Chapter 97 97
Kaelen's POV:
The morning started wrong.
I woke up with Annabeth still pressed against my side, her breathing slow and steady, but something in my chest felt off. Like a string pulled too tight, vibrating at a frequency I couldn't hear but could definitely feel. Through the bond I sensed her dreams, something about water and falling, and I tried to send calm without waking her up.
It didn't work. The wrongness stayed.
Marcus left around seven to meet his contact. He didn't say goodbye, just nodded at me from the kitchen door and disappeared into the trees like he always did. I watched him go with that feeling getting worse, this itch under my skin that wouldn't stop.
"You okay?" Annabeth asked from behind me. She was standing in the hallway, hair messy from sleep, wearing one of my shirts that hung past her thighs. Through the bond I felt her concern mixing with my unease, amplifying it.
"Yeah. Just... I don't know. Something feels weird."
"Weird how?"
I couldn't explain it. Couldn't put words to the wrongness that had settled in my bones since I opened my eyes. So I just shook my head and pulled her close, burying my face in her hair, breathing her in.
"Probably nothing," I said. "Just nerves."
But it wasn't nothing. Some part of me knew that. Some ancient dragon instinct that had kept my species alive for thousands of years was screaming at me to run, to grab my siblings and Annabeth and disappear into the forest and never look back.
I should have listened.
Marlen came downstairs around eight, already dressed, her maps rolled up under her arm. She looked at us tangled together in the kitchen and rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. Lucian followed a few minutes later, yawning, complaining that someone had finished the cereal.
"There's eggs," Marlen said.
"I don't want eggs."
"Then starve."
Normal. Everything was normal. Annabeth made coffee while I scrambled eggs for Lucian anyway because I couldn't help it, couldn't stop taking care of him even when he was being a brat. We ate breakfast at the small table with the sun coming through the windows and Marlen quizzing Lucian on the escape routes she'd made him memorize.
"If you hear gunshots, what do you do?"
"Basement, root cellar, follow the creek north until I hit the road."
"And if the basement is blocked?"
"Window in the back bedroom, drop to the roof of the shed, run east toward the river."
"Good."
I listened to them with that wrongness still pulsing in my chest. Tried to ignore it. Tried to focus on the coffee in my hands and Annabeth's presence warm and steady through the bond and the fact that Marcus would be back soon with information and we'd have time to prepare.
We didn't have time.
The first sign was the birds.
I noticed it around nine, when the forest outside went quiet. Not peaceful quiet. Wrong quiet. The kind of silence that happens when every living thing in a mile radius knows a predator is coming.
"Kaelen?" Annabeth was looking at me, her coffee cup halfway to her lips. Through the bond she'd felt my spike of fear. "What is it?"
"Something's—"
The window exploded.
Glass everywhere, and then men, black tactical gear, masks, weapons I recognized from Marcus's descriptions. Sonic suppressors. Tranquilizer guns. Nets made of some material that glinted like metal but moved like fabric.
"BASEMENT!" I screamed at Marlen. "NOW!"
She grabbed Lucian and ran. Didn't hesitate, didn't look back, just moved exactly like we'd practiced. I saw them disappear through the kitchen door toward the back stairs and felt one tiny piece of relief before the chaos swallowed everything else.
They were everywhere. Coming through the windows, the front door, probably the back too. At least fifteen, maybe twenty. Way more than Marcus had said.
It was a trap. The contact had sold us out. They'd been waiting for Marcus to leave, waiting until we were vulnerable, and now—
Annabeth.
I spun around and saw her fighting. She'd grabbed a kitchen knife and was slashing at an operative who'd gotten too close, her movements fast but untrained, desperate. Fire flickered at her fingertips but wouldn't catch, wouldn't grow. One of them had a sonic device pointed at her, that high-pitched whine cutting through the air, and I could see her fire dying every time she tried to summon it.
They were herding her. Separating her from me. Four of them moving in a coordinated pattern, pushing her toward the corner of the kitchen where two more were waiting with a net.
"ANNABETH!"
