Heart Pierced - Kayla Knowles (1)

Kayla's POV - The Aftermath

Alternative Chapter Title: Kayla's POV - My Boyfriend Calls Out The Queen Of The Gods To Her Face

(A/N: Some things about canon that have changed because of Colton and Michael's defiant stand with the MG42. One, Lee and Castor aren't dead.. so they are still alive. Two, Camp Half Blood suffers fewer casualties than canonically. And three.. we will get to the third part later on down the road. As to why I'm mentioning Porphyrion now, well.. this is mostly canon for a reason.

Also, more Belle in here as well.)

If I had to describe the way camp viewed my boyfriend after the "Battle Of The Labyrinth" as it became known, I would use two words: shock and awe. I don't think any of us, not even me, expected him to quite literally kill Kampê with a headshot while she was in mid air. If anything, I fell in love with Colton even harder. Sure, I was in tears when I found out he had been hit in the back by a club from a giant and then suffered burns from flames set by an enemy demigod, which thankfully, Percy managed to put out with water before they could ignite all the ammo we had there. Michael killed the offender just as Grover caused the army to panic and flee.

Even so, it had been a close call - not just for himself, but for camp multiple times during that fight. Without him and Michael, things could have been a whole lot worse.

Bodies, mostly those of Luke's army, littered the clearing and in the nearby woods. Some had been killed by Percy, some by Clarisse, some by other campers, some by me and Caeli, some by Austin.. but the lion's share of the kills had gone to Michael and Colton. So many bodies lay riddled with bullets. It was a ghastly sight, even for a beauty and fashion queen like me.

I think I puked after a few minutes of being out in that clearing, surrounded by the stench of so much death. It was horrific. We did recover Ariadne's string from Kampê's corpse though.

I don't think many campers could stand to be out there in that valley of death. The only ones that even did so were Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse, who spent a few hours after the battle was over, counting up how many victims Colton and Michael had killed. The grim tally was amazing.. of all the casualties Luke's army had suffered in attacking our home, 63% were attributed to Colton and Michael. They had killed basically the majority of the enemy casualties. It's no wonder then that some of the other campers started calling my boyfriend "The Beast Of Camp Half Blood".

- — - — - — - — -

Lee was the one who told me that Colton was awake. I had been waiting nervously and anxiously outside the infirmary for an hour after helping my siblings gather the dead and patch up the rest of the wounded. He didn't mix words, simply just said, "He's up", and that only had me bounding out of the chair and running to the door, tears of joy in my eyes.

If there were any words that could describe how much I was in love with Colton Reynolds by now, I think the word would be "madly". As soon as I opened the door and saw him, even with bandages on his forehead, parts of his face, his arms, neck, legs, and stomach, my heart skipped a beat. His hair may have been a little bit burnt, but that didn't matter. He was still my hero, always and forever.

I didn't say anything. As soon as he got out of bed, I just ran to him. I felt like I had a dress on - ball gown maybe even though I was only wearing my normal camp clothes - as I ran to him for some reason, but I didn't care at all. I wrapped my arms around him gently behind his back, and even though he hissed a little, it didn't stop him from putting one of his hands gently on the back of my head, and interlacing the fingers of his other hand with mine after I simply felt like hugging him with one arm was enough and took the other arm off of his back.

Then, we kissed. I swear to you, if kissing him the last time had felt like a fairytale, this kiss felt like a dream come true. We kissed for at least ten seconds before Chiron muttered, "Ahem."