“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 andnot 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 withCanadian Passport/Passeportand a golden maple leaf embossed on the front. Inside, he’sGray 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 forthemto 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—”
