Chapter 8 8
Kaelen's POV:
I barely got through the front door before Marlen appeared in the hallway with her arms crossed, looking at me like I'd just committed a crime.
"You smell like perfume," she said. Not a question: an accusation.
I closed the door behind me and tried to act casual, which was impossible under her sharp gaze. "Hello to you too."
"Girl perfume. Something floral." She stepped closer, actually sniffing the air around me. "Who is she?"
"I don't know what you're—"
"Kaelen." Her voice was flat. "I can literally smell it on you. So either you rolled around in the perfume section at the mall or you were very close to someone wearing it."
Damn her dragon senses. And damn me for not thinking about that.
Lucian appeared from the kitchen, a sandwich in one hand, grinning. "Oh man, you have a girl? Finally!"
"I don't have a girl."
"But there is a girl," Marlen said.
"There's... I met someone. We had lunch. It's not a big deal."
Lucian's grin got wider. "Dude, you smell like her perfume. That's definitely a big deal. How close were you sitting?"
My face got hot. "It was a small table."
"Uh-huh. What's her name?"
I sighed and walked past them into the living room, dropping my keys on the side table. They followed, of course, because privacy was apparently not a thing in this house.
"Annabeth," I said. "Her name is Annabeth. The night I fell at the store... uhm... she helped me."
Marlen's expression changed immediately, concern replacing suspicion. "That girl saved you from those drunks?"
"Yeah."
"And now you're dating her?"
"We're not dating. We just had lunch. I wanted to thank her properly for what she did."
"By getting close enough that she basically bathed you in her perfume?" Lucian was still grinning but there was genuine curiosity in his eyes. "Come on, Kael, you haven't shown interest in anyone since... well, ever that I can remember. What's different about this one?"
I sat down on the couch, running my hands through my hair. How did I explain this without sounding insane? How did I tell them that every instinct I had was screaming that Annabeth was important, that she was like us, that something important shifted in the universe when I touched her?
"I think she might be special," I said finally.
Silence.
Then Marlen sat down on the coffee table directly in front of me, her face very serious. "Special how?"
"Like us."
"You think she's a dragon?" Lucian asked, all the humor gone from his voice.
"I don't know. Maybe. A hybrid, possibly." I looked at Marlen. "You know how we can sense others sometimes? How there's that pull?"
"You feel that with her?"
"Yeah. And... my eyes. They almost shifted when she touched me that first night. I barely controlled it."
Lucian whistled low. "Shit. That's never happened before."
"I know."
Marlen stood up and started pacing, her thinking mode activated. "Does she know? About us? About what she might be?"
"No. She's completely clueless. She thinks everything has a scientific explanation."
"That's bad." Marlen stopped pacing. "Kaelen, if she's a hybrid and doesn't know it, that makes her incredibly vulnerable. Her abilities could manifest at any time and she wouldn't understand what was happening. And if the Order finds her before she knows how to defend herself..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
"I know," I said quietly. "That's why I need to get close to her. To figure out for sure what she is, and if my suspicions are right, to help her understand before something bad happens."
"Or you could walk away." Marlen's voice was sharp. "You could stay far away from her, keep our family safe, and not risk exposing us to the Order's attention. Because if they're watching her and you get involved, they'll find us too."
"Marlen—"
"No, listen to me. We've been running for five years. Five years, Kaelen. Mom and Dad are gone. We're all we have left. And you want to risk that for some girl you just met?"
The words hit hard because they were true. But they also weren't the whole truth.
"If she's like us and the Order finds her first," I said slowly, "they'll use her. Drain her. Kill her. You know what they do. Can you really ask me to walk away knowing that?"
Marlen's jaw clenched. She looked at Lucian, then back at me. "This is exactly how families get caught. Someone lets their guard down, gets attached to the wrong person, and suddenly we're all in danger."
"She's not the wrong person."
"You don't know that. You don't know anything about her except that she might be a hybrid and wears perfume that apparently makes you stupid."
Lucian laughed despite the tension. "Mar, come on. That's not fair."
"It's completely fair. He's thinking with his—"
"Marlen." My voice came out harder than I intended. "I'm not stupid. I know the risks. But I also know we can't keep living like this forever, running every time a shadow looks wrong. If she is a hybrid, she deserves to know. She deserves a choice."
"And what if telling her puts us all in danger?"
"Then we deal with it. Together. Like always."
The silence stretched between us, heavy with years of fear and loss and the weight of decisions that always seemed impossible.
Finally, Lucian spoke. "I think we should help her. If she's really one of us, I mean. We know what it's like to be alone and scared. Wouldn't you have wanted someone to explain things to you before everything went to shit?"
Marlen closed her eyes. "You're both going to get us killed."
"Or," I said, "we're going to help someone who needs it. And maybe, just maybe, we'll find out we're not as alone as we thought."
She opened her eyes and looked at me for a long moment. "Fine. But you're being careful. No revealing anything until you're absolutely sure. No bringing her here until we know it's safe. And the second I think the Order is involved, we're gone. All of us. No arguments."
"Deal."
"I mean it, Kaelen. I love you, but I also love staying alive."
"I know. I'll be careful."
Lucian clapped me on the shoulder. "So when do we get to meet her?"
"Never, if Marlen has anything to say about it."
"Probably," Marlen agreed, but there was a hint of a smile on her face now.
Later that night, after Lucian went to bed and Marlen finally stopped grilling me about every detail of lunch with Annabeth, I did what I always did: I checked the perimeter.
It was habit now, something I'd been doing since the first night in this house. Walk the block, check for unfamiliar cars, watch for anything that felt wrong. Usually it was nothing. Usually I was just being paranoid.
But tonight, at the end of our street, there was a black car I'd never seen before.
I stopped under a streetlight, pretending to check my phone while watching the car from the corner of my eye. Tinted windows. New model sedan. Engine running but no movement inside.
Could be nothing. Could be someone waiting to pick someone up, could be a rideshare driver, could be a million innocent things.
Or it could be the Order.
I stood there for five minutes, watching. The car didn't move. No one got in or out. Just sitting there, engine idling, right at the edge of where our street met the main road.
Then, finally, it pulled away. No hurry, no drama. Just smoothly entered traffic and disappeared.
I waited another ten minutes before walking back to the house, my heart pounding harder than I wanted to admit.
Probably nothing.
Probably just paranoia.
But as I locked the front door and checked it twice, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been watching.
And I couldn't stop wondering if me getting close to Annabeth had just painted a target on all of our backs.