Chapter 18
Grayson
He hits the bottom of the driveway at the wrought-iron gate and drags for air while sunrise lifts over the trees lining their quiet street.
Nearby, the flower boxes are dressed for the season, copper mums tumbling over the edges of the giant planters in a spill of burnished light that smells like autumn.
Of course, Leo has outdone himself this year.
Last year, he and Leo had worked together to make them beautiful, but this year, Grayson had been stuck in a classroom, and Leo had made the trek to the flower markets and greenhouses alone.
It was a first since they moved in…and hopefully it will be the last. He just hopes it’s not because he’ll be in the mountains four thousand miles away.
Grayson keys in the code, slips through the side door, and jogs up the drive.
He’s surprised Jay isn’t waiting on the porch, ready to blast him for being out without him.
He’d almost been kidnapped yesterday, and here he is, running around Nashville alone…
well, mostly. He throws a wave at the lone Sentinel guard, still catching his breath at the end of the drive.
Poor guy had settled into a rhythm ten feet behind him for Grayson’s fifteen-mile run at top speed.
Driven from the nest by his anxiety before the sun was up, he’d managed to escape long talks and sympathy long enough to run off some of his worry and hopefully clear his head.
A matte black van is parked, sitting just outside the front door of the house. Its doors stand wide open with the kids’ car seats already buckled in. It’s weird, since they’ll be with their grandparents here at home while the pack is at the tribunal this afternoon.
From inside the house comes the kind of noise that means either someone has died or is going to.
The front door opens before Grayson reaches it, and Tsuki barrels out with her leash in her jaws, tail helicoptering, shoulders quivering like a sprinter on a block.
She drops the leash into Grayson’s palm and turns to stare at him as if to say, Where have you been?
And maybe a little of Why didn’t you take me along?
Inside is a storm. Jay is crouching by the bench in the foyer, tying Skye’s laces and murmuring the little rhyme Luca taught them. “Bunny ears, bunny ears, playing by a tree…”
A small backpack sits open beside him, and they’re loaded with the efficiency only Finn, Gideon, or Jay can manage: water bottle, coloring books and crayons, and the well-loved copies of The Hundred Acre Wood and Purple People that Skye loves best. His Pooh Bear is tucked under one arm, with his tiny headphones covering his ears.
Despite the noise, he’s as serene as a monk.
Jay kisses the top of his head and says, “You can be my helper today, yeah? Hey, pretty, ribs okay?”
He looks like he’s gearing up for something more when Rowan rounds the corner from the kitchen, both babies strapped to his chest—Rosie facing in, Mari facing out—and an apple gripped in his teeth while he adjusts a buckle.
Mari waves a pale yellow sock like a flag while she squeals at the top of her lungs.
It doesn’t faze her sister sleeping three inches away, two tiny fingers in her rosebud mouth.
Rowan chews, swallows, and says, “‘Bout time. Get a move on, or Gid is going to blow a gasket.”
“I heard that, Foster!” Gideon shouts from the kitchen. “You’ll be the one blowing—”
Where Grayson had expected his pack to be moping, pacing, and avoiding Gideon’s impotent slamming of pots in the kitchen, this is not that. “What the fuck is going on?”
Finn scuttles past with a stack of first editions and two navy blue journals hugged to his chest. Notably, they’re gifts he’s received from family members.
He nearly collides with the cat carrier in the hallway, where two angry yellow eyes glower from behind bars, affronted at the concept of sudden travel.
Domino is the epitome of an inside cat, and he’s only ever been in the carrier on the way to see the villainous vet.
Another carrier shows Doodle staring eagerly at the open door as if she would happily accompany them into the wide unknown or go on her own if she could just get them to leave the door open for ten seconds.
Luca’s voice floats in from upstairs: “I’m not apologizing for that, Costas. You should know better than to try to pull that shit in the shower with a concussion. Sit down before you fall down.”
There’s an ominous thudding on the stairs, and he appears a second later, lugging a clear storage bin overflowing with nesting materials, three sweaters draped over one shoulder, and absolutely no pants. He looks like a man on a mission.
“Ooh, yummy, my favorite…sweaty Gray—” He takes a single step toward Grayson, but stops just short of touching distance. “No, Luca, no. We do not have time.” He licks his lips, eyebrows waggling. There’s no doubt he could be persuaded despite the mysterious time constraints.
