Chapter 74 74
Kaelen's POV:
Marcus showed up at nine with groceries. Actual groceries, not more canned soup. A bag with bread, eggs, orange juice, and a rotisserie chicken that he'd clearly bought for tonight but that I wanted to eat immediately because I was suddenly starving. For the first time in weeks I was genuinely, painfully hungry.
"Perimeter's clean," he said, setting the bag on the counter. "Third day, no movement. Either they're reorganizing somewhere far from here or we actually scared them off."
"You think they're gone?" I asked, cracking eggs into the one decent pan in the safe house kitchen.
"No." He poured himself coffee from the pot I'd already made. Still terrible. "The Order doesn't give up. But they lost eight operatives plus the two I handled outside in just one day. That's a significant blow. They'll need time to reassess, bring in new people, maybe change strategy."
"How much time?"
"Weeks. Maybe a month. Not enough, but it's something."
I scrambled the eggs and tried not to burn them, which was harder than it should've been because the stove had two temperatures: off and inferno. The bread went in the toaster, which only toasted one side, so I had to flip each piece manually.
"How is she?" Marcus asked. Casual, leaning against the counter, but his eyes were sharp.
"Better. She, uh..." I focused very hard on the eggs. "She forgave me."
Silence. I risked a glance at Marcus and found him looking at me with an expression I'd never seen on his face before. Not the suspicious father. Not the tactical dragon. Something else.
"Good," he said. Just that.
"We're not back together. She made that clear. We're... figuring it out."
"Also good. She shouldn't rush."
"I know."
"But for what it's worth," he said, taking a sip of his terrible coffee, "you're not what I expected. When I first found out about you, about the bond, I wanted to kill you."
"I remember. You told me that. In the car. While your eyes were literally glowing red."
"Yes. Well." He almost smiled. Almost. "I was wrong about you. Don't make me regret saying that."
I wouldn't. I'd cut off my own arm before I'd make him regret it. The dead one that still tingled, specifically.
Annabeth came out of the bedroom while I was plating the eggs. Walking on her own, steadier than yesterday, wearing the same flannel shirt and too-long sweatpants but with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked better. Still tired, still pale, but there was something different in the way she carried herself. Lighter.
"Is that actual food?" she asked, eyeing the eggs.
"Scrambled eggs. Toast. Only burned on one side because the toaster in this house is a crime against bread."
"I'll take it."
She sat at the small table in the kitchen, the one with the wobbly leg that Marcus had fixed with a folded piece of cardboard. Marcus sat across from her. I served three plates and sat between them and for a second, just a second, it felt like something almost normal. Three people eating breakfast together on a November morning.
Annabeth ate everything. Cleaned her plate, drank two glasses of orange juice, stole a piece of toast off my plate when she thought I wasn't looking. I was looking, I just let her take it.
After breakfast Marcus did his thing, perimeter check, phone calls, whatever network of information he maintained that I didn't fully understand. Annabeth and I were alone in the kitchen. She was washing dishes. I was drying.
"Can I try something?" she said, handing me a plate.
"Try what?"
She held out her hand, palm up, and focused. I saw the concentration on her face, the way her brow furrowed and her jaw set. The same expression she'd worn during training, back when setting a pile of leaves on fire was a victory.
For a second, nothing. Then heat. Real heat, not the borrowed warmth of my healing but her own, rising from her palm like steam from a cup. And then, small and flickering and unsteady as hell, a flame. Red-gold, dancing on her palm, barely the size of a candle flame.
Her eyes went wide. "Holy shit."
"Annabeth..."
"I can feel it. It's back. It's weak as hell but it's—" The flame sputtered and died. She stared at her empty palm and then at me and her face split into the first real grin I'd seen from her in a month. Big, unguarded, the kind of smile that used to make me walk into door frames.
"It's coming back," she said.
"Yeah." I was grinning too. Couldn't stop. Didn't want to. "Yeah, it is."
She looked at her hand again, opening and closing her fingers. The grin faded into something quieter, more serious, but still warm. Still there.
"We should probably start thinking about what comes next," she said. "The Order isn't going to wait forever."
"No. They're not."
"And there's the bond. The... completion thing." She said it without looking at me, her eyes fixed on her hand. "Marcus mentioned it. That a completed bond makes both dragons stronger. That we might need that strength for whatever's coming."
My heart did something violent in my chest. "He said that?"
"Don't look so surprised. He's practical. He knows what we're up against." She finally looked at me. "I'm not saying now. I'm not saying soon. I'm just saying... it's on the table. For when we're ready."
For when we're ready. Not if. When.
"Okay," I said. Because what else do you say when the person you love, the person who just forgave you, the person who spent the night in your arms and stole your toast and just lit her first flame in three days, tells you that forever is on the table?
You say okay. And you mean it with everything you have.
"Now stop looking at me like that," she said, turning back to the dishes. "We have a Thanksgiving dinner to figure out with one rotisserie chicken and whatever else Marcus brought in that bag."
"Yes ma'am."
"Don't call me ma'am."
"Yes sir."
She flicked water at me from the sink and I dodged, badly, and it hit me in the face, and she laughed. Actually laughed, this bright startled sound that bounced off the walls of the crappy safe house kitchen and made the whole room feel different.
I wiped the water off my face and laughed too, and the bond between us hummed warm and steady for the first time since everything broke.