Chapter 58 SAFE HOUSE
Ava's POV
Nobody moved for a moment, just me and this man standing in the middle of that underground room with everyone watching and his eyes wet and my heart doing something I couldn't name.
"Who are you," I said quietly.
"My name is Cael," he said, and his voice was steady now, controlled, like he'd pulled himself back from somewhere, "and I knew your grandmother for thirty years before they took her from me."
I heard Dominic come to stand behind me and I felt him there without turning, that familiar warmth at my back, and Cael looked over my shoulder at him and something passed between them, not warmth exactly, more like two people who knew each other's names from a long war.
"Hayes," Cael said.
"Cael," Dominic said back, same flat tone.
I looked around the room properly then and what I saw made me go still, there were maybe twenty people in the space, some sitting, some standing, all of them looking at me with that same careful attention, and none of them looked fully human, not in any way I could point to specifically, just something in how they held themselves, how their eyes caught the light differently.
"Sit down," Elias said from behind us, and I turned and he was at a table near the wall, pulling out chairs, "all of you, Adrian especially."
Adrian didn't argue and lowered himself into a chair carefully and I sat across from him and Dominic sat next to me and Cael took the seat at the end of the table and the rest of the room went back to whatever it had been doing before we walked in.
Someone brought a medical kit for Adrian without being asked and started working on his side while he sat very still and pretended it didn't hurt.
"There's a war coming," Cael said, looking at me, not at Dominic, at me, "it's been building for twenty years and you are the reason it's finally arrived."
"Me specifically," I said.
"Your bloodline specifically," he said, "your grandmother was the first marked woman in three generations and when she and I bonded it should have changed things, it was proof that the two kinds could exist together without destruction, but your father's faction didn't want proof, they wanted the old separation maintained and so they took her and they severed it and they've been trying to prevent it happening again ever since."
"My father's faction," I said slowly, turning that over.
"Your father is not just a man who abandoned his family," Cael said and his voice was careful but not kind, "he is one of the oldest hunters alive and he has been running operations against bonded pairs for fifteen years and the reason he married your mother and then left is because he needed to confirm she was marked and once he confirmed it he reported her location to his people and they suppressed the bond before it could complete."
The room was very quiet and I sat there and breathed and let that land fully because it needed to land fully, not be pushed aside or processed later, my father had not left because he was weak or selfish or afraid, he had left because he had done what he came to do and his daughter was collateral and acceptable.
"And my mother has been sick ever since," I said.
"Yes," Cael said.
"Can it be reversed," I asked and I heard how flat my voice had gone, that place past emotional where things just become questions that need answers.
Cael looked at Elias and something moved between them.
"If your bond with Dominic completes fully," Elias said carefully, "the bloodline activates completely, and a fully activated bond can be used to reverse a suppression, yes."
"So my mother gets better if I complete the bond," I said.
"Potentially," Dominic said from beside me, and I turned to look at him and he was watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read, "it's not guaranteed Ava, I don't want you to make a decision based on—"
"I know," I said, "I'm not deciding anything right now, I'm just understanding what's actually happening."
He nodded and went quiet and I turned back to Cael.
"The hunters who came to the hotel tonight," I said, "are they my father's people."
"Yes," Cael said, "and now that you're marked visibly they won't stop, a visible mark means the bond is close to completing and a completed bond is exactly what they've spent twenty years preventing."
Adrian made a quiet sound from across the table, nothing dramatic, just breath through his teeth, and the person working on his side said something low and he nodded.
"How long can we stay here," Dominic asked Elias.
"Two days, maybe three," Elias said, "they don't know this location but they're not stupid and they'll work outward from the hotel."
"Then we need a plan," Dominic said.
"We need rest first," I said, because I was running on empty and making plans while running on empty was how you made bad ones, and Dominic looked at me and after a moment he nodded.
Elias showed us to a back room, small and plain with two cots pushed against opposite walls, and I sat on one and took my shoes off and tried to think about nothing for five minutes and failed completely.
Dominic sat on the other cot and looked at me and I looked back at him.
"You're processing," he said.
"I'm trying to," I said, "my father is a hunter who married my mother to report her location and my grandmother's bond got severed and now I'm underground in London with twenty supernatural people and someone named Cael who cries at my face, yes I'm processing."
Dominic's mouth did the almost-smile thing.
"Come here," he said quietly, and I got up and crossed to his cot and sat next to him and he put his arm around me and I leaned into him and we sat like that for a while, just still and quiet with the muffled sounds of the safe house around us.
"Tell me something good," I said.
He thought about it for a moment and then said, "when this is over I'm taking you somewhere with no phones, no courts, no hunters, no marks, just you and me and a very large bed and nothing else for at least two weeks," and the certainty in his voice, like it was already decided, already real, settled something in my chest that had been loose all day.
"Promise," I said.
"Promise," he said.
I turned my face into his neck and he held me tighter and I was almost calm, almost settled, right up until the safe house door at the far end of the room opened and heavy footsteps came down the corridor and stopped outside our door and someone knocked twice, sharp and deliberate.
Dominic was on his feet before the second knock finished and I was right behind him and he opened the door and Cael was standing there and his face had changed completely, all the careful control from earlier gone, replaced by something urgent and raw.
"There's someone upstairs asking for entry," Cael said, and his voice was tight, "says he's here to protect Ava, says she'll confirm who he is," and he looked at me and I felt my stomach drop before he even said the name.
"Says his name is Scott," Cael said, "says he's her father.”