When Grayson stands there looking stupefied, he sighs. “Hey, does anyone know where my Uggs are?” he asks the room at large. “Do not say ‘where you left them,’ that’s a lie.”
“Your room. Under the bed,” Jay and Rowan say in chorus.
Luca takes off back up the stairs, passing Leo as he takes each step down carefully.
Whatever the magic user had done in Ruckus’s parking lot had shaken his brain around his thick skull enough that he had a concussion equivalent to that of a receiver taking a tackle in the NFL—without a helmet.
He drops to his ass on the floor beside Skye’s bench, accepting a firm head pat from the little boy.
He holds his grimace back but whispers, “Thanks, buddy. Guys, can we quit with the yelling?”
“You’re packed?” Jay asks quietly. “You got Grayson’s shit, too?”
His shit? What is happening right now? They should be getting into what Nix called their “court suits” instead of looking like they’re going on an extended vacation.
Oh.
Leaving his family in the foyer, Grayson finds Gideon standing in the kitchen at the center of it all in a soft black t-shirt and joggers.
There’s a Bluetooth earphone tucked into his ear, three different phones, and the security tablet in front of him on the breakfast bar like he’s tactical lead on a special ops mission.
On the island, there’s a neat stack of passports in varying shades of burgundy and navy, names on sticky tabs peeking from the corners that are both theirs and not theirs.
Next to them lie several thick sealed envelopes, the kind that open doors without anyone asking too many questions.
“You’re back,” he says, like he hadn’t been tracking Grayson on the family app or getting regular updates from his Sentinel guard the whole time.
“What is all this?” Grayson asks, and it comes out louder—and more concerned—than he’d intended.
“This,” Gideon says, fingers tapping the burgundy passports, “is a head start. How’s your Spanish?”
He tosses Grayson a burgundy passport from the top of the pile. It looks well used, even though it most certainly is not. The photo inside is of Grayson and looks real enough. It’s that it says he’s Peruvian, which makes Grayson’s stomach jump.
Benito Salazar.
Gideon hands him a second passport, this time navy with Canadian Passport/Passeport and a golden maple leaf embossed on the front.
Inside, he’s Gray Dorian. He’s not sure if he should be more upset that the name lacks originality, that he’s holding two illegal documents, or that Gideon thinks they need them.
There are ten more in both colors on the island.
Gideon gestures with his chin toward the driveway. “We can be out in thirty.”
“Thirty?” Grayson is suddenly aware of the pulse in his wrists, the slick of sweat cooling on his back, the way the house smells like smoke and thunder.
Everyone stills.
“You’re…you’re serious.”
They’re fleeing. Not into the night exactly, but illegally, without The Guild’s authorization, and to Goddess knows where.
Everything Grayson had worried about the Academy was one thing, but this is worse.
They’ll be leaving the Rhodes Pack identities behind to live on the run.
Running from Grayson’s world, and all because of him.
Any clarity he’d managed on his run disappears like a puff of smoke. Now, he just wants to puke.
“Of course, we are.” Gideon meets his eyes there across the island, and he doesn’t look away. “When we were at the hospital in February with Row—”
“Hey!” Rowan protests from the foyer. “We said we wouldn’t mention that again—”
Gideon ignores him, talking over the grumbling complaints. “It became clear that they weren’t going to make this easy. When Nimue said you needed to keep the Time shit on the down-low…”
He pauses, fist clenched on the island, and his teeth grinding as he tries to keep his anger in check for no other reason than that Skye is most agitated when Gideon and Jay are angry. “Then they came for you yesterday. We aren’t waiting for them to decide what your future looks like. Fuck that.”
Those goons had meant business—they were willing to kill or be killed to take him, and here he is shivering in the kitchen in his running gear while the rest of them are pulling up stakes so they can disappear.
Luca thrusts a hoodie at Grayson’s chest and a pair of joggers at his thighs. “Put these on.” He pulls at the damp shirt sticking to Grayson’s spine with a gentle smile. “Besides, those shorts should be illegal. If we get arrested today, it will be for that and not the other thing.”
“Not funny, Luc.” Grayson pulls off his shirt and slips the hoodie that smells like Jay over his damp skin.
“You should talk, fun-size.” Rowan gets out around the last bite of his apple. “Where are your pants?”
“I’m not committing to pants. Isn’t there a law in Canada about going shirtless, even for women? There has to be something about pants—”
The noise escalates while Rowan and Luca argue about whether Thailand or British Columbia was more likely to let him go pantsless.