I tried to get to her but there were too many. Three of them tackled me at once with military precision, and I went down hard, my head cracking against the floor. Stars exploded across my vision. Someone pressed a device against my neck and I felt that awful buzzing, that frequency that made my fire retreat into my core like a wounded animal.
No. No no no.
Through the bond I felt Annabeth's terror. Felt her fighting, struggling, the knife knocked from her hand. Felt the moment they grabbed her arms and started dragging her toward the door.
And something inside me snapped.
I don't know how else to describe it. For almost my whole life I'd kept the dragon locked away, just as my parents had taught me to survive. Never shifting, never letting that part of me out, because it was too dangerous, too visible, too likely to get us all killed. I'd held it down through beatings and fear and watching my parents disappear and raising my siblings alone and running, always running, never stopping long enough to let the beast inside me breathe.
But now Annabeth was screaming my name and they were taking her and the bond was flooding with her fear and I couldn't—
I couldn't—
The shift started before I made the decision.
Heat. Impossible heat, radiating from my core outward, my skin feeling too tight, my bones feeling wrong, everything feeling wrong because my body wasn't meant to be this small, this fragile, this human. The men holding me down stumbled back as my temperature spiked, their gloves smoking, their tactical gear starting to melt.
"WHAT THE—"
I didn't hear the rest. The world had narrowed to one point: Annabeth, being dragged through the door, her red eyes finding mine across the chaos.
I let go.
The transformation hurt in a way I'd forgotten. Bones breaking and reforming, skin splitting to make room for scales, my spine elongating, my skull reshaping itself into something ancient and terrible. I screamed but it came out as a roar, a sound that shattered every window left in the cabin and made the walls shake.
Golden fire poured out of me. Not controlled, not directed, just raw power exploding in every direction at once. I felt operatives burning, heard their screams, didn't care. Didn't care about anything except getting to her.
The ceiling collapsed as I grew. Wood and plaster raining down, the cabin falling apart around me because I was too big now, too massive, my wings tearing through what remained of the roof. I hadn't shifted in so long I'd forgotten how large I was. Thirty feet from nose to tail, maybe more. Scales the color of sunlight, golden and gleaming even through the smoke and fire.
I could see her. They were running now, dragging Annabeth toward a black van parked at the tree line, and some of them turned to look at me and I saw the fear on their faces, the absolute terror of men who had thought they were the predators realizing they were prey.
Good.
I launched myself at them.
The first three died before they could raise their weapons. My claws went through their tactical gear like it was paper, blood spraying across the pine needles and the morning light. The fourth got a shot off with his sonic device but it bounced off my scales without effect, designed for hybrid fire not a full dragon in battle form.
The ones holding Annabeth dropped her and ran. Smart. Not smart enough.
I caught them in my jaws and felt bones crack between my teeth and didn't feel anything except fucking satisfaction. They had touched what was mine. They had tried to take her from me. And now they were dead and I was going to kill every single one of them until there was no one left to threaten us.
"KAELEN!"
Annabeth's voice. I looked down and saw her on the ground, staring up at me with wide eyes. Fear? Wonder? Both?
It didn't matter. She was safe. I stood over her, wings spread wide to shield her from anything else, and let out a roar that echoed off the mountains. A warning. A promise. Anyone else who wanted to try would end up like the bodies scattered around us, broken and burning.
Through the bond I felt her relief, her shock, her overwhelming love. Felt her reaching for me even though I was a monster now, thirty feet of scales and teeth and golden fire, because she knew. She knew it was still me underneath.
I lowered my head toward her. My massive golden eye meeting her small red ones. She reached up with a trembling hand and touched my snout, her palm warm against my scales, and the bond between us pulsed with everything we felt for each other.
We'd won.
The bodies of our enemies lay scattered around us, broken and burning, and Annabeth was safe in the shadow of my wings. I'd kept her safe. For the first time in so many years, I'd let the dragon out, and it had been enough. It had been more than enough.
I made a sound, something between a purr and a rumble, and pressed closer to her touch. Let myself feel this moment.
Let myself believe, just for a second, that everything was going to be okay.