Haley finds her father in G's bedroom, neatly folding clothes and placing them into one of her old backpacks. It's a stylized dragon head in soft pink, with tiny fabric wings sticking out by the side pockets. Gramps had never really approved of it, but she'd thought it delightful and had used it until the right strap broke. Her mother hadn't finished sewing it up before Gramps had given her her current backpack, a simple purple one he'd said wouldn't have her standing out so blatantly. It's not good to be memorable, he'd said.

It had not been her first lesson, and it was far from her last.

Jonathan spots her and stops, moving the bag to sit on the end of the bed and patting it in an invitation for her to sit beside him. She crawls up and leans into him, relishing this moment of stillness. Beyond the bedroom, Gramps and Fu are systematically working through each nook and cranny, pulling out some things and leaving others.

She doesn't know exactly what they're looking for or precisely what they're doing, but she can guess.

It doesn't make her feel any better.

"How'd it go, Haley-hoo?"

"He wouldn't change," Haley admits as Jonathan wraps his arm around her and pulls her in tighter. "We still don't know if he's my brother."

"You were right to try to help him either way. I'm proud of you." He leans down to give her a quick kiss on the temple before releasing her. "Who knows? Maybe we can get a paternity test after all."

Haley bites her lip as Jonathan gets up to continue packing, moving over to the open closet and pulling out another robe. "What if he doesn't want to?"

"Then we don't."

"But what if…." She trails off, trying to find the right words. The robe is folded and packed away and another taken from the closet before she finds them. "What if we never find out for sure?"

Jonathan stops and smiles down at her. "If we don't find out, then we don't find out. He may change his mind in the future, and I'm sure he'd find a way to let us know if that happens. I want to think your mom is right, though. It's nice to think that your brother grew up with his own family, even if it wasn't ours, and that he can come back to us if he ever wants to do that."

Haley isn't sure she wants to think about the Huntsclan being anyone's family when she knows how much blood they have on their hands.

How much blood her brother—if he's her brother—must have on his hands.

She knows some of the members were raised in the life rather than joining their cause later. She's always known that. Yet, she never thought of them as a family. To her, they were essentially an evil, people she would have to outwit in order to do her job as the American Dragon and protect the magical world because they would see it destroyed.

She doesn't want to think of them as the people who kept the boy who might be her brother safe while he grew up.

She'd much rather think of them as the people who'd stolen him away from his real family.

Stolen his life away from him.

If that really is his brother downstairs, then he should have been the American Dragon, not her.

Haley isn't sure she wants to think too much about that, either.

It makes her head hurt.

If he is her brother, if he should have been the American Dragon, and if he decides to renounce the Huntsclan and live with them instead, does that mean G would have to start training him to be the American Dragon instead of her?

"Penny for your thoughts?" Jonathan quips. The closet is closed now, but the top drawer of the dresser is open. He's holding a pair of socks in one hand, thick and woolen and grey, and she's pretty sure she's never seen them before in her life.

"Gramps doesn't wear socks," she says as her dad puts them into her backpack. "He doesn't like them."

Jonathan laughs. "He might need a pair or two. You never know."

That's true. She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything. How is she supposed to predict what's going to happen if there's so much she doesn't know? She can't plan for this. She can't—

She doesn't realize she's crying until her vision blurs.

Jonathan is beside her again, pulling her closer and holding her, and she's sobbing into his chest because she doesn't know what to do. She's supposed to know what to do. She's the American Dragon, and she doesn't even know how to save the boy who might be her own brother from the Huntsclan. She wants to, but she doesn't want everything to change, either, and it will if she does.

Gramps expects the worst. She knows he does. He and Fu wouldn't be doing what they are if he didn't. Her dad wouldn't be packing G a bag if he didn't. They're going to have to leave the shop behind, leave her home behind, and it's not that she cares about her perfect marks or showing up Olivia Mears again, but they're leaving and she knows they have to go, that they'll all have to go, but she doesn't want to.

It isn't supposed to be like this.

She made the choice to tell her dad the family secret. She knows Gramps isn't thrilled about it, but he accepted her decision. He didn't insist they give her dad a potion to erase his memory. He didn't insist that they only tell him what is absolutely necessary when it comes to the magical world. Things are supposed to be getting better.

There aren't supposed to be secrets between them.

There aren't supposed to be messes.

It's not that she doesn't want the boy downstairs to be her brother, and it's not that she doesn't want to help him.

She does.

She's just scared of what it all means. She's scared of what might happen. She's scared of what she doesn't know and what she can't control.

She's scared that Gramps might be right, and that her mom might be right, and most of all that both those things are true, because if 99 is her brother, she wants him to be her brother, not an enemy. Not a member of the Huntsclan. Not someone she can't trust with her life.

It feels like she has to make things right, because that's her job as the American Dragon, to protect people, to protect magical creatures, and it doesn't matter that her dad is trying to comfort her by telling her it'll work out, that it's not her responsibility, because it is, she accepted it, she'd known what she was doing when she accepted, but now she doesn't know what to do and she can't—

She can't—

"You're not alone," Jonathan whispers into her hair after he kisses the top of her head. She hugs him and tries to burrow closer. He's warm, solid, safe—except nothing is safe anymore. Is it? "This isn't your responsibility," he continues as he rubs circles into her back, "and whatever role you play in all of this, it's not something that you need to do alone. I'm here for you. We're all here for you, no matter what happens. We love you, and that's never going to change. It's okay. We'll be okay."

He can't promise that. She knows he can't promise that. She doesn't know if any of them will be okay.

He knows it, too. He has to know it might not be anything more than wishful thinking. G wouldn't have asked him to pack a bag like this. He certainly wouldn't have told Jonathan to use her old backpack.

"I…I don't want…." She isn't even sure what to say. She doesn't want to stay? She doesn't want to go? She doesn't want it to be true? She doesn't want it to be a lie? She doesn't want everything to change? She doesn't want it to stay the same? "I don't want to lose everyone."

She's trembling.

She can't stop.

Jonathan's arms tighten around her. "We won't," he says. We. He might just mean the others, but she knows it's more than that. He believes the boy downstairs is her brother, even if they don't have proof.

He doesn't need proof.

"What's going to happen, Dad?" she whispers as she pulls away from his tear-soaked chest to look up at him.

He rubs her arm with his right hand. "I wish I could tell you, my little comet. All I know is that we're going to do whatever we can to keep everyone safe."

But what if we can't?

She doesn't voice the question.

She doesn't want to know the answer.

She turns in his arms and snuggles into his side instead. "I'm scared."

"So am I."

The admission startles her enough that she asks without thinking, "Really?"

"Yes, really. We don't know how everything will turn out, and that's scary for all of us, but we'll find a way through it together." He holds her tighter for a few heartbeats more before adding, "I promise, I'm going to do whatever I can to help you, but right now, maybe you can help me." He reaches over to pull the backpack in front of her, and she takes it and holds it on her lap so it doesn't slide off. "Can you think of anything else your gramps will need if he has to leave the shop for a little while until this gets sorted out?"

The backpack is nearly full, everything rolled or folded to make it as small and dense as possible. Her dad has always been good at packing and maximizing space, a skill put to good use the few times they go camping, but she's still surprised to see as much in there as she does. He's already packed clothes she isn't sure Gramps will wear, but he has all the essentials, including multiple pairs of underwear and a nightshirt, except— "His toothbrush is still in the bathroom." Along with toothpaste and a comb and—

"Do you think you could grab that for me while I finish up in here?"

She nods and hands him the backpack before sliding off the bed.

He is going to do whatever he can to help, and so will she.