The Winds Of Heaven (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

15. The Wolf's Call

Y/N woke up cold and shivering.

He'd had the worst dream, with too many falls in it.

"Damned old man." His teeth chattered. "He turned me to gold!"

"You're okay, dude." Ethan leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around him, but he still felt as cold as a Boread.

He blinked, trying to figure out where they were. Next to him, a campfire blazed, turning the air sharp with smoke. Firelight flickered against rock walls. They were in a shallow cave, but it didn't offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It might've been day or night. The storm made it too dark to tell.

"A-A-Annabeth?" Y/N managed.

"Here." Annabeth was also wrapped in a blanket. She didn't look great, but better than Y/N felt. "I got the gold treatment too," she said. "But I came out of it faster. I don't know why."

"We had to dunk you into the river to get you back completely," Ethan told Y/N. "We tried to dry you off, but . . . it's really, really cold."

"You've got hypothermia," Annabeth said. "We risked as much nectar as we could, which was already more than should've been possible."

"Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—" Jason started to say.

"Sports medicine." The coach's ugly face loomed over Y/N. "Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it'll pass. You probably won't die. Probably."

"Thanks," Y/N said weakly. "How did you beat Midas?"

Ethan and Jason told him the story, putting most of it down to luck.

The coach snorted. "Those kids are being modest. You should've seen them. Hi-yah! Thrust! Boom with the lightning!"

"Coach, you didn't even see it," Jason said. "You were outside eating the lawn."

But the old satyr was just warming up. "Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told them, 'Kids, I'm proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—'"

"Coach," Jason said.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up, please."

"Sure." The coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel.

Ethan asked, "Leo, can you stoke the fire?"

"On it." Leo summoned a baseball-sized chump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.

"Where are we?" Y/N asked, shivering.

"Pikes Peak," Annabeth said. "Colorado."

"But that's, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?"

"Something like that," Ethan agreed. "I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. They didn't like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I'm not going to be trying that again."

"Why are we here?"

Leo sniffed. "That's what I asked."

Jason gazed into the storm as if watching for something. "Remember that glittery wind tail we saw yesterday? It was still in the sky, though it had faded a lot. We followed it until I couldn't see it anymore. Then—honestly I'm not sure. I just felt like this was the right place to stop."

"'Course it is." Coach Hedge spat out some cudgel splinters. "Aeolus's floating palace should be anchored above us, right at the peak. This is one of his favorite spots to dock."