Chapter 59 59
Kaelen's POV:
I was staring at my ceiling again when the bond flared. Not the usual low hum of shared misery I'd gotten used to over the past weeks. This was different. Sharper. Closer. Like someone had turned up the volume on a radio that had been playing static for days.
Annabeth was nearby. And she was scared.
I sat up so fast I almost fell off the bed, my heart already pounding before my brain caught up. The bond pulsed with her fear, her determination, something else I couldn't name, and it was getting stronger. Closer.
Then I heard the car.
I was at my window before I could think about it, pulling back the curtain just enough to see. Headlights in my driveway. Her car. Annabeth's car, the one I'd watched drive away from me so many times over the past weeks that I'd memorized the shape of its taillights.
She was here. At my house. At... I checked my phone. 11:47 PM.
Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
I grabbed a shirt from the floor, didn't bother checking if it was clean, just pulled it over my head and headed for the main door. My siblings' door was closed and the room dark. Good. I didn't want them involved in whatever this was, not until I knew what I was dealing with.
The knock was soft, almost hesitant. Nothing like the confident knock I remembered from before, when she used to come over for dinner and Lucian would race me to the door to let her in.
I opened it and there she was.
God, she looked... I don't know. Different. The same. Both at once. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and she was wearing that gray hoodie I'd seen a thousand times, the one with the frayed cuffs she always picked at when she was nervous. But her face was thinner than I remembered, sharper, and there were shadows under her eyes that hadn't been there a month ago.
She'd been training hard. I could see it in the way she held herself, the new tension in her shoulders, the way her weight was balanced like she was ready to move at any second. Marcus had been pushing her, and she'd been letting him.
"Annabeth." Her name came out rough, barely more than a whisper. I'd imagined this moment so many times, rehearsed what I'd say if she ever showed up at my door, but now that she was actually here my mind went completely blank.
"Can I come in?" Her voice was flat. Business-like. Like she was talking to a stranger instead of the person she'd said "I love you" to less than a month ago.
"Yeah. Of course. Yes." I stepped back so fast I almost tripped over my own feet. Smooth, Kaelen. Real smooth.
She walked past me into the living room and I caught her scent, that mix of coconut shampoo and something else, something burnt, like smoke and ash. Dragon fire. She'd been training tonight, or recently at least.
I closed the door and turned to face her, keeping distance between us because I didn't trust myself not to reach for her if I got too close. The bond was going crazy, her emotions bleeding into mine until I couldn't tell where my fear ended and hers began.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Are you okay? Is your aunt—"
"She's fine. Everyone's fine." She paused. "For now."
"What does that mean?"
She didn't sit down. Just stood in the middle of my living room with her arms crossed, looking at anything except me. The couch, the TV, the stupid blanket Marlen had left crumpled on the armchair. Anywhere but my face.
"The Order," she said finally. "They cornered me today. In a parking lot, in broad daylight. Gave me a deadline."
My blood went cold. "What kind of deadline?"
"Tomorrow at noon. I show up at their hotel room alone and we have a 'civilized conversation,' or they come for me and everyone I love."
No. No no no. This wasn't happening. I'd been patrolling every night, watching for exactly this, and I'd missed it. They'd gotten to her and I hadn't been there to stop it.
"I'll kill them." The words came out before I could stop them, low and dangerous in a way I barely recognized. "I'll find every single one of them and—"
"That's not why I'm here."
I stopped. Looked at her. Really looked at her, past the exhaustion and the fear and the walls she'd built between us. There was something else in her eyes, something that looked almost like guilt.
"Then why are you here?"
She finally met my gaze, just for a second, and the pain in her expression nearly broke me.
"Because we need your help. Marcus and I, we can't do this alone. There are too many of them and they've been hunting dragons for centuries and..." She took a breath. "And I can't let anyone else get hurt because of me. Not Aunt Sarah, not Marcus, not..." Another pause. "Not you."
Not me. After everything, after the weeks of silence and the door closed in my face and the wall of grief bleeding through our bond, she still cared if I lived or died. It wasn't forgiveness, wasn't even close, but it was something. A crack in the armor she'd built.
"The Order doesn't know about you," she continued. "They didn't mention you at all. If you get involved, you're putting yourself at risk. You and Marlen and Lucian."
"I don't care."
"Kaelen—"
"I don't care," I repeated. "If you think I'm going to sit here while you walk into a trap with just Marcus as backup, you don't know me at all."
"I know you." Her voice cracked slightly on the words. "That's the problem. I know you'll throw yourself in front of a bullet for me without thinking twice, and I can't..." She stopped, pressed her lips together, and I saw her throat move as she swallowed. "I can't have your death on my conscience. I can't feel that through the bond."
The bond. Right. She could feel my emotions the same way I could feel hers, although it wasn’t complete and probably would never be. If I died, she wouldn't just know about it. She'd experience it.
"Then we make sure nobody dies," I said. "Tell me what happened. Everything."
She told me. The man from the hotel, the one who'd approached her on campus weeks ago. How he'd cornered her at the mall while Mara was waiting in the car. The threats against Sarah, against Marcus, against anyone who got in their way. The deadline: tomorrow at noon, Room 412, Meridian Hotel.
By the time she finished, my hands were shaking so hard I had to shove them in my pockets to hide it. Rage, fear, the desperate need to protect her warring with the knowledge that I'd lost the right to protect her when I'd lied about her father.
"Marcus wants to fight," she said. "Take the battle to them before they can bring it to us. But we're outnumbered. He knows that. That's why..." She gestured vaguely in my direction. "That's why I'm here."
"I'm in. Whatever you need."
"Just like that?"
"Did you think I'd say no?"
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "I didn't know what you'd say. I wasn't even sure you'd open the door."
That hurt. More than I expected, more than I had any right to feel after what I'd done. But I kept my voice steady.
"I will always open the door for you. Always. Even if you slam it in my face a hundred more times."
Something flickered in her expression. Pain, maybe. Or the ghost of something softer, something she didn't want me to see.
"We should go," she said, turning toward the door. "Marcus is waiting at the clearing. We need to plan."
"Wait." The word came out before I could stop it. "Annabeth, wait. Just... give me one minute."
She stopped but didn't turn around. Her back was rigid, her shoulders tense, every line of her body screaming that she didn't want to be here, didn't want to be near me, didn't want to feel whatever she was feeling.
"I know you hate me right now," I said quietly. "I know you can't forgive me. And I'm not asking you to. But I need you to know that everything I did, every lie I told, it was because I was trying to protect you. I made the wrong choice. I know that now. I knew it then, probably. But Marcus was so sure that telling you would put you in more danger, and I was scared, and I convinced myself that keeping his secret was the right thing to do."
She still wasn't looking at me. But she wasn't walking away either.
"I love you," I said. "That never changed. That's not going to change, no matter what happens tomorrow or the day after or ten years from now. You're my mate, Annabeth. My partner. The person I'm supposed to spend forever with. And I ruined it because I was a coward who was too afraid of losing you to tell you the truth."
Silence. The bond pulsed between us, heavy with emotion, hers and mine tangled together until I couldn't separate them.
"We should go," she said again. Her voice was rough. "Marcus is waiting."
She walked out without looking back.
But she hadn't told me to stop. Hadn't told me she hated me or that she'd never forgive me. And through the bond, buried under the fear and the anger and the grief, I felt something else. Something small and fragile and desperately trying not to exist.
Hope.
I grabbed my jacket and followed her into the night.