Chapter 78 78
Kaelen's POV:
Marcus called at four PM. I was at Annabeth's house, in the kitchen helping her heat up the food Mara had brought because we were both still hungry even after eating all morning. Her aunt was still at Helen's, had been since before the hotel, and the house felt strange without her. Too quiet. Too empty. Like a stage set waiting for actors.
My phone rang and Marcus's name appeared and something in my gut twisted before I answered.
"Where are you?" he said. No greeting. No how's Annabeth.
"Annabeth's house. With her."
"Stay there. I'm fifteen minutes out."
He hung up.
Annabeth was watching me from across the kitchen, a piece of cold meat halfway to her mouth. She read my face the way she'd gotten good at over the past few months, and set the food down.
"What is it?"
"Marcus. He's on his way. Something's wrong."
She didn't ask how I knew. She could feel it too, through the bond, that shift in the air when the calm part is over and the running part starts again.
Thirteen minutes later Marcus came through the front door and I knew from the look on his face that the peace we'd built over the last few days was finished. He had that expression, the one from the hotel hallway, the one that meant he'd already calculated the bad outcomes and was working on making them less bad.
"They're sending a full retrieval unit," he said. Didn't sit down. Didn't ease into it. "Twelve operatives, maybe more. Military trained, anti-dragon weaponry. At least two of those sonic devices."
The kitchen got very quiet.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"I have a contact inside the Order. Low level, logistics division. He reached out this morning because the movement orders crossed his desk." Marcus dropped a cheap burner phone on the table. "They're assembling now. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours before they're in position."
"Sunday night," Annabeth said. She'd put the meat down. Her arms were crossed. Her jaw was set in that way that meant she was terrified but would rather die than show it. "Monday morning at the latest."
"Yes."
"Here. Emberdale."
"They know everything. The university, Sarah's address, my safe house, your training spots. It's all compromised." Marcus looked at both of us. "We can't stay."
Annabeth leaned against the counter. I saw her hand grip the edge behind her.
"Where?" she asked.
"I have a property upstate. Three hours north. Off the grid, no paper trail, nothing that connects it to any name the Order would recognize." He pulled a folded map from his jacket, actual paper, worn at the creases. Spread it on the kitchen table. "Here. Dense forest, river access, defensible terrain. I've been maintaining it for years as a last resort."
I looked at the map. A small blue square near a river, surrounded by nothing.
"Sarah stays at Helen's," Marcus said. Not a suggestion. "She's been there over a week already. The Order doesn't waste resources on humans, she's not their target. I'll contact her, explain the situation, tell her to stay put."
"For how long?" Annabeth's voice was quiet.
"However long it takes."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now."
Annabeth stared at the map. Her finger traced the route north, calculating distances, memorizing turns. The biology student who'd once thought glowing eyes were an optical illusion, planning an escape through upstate wilderness.
"Marlen and Lucian," she said, looking at me.
My stomach dropped. They were still at the motel on Route 7. Had been for almost a week, living on vending machine food and cable TV, waiting for me to call and say it was safe to come home. Except safe wasn't coming. Safe had left the building.
"They're still at the Route 7 motel," I said.
"We pick them up on the way," Marcus said. "Two cars. I lead, you follow with Annabeth and the kids."
"They don't know you." It came out harder than I meant. "They've never met you. Marlen and Lucian have never seen a red dragon in person, much less an adult one who shows up unannounced while they're already hiding in a motel room."
Marcus looked at me. His expression didn't change but something shifted behind his eyes.
"Then you go in first. Explain. I'll wait in the car."
"It's not just that." I ran my hand through my hair. "Marcus, they're thirteen and fifteen. They've been running since they were eight and ten. Every time a stranger shows up in our lives it's because something terrible is about to happen. And you're... you're intimidating. You know that, right? You walk into a room and the temperature changes."
"I'm aware."
"So maybe don't walk in looking like you're about to kill someone. Because that's Marlen's default assumption about everyone we meet."
A beat of silence. Then Marcus said, "I'll stay in the car until you're ready," and I could tell it cost him something to concede that. He wasn't a man who stayed in cars. He was a man who entered rooms and controlled them.
"Thank you," I said.
"We leave at eight. It'll be dark, less visibility on the roads." He folded the map. "Pack what you need. Only what you need. We're not coming back here for a while."
