by C. R. Jane
I stood with Hades, who looked just as uncomfortable as I was, clenching and unclenching his fists.
Ready to leave? Yes, please. I nodded at Apollo, smiling, grateful he offered an escape.
“Incoming,” Ares said, appearing at my side in a puff of magic.
“Fuck,” Hades breathed.
When I looked up, Hera stood in front of me in all her divine glory. And boy, was there a lot of it. I remembered now, she was the goddess of women, marriage, and family. But she might as well have been the goddess of seduction. Everything about her screamed sex appeal. She was voluptuous, practically spilling out of her dress in all the right places and her golden hair looked like it was spun from silk.
But it was her sultry smile that really sealed the deal. If it weren’t for the way her eyes narrowed on me, I would have said this woman was a stunner. But something about the way she looked at me, the way her eyes shifted around, taking it all in, gave me the feeling we were dealing with a calculating bitch, not to mention everything she’d put Heracles through.
“You survived the evening,” she said with a smile as if she were on our side. Right, we were all friends here.
“Thank you very much for inviting me,” I said. One polite foot forward and then we could get the fuck out of here.
“A word of advice,” she warned, and Hades groaned, not bothering to hide it. “The sooner you accept that you’ll be living here permanently, the faster you’ll adjust to our ways.”
“What?” I frowned. Poseidon joined us, walking up from behind Hera, and I glanced at him. He stared at me blankly, having just missed the sentence that had ruffled all our feathers.
“You’re one of us now, darling.” She reached out to my hair and ran it through her fingers. It was an oddly intimate gesture and I wanted her to get the hell away from me.
“I’m the Goddess of Sanctuary. I look after the people. I can’t do that when I’m not with them.”
Hera laughed as if I had just said the funniest thing, her voice light and crisp. “Of course you can,” she added. “We all do our jobs from here just fine. It’s what’s done, Elyse. It’s only right.”
“I’ll have to think about it.” I offered her a tight smile, ready to get out of here already.
Poseidon sucked in his breath as if I’d said something wrong. When I glanced at Apollo, he stood stiff next to Poseidon. Ares clenched his jaw. I didn’t dare look at Hades. I could already feel the anger radiating from him.
“They’ve already started construction on your palace. We expect you in a week. We’re not joking about you living here.” Hera smiled at me, her lips perfect, her whole body exuding sexuality. She ran her hand down my arm before she walked away. It was just a brush of the fingertips, a light touch, but after she turned to leave, I rubbed my arm where she’d touched me.
“What the fuck was that?” Hades asked the moment Hera had disappeared.
“They don’t think it’s right that she lives with the humans,” Poseidon explained.
“You knew about this?” I snarled quietly.
Poseidon nodded, his lips thinning, clearly not pleased about the whole situation. “I was coming to talk to you. I spoke to Zeus just now.”
I shook my head, fury surging through me. Since losing my dad, no one had dictated my life, and no one sure as hell was going to start now. “This is bullshit. How can they expect me to give up who I am?”
“They’re not expecting that,” Poseidon responded. “They just don’t want you removed from Olympus.”
“Never bothered them with me,” Hades piped in, his voice strangled and full of sarcasm.
Poseidon rolled his eyes. “Don’t make this about you, brother,” he shot back before looking at me again. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea.”
I blinked at him. “You can’t be serious?”
“What the fuck, bro?” That came from Apollo.
Poseidon huffed loudly. “I just think it wouldn’t be bad for you to be here with us. After everything you’ve done, Zeus knows you deserve a break, to realize who you are now, to enjoy this heavenly location. And it’s not safe for you on Earth. We still don’t know if you’re immortal and if you die again, we’re all fucked.”
I shook my head, trying to process everything he’d so succinctly laid out, but this was huge and not a decision to be rushed. “So what about the people?”
“Yeah,” Apollo said. “How is she going to do what she does best if she’s removed from the humans she’s saving?”
“You dislike them,” Hades barked in response, staring at me.
I glared at him. Whose side was he on?
“What?” he asked. “You keep complaining how you need a break. Right?”
He wasn’t wrong. I did complain about that a lot. It was one of the reasons we fucked so often lately. I needed the distraction and I felt like of all the gods, Hades understood that side of me the best.
At least, so I had thought. It didn’t look like it now.
“I love the humans,” I said. “I am one of them. I’ve always been a part of that world. Just because I get tired sometimes… You know what that’s like, right? I’m sure you do.”
Hades clenched his jaw.
“I think it’s better if you stay on Earth,” Apollo declared, his voice strong and direct.
“You just want her there with you.” Poseidon’s eyebrows pulled together into a frown.
“Yeah?” said Apollo. “And you’re going to stay on Earth if she comes here? Or are you going to follow? Don’t make it sound like you’re so fucking selfless.”
“Guys, please,” I said, shaking my head. I glanced at Ares, who’d been quiet all this time. He watched us with an expression I couldn’t read, his feet wide apart, gripping his wrist like he was a sentry waiting to be called upon. “What about you,” I asked him. “What do you think?”
He shrugged, his breaths slow and calculated. “I don’t actually give a shit, truth be told.”
