Chapter 118 118
Annabeth's POV:
The stairs seemed to go on forever, but maybe that was just because my legs felt like they were made of rubber and every step hurt. The first transformation had wrecked me, I could feel it in my bones, in my muscles, in every single part of my body that had been ripped apart and put back together wrong. The second had been slightly easier, but I was in pain anyway.
Kaelen's hand was solid in mine, pulling me up when I stumbled, and behind us came his family: Erik leaning on Kalessi, Marlen and Lucian holding each other up, both of them still shaky from their own transformations. The two dragons from the east wing had disappeared somewhere in the chaos, probably found their own way out.
Good for them.
We hit the main level and everything was on fire. Not regular fire, but dragon fire, the kind that burned blue at the edges and melted steel. The walls were half collapsed, the ceiling was gone in places, and bodies were everywhere. Guards, mostly. Some of them weren't even recognizable anymore.
Marcus did this. My father did this.
We stumbled through what used to be the main corridor, stepping over rubble and debris and things I didn't want to look at too closely. The front entrance was just a hole now, a massive gap in the building where the doors used to be, and through it I could see the sky turning pink at the edges.
Dawn. It was almost dawn.
We made it outside and the cold air hit me like a slap, crisp and clean after the smoke and blood and chemical stench of the facility. I took a breath, then another, and my lungs burned but in a good way, the kind of burn that meant I was alive.
And then I saw him.
Marcus was standing about fifty feet away, in dragon form, massive and red and awesome and abysmal and covered in blood that wasn't his. He was watching the building, waiting, and when we emerged through the gap his head swung toward us.
Our eyes met.
For a second neither of us moved. I couldn't read his expression, not in dragon form, but I could feel... something. Relief, maybe. Or just the absence of the fear he must have been carrying since they took me.
Then he turned back to the building and opened his mouth.
The fire that came out wasn't like anything I'd seen before. It was a wall of flame, red and orange and so hot I could feel it from here, and it hit the facility like a bomb. The whole structure groaned, shuddered, started to collapse inward. Marcus walked forward, still breathing fire, and every step he took left more destruction behind him.
He went around the entire building, targeting the parts that were still standing, burning through concrete and steel until there was nothing left but rubble and ash. The suppression system, the cells, the extraction rooms, the control center, all of it. Gone.
The Order's main facility, the place where they'd tortured dragons for decades, where they'd held Kaelen's parents for five years, where they'd drained my blood and strapped me to tables and tried to turn me into a science experiment.
Totally gone.
It took maybe ten minutes, but felt much longer.
When he was done, Marcus stood in the middle of the destruction and roared. It was the loudest sound I'd ever heard, a sound that shook the ground under my feet and echoed off the hills and probably carried for miles. A sound of rage and triumph and years of pain finally released.
Then he started shrinking.
The transformation was fast, practiced, nothing like my messy first attempt. Within seconds he was human again, naked and covered in soot and blood, standing in the ashes of everything the Order had built.
He walked toward the treeline and disappeared for a minute. When he came back he was wearing clothes, a guard's uniform that was way too small, the pants barely reaching his ankles and the shirt stretched tight across his shoulders. He looked ridiculous, honestly, but I wasn't about to laugh.
He walked toward us. Toward me.
The others hung back. Kaelen squeezed my hand and let go, and I heard him murmur something to his family, pulling them aside to give us space.
Marcus stopped about three feet away. His face was blank, guarded, the same expression he always wore. The same careful distance he'd kept between us since the day we met.
"You're hurt," he said. His voice was rough from the fire, from the roaring.
"I'm okay."
"You transformed." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah. I, uh... I did. Twice."
He nodded once, like that was all he needed to know. "We should move. There might be more of them."
Same old Marcus. All business, no emotion. Keep moving, stay alert, don't get attached.
But I was looking at him, really looking, and for the first time I wasn't seeing the cold stranger who'd shown up in my life claiming to be my father. I was seeing the man who'd left the woman he loved when she was six months pregnant because staying would have gotten her killed. The man who'd spent eighteen years watching me from the distance, protecting me without ever being able to hold me. The man who'd built a life around keeping me safe, who'd given up any chance at normal happiness, who'd stayed alone in the dark so I could live in the light.
And when they took me, he came. He didn't hesitate, didn't calculate the risks, didn't play it safe. He transformed in the middle of an enemy facility and burned down everything that stood between us.
He came for me.
Something cracked open in my chest and I couldn't stop it, didn't want to stop it. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him, pressed my face into his shoulder, and held on.
He went stiff. His whole body just locked up and for a second I thought he was going to push me away, was going to keep that distance between us even now.
But then his arms came up, slow and uncertain, and wrapped around me. He held me like he didn't know how, like he'd forgotten what it felt like to touch another person, and I could feel him shaking, just a little, just enough.
"Dad," I said into his shoulder, and my voice cracked on the word. "Thank you. For coming for me. For... for everything you’ve done to protect me. And I’m... I’m so sorry for being so harsh with you..."
His arms tightened. His breath hitched.
"Annabeth." My name came out broken, rough, and when I pulled back to look at his face there were tears on his cheeks. Marcus Thorne, the legendary red dragon who'd just burned an entire facility to the ground, was crying.
"I should have been there," he said, and his voice was thick, almost unrecognizable. "From the beginning. I should have found a way. I should have—"
"You're here now." I wiped my own face with the back of my hand, snot and tears and I didn't even care. "You're here now and that's what matters."
He looked at me for a long moment, and his face did something I'd never seen before. It softened. The walls came down, just for a second, and I saw him, the real him. The man who'd loved my mother. The man who'd wanted to be my father.
"You're so much like her," he said quietly. "Sammy. You have her eyes. Her stubbornness." A small, broken laugh. "Her complete inability to stay out of trouble."
"I wonder where I got that from."
He actually smiled. Just a little, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it was there. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
I laughed, wet and messy, and hugged him again. This time he hugged back without hesitation, his arms tight around me, his face pressed into my hair.
"I missed you," I whispered. "I didn't even know you, and I missed you my whole life."
"I know." His voice was barely audible. "I know, sweetheart. I missed you too."
We stood there for a while, holding each other in front of the smoking ruins, and I let myself feel it. All of it. The grief for the years we'd lost, the anger at the circumstances that had kept us apart, and underneath it all, the relief of finally, FINALLY having my father here with me.
When we pulled apart, Kaelen was there. He'd been watching us, his face soft, and when I reached for his hand he took it without hesitation.
"Hey," he said to Marcus. "Thank you. For all of this."
Marcus looked at him, at our joined hands, and something passed between them. An understanding, maybe. A acknowledgment.
"Take care of her," Marcus said.
"I will. Always."
Marcus nodded. Then he looked past us, at Erik and Kalessi holding each other, at Marlen and Lucian talking in low voices, and I saw something cross his face. Longing, maybe. Or regret for what he'd never had.
"Come on," I said, tugging his arm. "Come meet everyone properly."
"I don't think—"
"Dad." I said it firmly, deliberately. "Come on."
He looked at me, and I saw the moment he gave in. The moment he decided to stop standing on the outside.
"Okay," he said quietly. "Okay."
We walked toward the others together, Kaelen on one side of me and Marcus on the other, and behind us the ruins of the Order's facility burned in the early morning light.
The nightmare was over. It was finally over.