He left to do whatever Marcus did before an extraction, probably check weapons and sweep routes and be generally terrifying somewhere private. Annabeth and I were alone in the kitchen with the half-eaten food and the reality of what was happening.
"I need to call my aunt," she said.
"Yeah."
"She's going to freak out."
"Probably."
"And then I need to pack. And then we need to get your brother and sister from a motel and introduce them to my father who they've never met, and then drive three hours into the woods to hide in a house nobody's ever been to."
"That's the plan."
"Great plan. Very reassuring."
She was being sarcastic because she was scared. I knew because I was doing the same thing.
"Annabeth."
"What?"
"We're not alone this time."
She looked at me. Her eyes were dark in the kitchen light, those gold flecks near the pupils that showed up when her dragon nature was close to the surface. She was scared. I could feel it through the bond, a cold thread running under everything else. But she wasn't breaking.
"Call Marlen," she said. "Warn her. She should hear it from you before we show up."
She was right. I pulled out my phone and called. Marlen picked up on the first ring because Marlen always picked up immediately when it was me.
"Kael?" Alert. Immediate. No sleep in her voice even though it was late afternoon and she'd probably been napping because what else did you do in a motel room for a week.
"Hey, Mar. How's Lucian?"
"Watching some cooking competition show. He's decided he wants to be a chef now. Last week it was marine biologist." A pause. "What's wrong?"
She always knew. Always, before I said a single word.
"We're leaving Emberdale. Tonight."
Silence. I heard Lucian in the background, some host yelling about undercooked risotto.
"Is it that bad this time?" she asked. Her calm voice. The one that meant things were very bad and she was holding it together for Lucian's sake.
"Yes. Bad enough that Marcus says we can't stay."
"Marcus. Annabeth's father. The one you've told us about."
"Yeah. He has a place upstate. Safe, off the grid. We're all going together."
"All of us."
"All of us. You, me, Lucian, Annabeth, Marcus."
Another silence. Then, carefully: "We've never met this person, Kaelen."
"I know. He's... look, he's intense. He's a red dragon, full-blooded, and he's been fighting the Order alone for eighteen years. He's not warm and fuzzy. But he's on our side. He saved my life at the hotel and he's been protecting Annabeth since before she was born."
"Is he going to come into the motel room?"
"No. He'll wait in his car. I'll come in first, just me. You'll meet him on your terms."
I could practically hear her thinking. Marlen, thirteen years old, weighing risks and calculating trust the way other kids her age calculated algebra homework. My heart ached every time she did this, every time I was reminded that my little sister had never gotten to just be a kid.
"Okay," she said. "What time?"
"We'll be there around eight-thirty. Pack the bags. Tell Lucian..."
"I'll handle Lucian."
"Mar."
"Yeah?"
"It's going to be different this time. We're not running alone."
She was quiet for a second. Then: "You trust him? Marcus?"
"With my life. With yours."
"Okay. Then we'll be ready."
She hung up. I stared at the phone and felt that familiar ache, the one that came from putting my little sister through another upheaval, another goodbye, another night of stuffing everything they owned into bags and driving into the dark.
Annabeth was already upstairs packing. I could hear her moving around, drawers opening and closing. Getting ready to leave the only home she'd ever really known, the house where Sarah had raised her, the room with the periodic table poster and the biology textbooks and the ceiling she'd stared at through every heartbreak and revelation of the past three months.
I started folding the map Marcus had left on the table. Three hours north. Dense forest. A house by a river that nobody knew about.
This was the part that never got easier. The leaving. Every place you loved became another town on a list of towns you couldn't go back to, another set of streets you'd memorized for nothing, another university and classmates you’d never see again, another chapter that ended before you were ready...
But this time was different. This time I wasn't running with two scared kids and a dwindling bank account and no plan beyond survive another month.
This time I had Annabeth. And Marcus. And whatever we were becoming, this strange fractured family held together by dragon blood and stubbornness and the kind of love that had survived every single thing that tried to kill it.
Eight o'clock. Just a couple of hours to pack a life into a bag and say goodbye to a town that was never really home but had come closer than anywhere else.
I started making a list of things Marlen and Lucian would need. Warm clothes. Marlen's glasses, the thrift store ones she wore even though her eyesight was perfect because they made her feel smart. The field guide Lucian had bought at the thrift store, the one about birds. His charger, because he'd lose his mind without his phone.
Small things. Stupid things. The things you grab when you're running because they're the only proof that your life was real.