Chapter 59 DIVIDED LOYALTIES
Ava's POV
Elias came back into the room and closed the door behind him and looked at Dominic and me and said, "he's alone and he's not armed, at least not visibly," and then he looked at me specifically and said, "it's your call."
I looked at Dominic and he looked back at me with his jaw tight and said nothing, which was his way of saying he had an opinion and was holding it because he'd decided this was mine to make, and I appreciated that even though it didn't make it easier.
"Let him in," I said.
Elias went back out and a few minutes later my father walked through the door and the safe house went quiet the way it had when I walked in, except this time the quiet felt hostile, people shifting in their seats, someone near the back wall standing up slowly.
My father noticed all of it and kept walking anyway, which told me he'd walked into hostile rooms before and knew how to carry himself through them.
He stopped a few feet from me and looked at my face and then at the mark on my shoulder which was visible above my collar and something moved in his expression, not guilt exactly, something older and more complicated than guilt.
"Ava," he said.
"Don't," I said, because whatever he was about to say I didn't want it to start with my name said softly like an apology, "just tell me why you're here."
He looked at Dominic briefly and then back to me.
"Because what's coming is bigger than what you know," he said, "and I'm not here to fight, I'm here because you're my daughter and the hunters I work with have been given a new order and you need to know what it is."
"What order," Dominic said from beside me, his voice completely flat.
My father looked at him and I could see the effort it took him not to look away and he said, "kill the marked one before the bond completes, they've moved the timeline up, they're not waiting anymore."
The room was very still.
"They're going to kill me," I said, just to make sure I understood it cleanly.
"They're going to try," my father said, "and I'm telling you because I may be many things but I am not going to stand by and watch my daughter die."
"You watched her struggle for years," Dominic said quietly, and there was something in his voice that was worse than anger, something cold and final, "you watched her mother get sick and you let it happen and you never once,"
"Dominic," I said, touching his arm, and he stopped but the muscle in his jaw didn't.
I looked at my father and thought about everything Elias had told me about who he was and what he'd done and I thought about the eight year old version of me waiting for him to come back and I let myself feel that for exactly three seconds and then I put it down because I didn't have room for it right now.
"If you came to warn me then warn me properly," I said, "everything, all of it, how many, when, how they're planning to move."
He told us and it was worse than I expected, not a small group like the six from the hotel, a coordinated operation, multiple entry points, people already positioned around the safe house neighborhood which meant they either knew this location or had narrowed it down significantly.
"How long do we have," Elias asked, and he'd been leaning against the wall through all of this with his arms crossed and his face very still, watching my father the way you watch something you've known for a long time and still don't trust.
"Hours, not days," my father said.
Elias looked at Dominic and Dominic looked at me and the three of us had a full conversation without saying anything.
Adrian appeared in the doorway of the back room, his side bandaged now, moving carefully but upright, and he took one look at my father and his hand went to his back automatically.
"Easy," I said to him and he lowered his hand but didn't relax.
"We need to move again," Dominic said, looking at Elias, "is there another location."
"There is but it's an hour out of the city," Elias said, "and we'd need cars."
"Get them," Dominic said.
While Elias went to sort that out I went to the back room and sat on the cot and pressed my hands flat on my thighs and breathed and tried to put my thoughts in some kind of order and failed and then my father appeared in the doorway.
"Don't," I said, not looking up.
"I just want five minutes," he said.
"You want five minutes," I said and now I did look up at him, "you had fifteen years and you chose what you chose with them, you don't get five minutes now because things got dangerous."
He was quiet and he looked like that landed and good, it should have landed.
"Your mother," he started.
"Don't talk to me about my mother," I said and my voice came out sharp enough that he stepped back slightly, "you know what you did to her and you know she's been sick because of it and the fact that you're standing here now doesn't change any of that."
"I know," he said, and he said it so simply, no defense, no explanation, just I know, and that was somehow harder to deal with than if he'd argued.
I stood up because sitting felt too vulnerable and I crossed the small room and stopped in front of him.
"Is anything you told me true," I said, "when you said you left to protect us, was any part of that real."
He met my eyes. "The part where I didn't want to leave you, yes, that was real, everything else was a lie I told myself to make it livable."
I didn't know what to do with that honesty so I stepped past him and went back out to where Dominic was standing with Adrian, both of them looking at a rough map Elias had drawn on a piece of paper, and I went to Dominic's side and he moved his arm around me without looking up from the map and I leaned into him and let that steady me.
We left forty minutes later, three cars, everyone split between them, and I ended up in the middle car with Dominic driving and Adrian in the back lying down because Elias had said firmly that he needed to stay horizontal and Adrian had argued and then complied.
My father was in the third car and I didn't look back at it.
We drove in silence for a while and the city thinned out around us and the roads got darker and I stared out the window and thought about everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours and the mark on my shoulder pulsed warmly and steadily like it was trying to tell me something.
"I'm scared," I said to Dominic, not dramatically, just saying it because it was true and he was the person I said true things to.
"I know," he said, his hand finding my knee and squeezing once.
"My father said they're going to try to kill me," I said.
"They're going to try," he said, and the emphasis on try was quiet but absolute, "and they're going to fail."
I put my hand over his on my knee and held it and he turned his palm up and laced his fingers through mine and we drove like that through the dark English countryside and I tried to believe him and mostly managed it.
We were maybe twenty minutes outside the city when Adrian's voice came from the back seat, calm and certain the way he always was even when he absolutely shouldn't be.
"Dominic," he said quietly, "we have a tail, two cars, been with us since we left the city, and they just turned their lights off."
Dominic's hand tightened on mine once and then he let go and both hands went to the wheel and his whole body changed, that shift I'd seen before, human edges dropping away, something older and more certain taking over underneath.
"Hold on," he said to both of us, and then to me specifically, very quietly, "whatever happens next, do not get out of the car.”