think moving us into your fortress will fix everything?”
“It’ll keep you breathing,” he replies, eyes still on the road. “That’s all I care about right now.”
I look away before he can see my hands trembling.
The building he takes us to isn’t just guarded, it’s armored.
Glass and steel, thirty stories up, overlooking the Sound. The lobby smells like money and old power.
The guard at the desk nods to him with quiet respect. “Welcome back, Mr. Kingston.”
My stomach knots tighter. “You own this?”
He doesn’t answer, just guides us toward the private elevator. The twins press every button until he laughs under his breath, a sound so foreign I almost forget how much I hate it.
At the top floor, the doors open to a space that doesn’t look real.
Floor-to-ceiling windows. Marble floors. The kind of view that makes you feel both infinite and small.
Aria gasps. “We live in the clouds!”
Levi's voice softens. “For now.”
The rooms are already prepared, two bedrooms for the twins, a study turned into mine, a kitchen stocked with more food than I’ve seen in months.
Lucas gives me a brief nod before disappearing into another corridor. “I’ll handle the security sweep.”
The door clicks shut behind him, leaving me alone with Levi.
He watches me from across the room, patient, unreadable.
“You did all this overnight?” I ask.
“I’ve been preparing for weeks,” he says simply.
“Because you knew this would happen.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t.”
Something in his tone makes me pause.
I walk toward the window. The city stretches below, blurred by rain.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.
“Neither do I.”
His honesty disarms me more than his arrogance ever could.
By afternoon, the twins have claimed every corner of the penthouse. Lior builds a tower of pillows. Aria names every plant by the window.
For a while, it almost feels normal, like this isn’t exile, like we aren’t fugitives from a world I don’t believe in.
Levi spends the day on calls, voice low, speaking in a language that sounds half human, half electricity.
I catch pieces of it words like Council, boundary, containment.
When I finally confront him, he ends the call without hesitation.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
He studies me. “You remember the night I rejected you?”
I nod once, cold spreading through me.
“The bond didn’t break,” he says. “It fractured. That fracture left something open, a boundary that connects you to their power and to me.”
I shake my head. “You’re talking nonsense again.”
He takes a slow step forward. “Then explain why your heartbeat changes when I walk into the room.”
I can’t.
The silence stretches between us. His eyes find mine, steady, unblinking.
“You don’t have to believe me yet,” he says softly. “You just have to stay alive long enough to see it for yourself.”
That night, when the twins fall asleep, I find myself wandering to the balcony.
The city glitters below, a thousand lights reflecting on the wet streets.
Behind me, the sliding door opens.
Levi joins me, silent, his presence pulling the air tighter.
“You always did like high places,” he says quietly.
“Easier to fall from,” I reply.
He smiles faintly. “You never fell.”
“Only because I hit the ground first.”
His expression darkens. “I’m sorry, Aurora.”
The words are simple, but they steal the breath from my chest.
I want to tell him it’s not enough. That sorry can’t erase years. That I still wake up angry.
But when I look at him, at the way the city light catches in his eyes, at the exhaustion carved into his face, the words die on my tongue.
He’s still the storm that wrecked my life.
But he’s also the only thing standing between me and everything worse.
“Go to bed,” I say finally. “You’re bleeding again.”
He glances at his sleeve, then at me. “And you’re still pretending not to care.”
He walks away before I can answer
When the door closes, I let the mask drop.
I touch the faint glow beneath my collarbone, the mark pulsing steady as a second heart.
I don’t know if I’m trapped or protected.
But as the rain starts again, I know one thing for certain
Ninety days just became an eternity.