Chapter 177 177

Chapter 177 177
Emma's POV:

The Ellsworth house was white with green shutters and one of the shutters had a paint drip that ran almost to the bottom, which was the first thing I noticed because my brain was grabbing onto small details since the rest of me was too nervous to process the big ones. The drip was on the second shutter from the left. Somebody had painted it wrong and never bothered to fix it. That made me feel better, somehow. Imperfect shutters. A family that let things slide.

Lucian opened the door before I knocked. Clean shirt, the right way around this time, and his hair doing what it always did, sticking up in three directions and lying flat in a fourth, and there was a half second where neither of us knew how to do this. What the rules were now. Whether we were supposed to act normal or acknowledge that normal had caught fire in a forest yesterday.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"You found the house okay?"

"You texted me the address. And I have Google Maps."

"Right. Yeah. Obviously."

He stepped aside. I walked in.

The hallway was narrow, photos on the walls. A family at a lake, everyone squinting at the camera. A Christmas photo with matching sweaters where Lucian was making a face behind his mother's head. A picture of three kids on a couch that had to be years old because the boy in the middle was scrawny and short and looked nothing like the six-foot walking disaster next to me.

"That's me at nine," he said, catching me staring. "Before everything, you know... Happened."

"You were tiny."

"I was a shrimp. Marlen was taller than me until I was fifteen and she still brings it up."

The living room was to the left. Clean, obviously recently, the vacuum lines still on the carpet. The couch had too many throw pillows and a knitted blanket that looked handmade.

"Mom stress-cleaned," Lucian said. "She stress-cleans when she's nervous. Also stress-bakes. There's probably four kinds of cookies in the kitchen."

"She's nervous about me?"

"Terrified."

"Great."

"It should be a good sign. Means she cares what you think."

The kitchen. His mother was at the counter. She was, I don't know how to put this, normal-looking in a way that surprised me because after yesterday some part of me had been expecting, what, scales? A tail? She was blond, hair up, mid-forties, and Lucian looked a lot like her.

"Emma." She put down the dish towel and smiled and it was the nervous kind that didn't quite make it all the way up her face. "I'm Kalessi. It's so nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too, Mrs. Ellsworth."

"Kalessi, please." She looked at Lucian, at me, back at Lucian. "Are you hungry? I made, well, I made things. There's cookies, a few kinds, and there's leftover pasta from last night, and I could make sandwiches, or—"

"Mom."

"I'm being normal."

"You're listing food."

"That's how I'm normal, Lucian."

I laughed. Didn't mean to, it just came out, because she sounded exactly like him when he was nervous, the same too-many-words, the same rambling, and seeing where he got it from loosened something in my chest.

"Cookies sound great," I said.

She put a plate on the table. Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and something with cranberries that looked ambitious. I sat down. Lucian sat next to me, close, closer than he ever sat when other people were around, like being in his own kitchen changed the rules.

His father came in from the hallway. Tall. Gray beard. Broad shoulders, and eyes that were assessing me the way Marcus's had in the forest, but slower, like he was in no rush to reach a conclusion. He didn't smile. He sat at the head of the table and looked at me for about five seconds.

"Erik," Kalessi said.

"I'm looking."

"You're staring."

"It's the same thing." He picked up a cookie. Bit into it. Looked at me while chewing. "You know what we are."

"Yes."

"And you came anyway."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Blunt. Direct. It deserved the same back.

"Because your son saved my sister's life," I said. "And because I love him. And because knowing what he is doesn't change either of those things."

The kitchen got quiet. Kalessi's hand went to the counter. Lucian's knee pressed against mine under the table, warm, too warm.

Erik chewed. Swallowed. Picked up another cookie.

"Okay," he said.

It wasn't a hug. Wasn't "welcome to the family." It was a man who'd spent five years locked in a cage because of what he was deciding that maybe, possibly, this human at his table wasn't gonna be the reason it happened again.

But okay was enough. I could work with okay.

His sister, Marlen, showed up twenty minutes later. She came down the stairs, walked into the kitchen, looked at me with an expression that was half curiosity and half "I will end you if you hurt my brother," and opened the fridge. She looked like a female and even more beautiful version of Lucian and his older brother. Dragons had definitely good genetics, and for a second I just felt kind of outta place, too normal to be among them.

"So you're the girl," she said, pulling out an orange juice carton and drinking straight from it.

"Last time I checked."

"Marlen, use a glass," Kalessi said without turning around. Marlen ignored her.

"He's told you everything?" she said to me.

"I think so."

"Everything everything? The dog videos? The three phone chargers he lost in one month? The soap dispenser at—"

"MARLEN," Lucian said.

"I'm helping." She leaned against the counter. "Can I ask you something?"

"You already did."

She almost smiled. Almost. "Why does he break things? Did he tell you that part?"

I looked at Lucian. He was studying the table.

"He hasn't always been like this," Marlen said. "Three years ago he was a scrawny kid who couldn't open a jar. Then he grew. A lot, really fast, in like a year and a half. The strength is still set for the old body and the new one has, I don't know, double the power? Triple? So he grabs a door handle the way he used to and the handle comes off. It's like..." she paused, thinking. "Wearing someone else's hands."

"Okay I didn't ASK for the analogy," Lucian said.

"You also didn't need to crush the soap dispenser last week but things happen."

"The soap dispenser?" I said.

"I'd rather not."

"He pushed the pump and the whole thing just—" Marlen made a fist, slow, closing. "Crunch. Soap everywhere."

"Great. This is going great." Lucian stood up. "Emma, do you want a tour? Of the house? Far away from my sister?"

"I would love that."