Chapter 99 99
Annabeth's POV:
Kaelen’s massive body started swaying. His wings folding. His legs buckling.
He tried to stay standing. I felt him trying through the bond, this desperate determination to keep his wings over me, to protect me even now, even with three feet of metal through his chest. But his body wouldn't obey.
He fell.
The ground shook when he hit it. Thirty feet of dragon crashing down into the ruins of the cabin, his tail smashing through what remained of the back wall, his wings crumpling beneath him. Dust and debris flew everywhere.
I covered my face, coughing, and when I looked again, he was shrinking.
The scales were receding, pulling back into his skin. His body was compressing, bones cracking and reforming in reverse. The massive wings folded inward and disappeared. And as he got smaller, as the dragon collapsed into the boy, the harpoon...
Oh god. The harpoon.
It was too big. It had been designed to kill a thirty-foot dragon, and now his body was shrinking around it, and the metal wasn't shrinking with him. I watched the shaft push outward as his chest compressed. The weapon was too big for his human body, and as he shrank, it was being forced out through the entry wound in his back, tearing muscle and rib on its way out with this horrible wet sound.
The pain was excruciating. I could barely breathe. And the worst part is that it was his pain. Not mine. Not really. My Kaelen was being torn apart.
By the time he was human again, the harpoon had been expelled almost completely. It lay beside him in the dirt, three feet of blood-slicked metal, and where it had been there was now just... a hole.
A hole in his chest. I could see inside him. Could see things I shouldn't be able to see, red and glistening and wrong.
"KAELEN!"
I crawled to him. Couldn't stand, my legs wouldn't work, so I crawled through the dirt and the ash and the blood of the men he'd killed. He was lying on his side, his eyes closed, his face pale and slack. Blood was pooling under him, spreading outward in a dark red stain that grew bigger with every second.
"No no no no no—"
The pain started to cede in my chest while my horror grew.
I grabbed his face in my hands the best I could. His skin was still warm but cooling fast. I couldn't feel him through the bond. Couldn't feel anything except this horrible emptiness where he should have been.
"Kaelen, wake up. Please. Please wake up, you can't do this, you can't leave me, please—"
His chest wasn't moving. Or maybe it was, maybe there was the tiniest rise and fall, but I couldn't tell because my hands were shaking too hard and there was so much blood, everywhere, soaking into the dirt, soaking into my clothes where I knelt beside him.
"HELP!" I screamed at nothing, at no one. "SOMEONE HELP ME!"
Hands grabbed me from behind.
I fought. Screamed and kicked and bit and tried to summon fire but nothing came, the sonic devices were back, pointed at me from three different directions, and my flames wouldn't answer.
"No! NO! Let me GO!"
More men emerging from the trees. A second team. They'd been waiting. Waiting for him to transform, waiting for him to become vulnerable, and now they were here to collect their prize.
One of them knelt beside Kaelen and pressed two fingers to his throat.
"Target down," he said into his radio, voice flat. "Dragon neutralized. Significant blood loss. Unlikely to survive without immediate intervention."
"Leave him," another voice responded through the radio. "We have what we came for."
No.
They couldn't. They couldn't just leave him here to bleed out in the dirt while they took me to God knows where. I wouldn't let them. I would burn them all, I would—
The needle went into my neck before I saw it coming.
Cold. Instant cold, spreading through my veins like ice water. And my fire, my connection to my dragon side, just... vanished. Like someone had flipped a switch and turned off everything that made me myself.
"No," I said, but the word came out slurred, my tongue too thick. "No, please, you can't leave him, please..."
"Transport the hybrid. Extraction in progress."
They lifted me like I weighed nothing. My body wasn't responding anymore, limbs heavy and useless, vision starting to blur at the edges. I tried to keep my eyes on Kaelen, on his still form lying in the spreading pool of his own blood, but they were carrying me away.
Away from him. Away from the bond that had gone silent. Away from everything.
The last thing I saw before they put me in the van was his hand. His right hand, lying palm-up in the dirt, fingers curled slightly like he was reaching for something. For me. He'd been reaching for me.
The van doors slammed shut. Darkness swallowed everything.
And in that darkness, I reached for the bond one last time.
Kaelen, I thought into the void. I love you. Please don't die. Please please please don't die.
No answer.
Just silence.
Just emptiness.
Just the cold spreading through my veins as the drug pulled me under.
The last thing I felt was the place where he used to be.
Empty.
Silent.
Gone...