Chapter 22 Locke
Locke
We’ve been at the Hollow for a week.
I know because I’ve been counting. Not on purpose — I can’t help it.
Day one, we arrived. Day two, Rane shifted in the backyard and couldn’t change back for six hours.
Day three, Vaelor took over the community hall kitchen and nobody stopped him.
Day four, Nova fell asleep on Kyron’s shoulder on the porch and Trey took a picture on his phone that he thinks nobody knows about.
Day five, she slept in our room. Mine and Vaelor’s.
She showed up at two in the morning with that look on her face — not scared, just not wanting to be alone — and crawled in between us without a word.
Vaelor didn’t even wake up. Just shifted to make room like his body knew she was coming before his brain did.
She hasn’t slept in her own room once.
It’s Beckett and Rane most nights. Kyron and Trey some.
Us just the once. She rotates like she’s working through a schedule she doesn’t know she’s making.
Like the bed rotation after the fire in her room back at the academy followed us here.
The guys have stopped commenting on it. It’s just what Nova does — she picks a door, she knocks, someone opens it. Nobody says no. Nobody wants to.
Her room has become storage for Beckett’s gear.
This morning Brent finds me on the porch.
“I need your help with something.”
“What kind of something?”
“The lifting kind. There’s a house on the east side that needs a hand finishing up.”
I look back inside. Vaelor’s in the kitchen.
Nova’s at the table with Beckett, reading something Minerva gave her yesterday.
She looks up when I stand and I give her a nod.
She nods back and smiles. No one needs to know that’s it for me, that I’ll take that small smile with me wherever it is that we’re going.
Brent leads me through the Hollow and I’m still getting used to this place.
A week and it already feels more real than the Academy ever did.
People wave at me now. The woman who runs the supply shop knows my name.
A kid threw a ball at my head yesterday and then ran away laughing and I’m going to get him back later.
He just doesn’t know it yet. I chuckle to myself at the thought.
We pass the community hall and I hear voices through the open door. Women talking.
“—think it means now that she’s here? The one Minerva’s been—”
“I don’t know. I just know my kids didn’t sign up to be targets.”
“Nobody’s a target. Brent said—”
“Brent says a lot of things. Are we safe? That’s what I want to know. Because if the Order finds out she’s here—”
“Then what? We leave? And go where?”
Silence. I keep walking. Brent doesn’t look at me but I can tell he heard it too.
“It’s not the first time,” he says quietly. “People talk when they’re scared.”
“Are they wrong to be scared?”
He doesn’t answer.
The house on the east side is bigger than ours. Same old bones, same wood and stone, but someone’s been working on it. Fresh paint on the shutters. A garden that actually produces things. Wind chimes on the porch made from what looks like old silverware.
A man comes out the front door. Big. Not as big as Vaelor but close. Dark hair going grey at the temples, laugh lines deep enough to see from the road. There’s a mark on his forearm that’s faded almost to nothing — I can barely make out the shape.
“You must be Locke.” He holds out a hand. “Cal.”
“Brent said you needed help.”
“I need about four more arms and someone who doesn’t mind splinters.” He grins. “Come on in.”
Inside is warm. Lived in. Shoes by the door — multiple sizes. A jacket hanging on every hook. The kitchen has the same energy as Vaelor’s cooking — someone who feeds people because that’s how they love.
And then I see the living space.
They knocked out walls. Three bedrooms turned into one massive room. The only bedroom left separate is smaller — a kid’s room, from the look of the drawings taped to the door.
The big room has windows on two sides. Rugs layered on the floor. Shelves built into the walls. And in the center, in pieces, the biggest bed frame I’ve ever seen.
“That’s what I need help with,” Cal says. “Been building it for months. Can’t get the last section up by myself.”
I stare at it. It’s solid wood. Hand-built. Wide enough for four or five people to sleep without touching if they wanted to. Or touching if they wanted to.
“You’re a cluster,” I say.
“Five of us. Well, four now.” Something flickers across his face.
“Lost one about two years back. The rest of us are still here. Two of them are on patrol, one’s at the hall.
” He runs his hand along the frame. “We’ve been sleeping on mattresses on the floor since we got here. Figured it was time to do it right.”
I help him lift the last section. It’s heavy — real wood, not the flat-pack shit the Academy furnished with. We fit it into place and step back and it looks like something that belongs here. Something permanent.
“How long have you been at the Hollow?” I ask.
“Eight years. Came when my youngest was born. His mark didn’t resolve and the House started asking questions we didn’t want to answer.” He leans against the doorframe. “Minerva found us. Like she finds everyone.”
I look at the bed. At the room they built around it. The walls they took down.
“We had four bedrooms when we got here too,” Cal says, watching me look. “Took us about a week to figure out that wasn’t going to work.”
“A week,” I repeat.
“We kept pretending we didn’t all want to be in the same room. Then one night my partner just started dragging mattresses and nobody argued.” He shrugs. “It’s easier when you stop pretending.”
I think about Nova. Knocking on doors at two in the morning. Rotating through rooms like she’s apologizing for needing them. Sleeping in a different bed every night because she hasn’t figured out that she could just sleep in all of them.
“We need one of these,” I say.
Cal looks at me. Looks at the bed. Smiles.
“I’ve got extra wood in the shed. And I’m guessing you’ve got more than five people to fit.”
“Seven.”
His eyebrows go up. “Seven. That’s…”
“Yeah.”
“That’s going to be one hell of a bed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “It is.”
We start measuring before I leave. Cal draws it out on a piece of scrap paper — dimensions, support structure, how to make it so it doesn’t collapse under seven people who are all bigger than average except for the one in the middle who weighs nothing but takes up the most space.
I fold the paper and put it in my pocket.
On the walk back, I pass the community hall again. The women have stopped talking. One of them is standing in the doorway and she looks at me as I pass. Not hostile. Just measuring.
I nod at her. She nods back.
The Hollow isn’t sure about us yet. That’s fair. We’re not sure about us either.
But I’ve got a bed to build. And for the first time in two years, I know exactly where we’re sleeping.
All of us. Together. The way it should have been from the start.