Chapter 176 176

Chapter 176 176
Lucian's POV:
I walked home and every step felt like it weighed forty pounds because my body was coming down from all of it, the gold and the adrenaline and the fight and the confession and the kiss and Emma's face three inches from mine saying words I was gonna hear in my head for the rest of my life whether it lasted sixty years or six minutes.
Mom’s car was in the driveway. Kaelen's next to it.
I went in through the back door because nobody in this family used the front, never had, probably never would. The kitchen smelled like coffee, which meant Mom was stress-brewing, which meant she already knew something was wrong.
They were all there.
Mom at the counter with both hands wrapped around a mug. Dad at the table, sitting straight, the Dad posture he'd gotten back after the first year home. Kaelen against the fridge with his arms crossed and that jaw thing going on, the thing that meant he was processing seventeen things and didn't like any of them. Annabeth next to him, ponytail crooked, like she'd run over from wherever she'd been when she got the call. Marcus at the head of the table, taking up too much space the way he did everywhere. And at the far end of the counter, Dawson. Silent. Like a piece of furniture that happened to have green eyes.
Everyone looked at me.
"He's alive," Marcus said. No hello, no are you okay. Just the update. "Broken tibia. Burns on his torso. Nathaniel and I left him at a payphone off Route 9. He'll call his people."
"You let him go?"
"After I questioned him. And if he’s alive we can track him to the rest of them."
"And?"
"There are three of them. Operating out of Richmond. Got your class schedule from the university website, which is public, any idiot can find it. They've been watching you for about a week." He said it the same way he said everything, flat, like we were discussing what to have for lunch. "He didn't know about the girl until today."
"Her name is Emma."
"I know her name."
"Then use it."
Marcus looked at me. The red in his eyes wasn't bright, not the angry kind, just there, steady, and it reminded me what he was. A red dragon who'd killed fourteen Order operatives the night he broke out of their facility and never lost a minute of sleep over it.
"Emma," he said. Slow, making a point. "She knows what you are. She knows what your family is. And the Order now knows you have a human close to you." He let that sit for a second. "How much of a problem that is depends on whether they decide she's useful."
"She's not a problem."
"That's not your call. It's theirs."
Mom's hand was gripping the mug so hard I thought the ceramic was gonna crack. Dad was staring at the table, at the wood grain, and I could read his face because I'd been reading it my whole life: five years in a facility because of what they were. And now a human girl knew, and humans who knew were either on your side or they weren't, and the distance between those two things could close overnight.
"She won't tell anyone," I said.
"You've known her two months," Dad said. Not mean. Tired. The kind of tired that came from experience.
"So? Kaelen knew Annabeth for just some weeks before he told her. And she's family now. She's sitting right there."
The kitchen went quiet. Kaelen shifted against the fridge. Annabeth's hand went to his arm, automatic, and I knew I'd hit something because his face did the thing it did when you brought up that period, the lying and the hiding and the guilt that nearly ate him alive.
"That's different," he said. Careful.
"How?"
"Because Annabeth is half dragon. She was already part of this. Emma is fully human, she has no protection, no—"
"She followed me." I cut him off. Didn't mean to but I did. "After I threw a man into a tree and my hands were on fire and the ground was smoking. I ran, Kaelen. I literally ran, and she followed the burns through the trees and found me and said 'I'm not going anywhere.' That's who she is. You don't get to decide she can't handle it."
Silence. Marcus was watching me with that steady look, the one that peeled you back.
"Like Sammy," he said.
Everyone looked at him. He wasn't looking at any of us. He was looking at the table.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." He stood up. Chair scraping the floor, Mom flinching at the sound. "She knows. We can't take that back. The question now is how we keep her safe." He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. "I'll talk to Nathaniel about the Richmond cell. Three operatives isn't a big problem but it's not nothing. Dawson."
The boy looked up.
"We're going."
Dawson pushed off the counter. Walked toward the back door. As he passed the table he slowed down, barely, and glanced at the hallway. Marlen wasn't there. She'd been upstairs this whole time, I realized. Hadn't come down for any of it, which was so unlike Marlen that it said more than her showing up would have. Marlen always came to the fight, always had opinions and demands, and if she was staying upstairs it meant she was avoiding something... Or someone.
Dawson noticed the empty hallway. His green eyes stayed there for half a second. Then he walked out. Marcus followed. The back door closed.
The kitchen felt smaller.
Mom poured me coffee without asking. Black. Too strong. Her recipe, which was basically burnt water with caffeine, and I hated it but I drank it because she'd made it for me and that counted for something right now.
"I need to update the protocols," Kaelen said. "If they have his schedule they might know the house. Dad, tomorrow I want to—"
"Kael."
He stopped. I was looking at my coffee. At the surface of it, dark and still and reflecting the kitchen light.
"She saw everything," I said. "The gold. The fight. The guy calling me a monster. All of it." I looked up. "And then she kissed me."
Nobody talked for a second.
"On the ground," I said. "In the dirt, with burned leaves everywhere. She put her hands on my face and she kissed me and she told me she's in love with me." I put the mug down because my hands were doing the shaking thing again and the coffee was vibrating. "Nobody's ever said that to me. And she said it after she saw the worst thing I can do. The absolute worst."
Mom turned to the stove. Moved a pot that didn't need to go anywhere.
Kaelen looked at Annabeth. Annabeth looked at Kaelen. One of those conversations that happened without sound, the bond thing, the frequency the rest of us couldn't access.
"Okay," Kaelen said. Softer. The protector stepping aside. "Okay."
"She wants to come here," I said. "Tomorrow. She wants to see the house, meet everyone, I don't know, see all of it."
Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at Dad.
"I'll clean the living room," Mom said.
Not permission, not exactly, but close enough. The first step toward letting a human into a dragon family's house, and I could see Dad wasn't convinced and Mom was scared and Kaelen was already running security in his head, but the thing was done. Emma was coming.
I went upstairs. My room. I lay down and my phone buzzed.
Emma: "evie knows I know. she cried for twenty minutes. happy tears. she says the pinky promise is officially done and you owe her ice cream."
I read it. Read it again. And something in my chest that had been wound tight for weeks, for months, since that first day and the spilled coffee and "why are you so hot," just came undone.
I typed: "tell her chocolate. with sprinkles."
Emma: "she says rainbow sprinkles not chocolate sprinkles. chocolate sprinkles are a crime against humanity."
"she's right. rainbow or nothing."
Pause. Then: "are you okay?"
I looked at the ceiling. At the burned pillow I couldn't see under the bed but knew was there.
"yeah," I typed. "I think I actually am."