I didn’t know why, but that pissed me off so much more. I should have been happy that at least one of them wasn’t trying to tell me what to do. Or picking a fight about it. But that Ares didn’t actually care only made me feel like he wasn’t invested. I knew it was bullshit. Ares worried as much for me as the rest of them did. And our relationship had always been a very strange balance of give and take.
But it annoyed me he just didn’t seem to be bothered where I would be.
“So you don’t care where I end up?” I asked with a bit too much sass in my voice.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” he said, staring at me with sincerity in his eyes. That was what I loved about him. He was real and spoke his mind.
I bit my tongue. He’d often been called a coward by other gods and even in historical records because his life views were so different. I wasn’t going to follow suit. But it was looking a hell of a lot like he wasn’t interested in getting involved in conflict. It was fine if it wasn’t something serious, but this was my future we were talking about, and if I relocated, I wanted to ensure all four of the men in my life were okay with it.
I looked at Hades again. When he noticed, he reached for my hand and squeezed it. He was searching for shit with the other gods by saying things that riled them up, but at least he stood on my side with this. He was being a dick by telling me I didn’t like the humans, but he had my back. At the end of the day, he didn’t tell me where he wanted me, but that he longed to be with me.
That was something, and I accepted it.
“I think we need to get out of here.” Hades broke the silence, proving that he was my hero after all.
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all night,” I replied.
Poseidon looked like he wanted to say something, the corners of his mouth twitching, but Hades pulled me against him and the next moment we were back in my apartment, the others still on Mount Olympus.
“Thank you,” I whispered, smiling too widely. Never would I have thought I’d hate being in a h
eavenly location.
He nodded. “I hate that place, anyway.”
“I know.”
“It’s filled with self-righteous assholes,” he hissed from clenched teeth.
After I had seen them tonight, I started to understand why Hades loathed the place and other gods. I’d always thought his dislike was rooted in jealousy or bitterness over what had happened to him. But I’d never seen so many people in love with themselves in one room together.
I’d never felt more left out, more out of place, more judged. Which was ironic because for the first time, I should have felt like I was fitting in.
Chapter 4
“I need to get out of these clothes,” I explained after a while, still standing there, feeling stiff and uncomfortable, unable to be myself. Normally, I didn’t wear makeup or dresses and I didn’t ever doll myself up to look like a sex object.
Because that was essentially what all the gods did. And that was what they wanted from me, too. How the hell was I going to survive with them? How would I live there and be one of them if I couldn’t be like that—sexed-up and full of myself? No thank you. I’d end up saying the wrong thing, probably fighting them, and they’d gang up on me. Maybe curse me. I’d read up on the Greek mythology tales and how nasty the gods were to one another.
I dragged myself to my room and started undoing the ropes Heracles had spent time wrapping around me. I dropped the tunic on the floor—just a cloth without the rope holding it in place—and I pulled my hair out of the hairband that held it back. I got into the shower, turning the spray on hot and letting the water run over my body, washing away all the bullshit that felt like it still clung to me from Mount Olympus.
Hades had been right when the gods had argued about me being on Mount Olympus or on Earth. I often complained about being around the humans, about always having to save them. There were days when I felt that everything, my life, my responsibility, was all too much. Days when I wished Heracles would come stay in Chicago with me rather than heading out to wherever he holed up now.
But I didn’t want to pull him out of the new life he’d created for himself, now that he was free of the Lowe bloodline and having to train them. Since I’d realized my full potential, the hero Zeus had always intended for the Lowes to become, Heracles had been free to live the life he hadn’t been able to live for centuries.
I wanted that for him. I wanted him to find love again, to just relax for a change.
So I was going to do this saving-the-world thing alone. I wouldn’t get a break. And sometimes, that felt like a black hole opening up in front of me.
Other times, I was fine with it. It was worth it whenever the humans were safe again and I could finally use my power for everything I was meant to do. I got a rush from being the one who could save them all, from being a hero, from being fulfilled in a way I hadn’t been before.
Fuck, how was I going to decide what I was going to do? Living on Mount Olympus sounded awful. Except for the fact that I could step away from everything for a little while and just breathe.
But to leave the humans behind? Catina and Oliver? My other friends? And the world where I’d grown up. It would feel like a betrayal if I did that.
I trembled with anger. How could I even consider leaving? To live among the gods, away from the people whom I associated with, the humans I’d promised my dad to take care of whether or not they deserved it?
Just because life had an expiration date, just because the humans were mortal, didn’t make their lives any less important than those of the gods. And I’d found my purpose in life, to look after them on a level I had never thought possible. I wasn’t going to turn my back on that just because I was tired once in a while, just because some goddess had told me that it was better another way. Besides, none of the gods, other than my four men, Heracles, and Persephone, had given two shits about me before. Now that I was the Goddess of Sanctuary, they suddenly wanted to have me join their clique. To have me pretend everything was fine and dandy and that mortals weren’t a big concern of mine anymore. Yeah, right.
When I stepped out of the shower, my pulse still raged in my veins, but at least I was less confused. And I’d made the decision not to move to Mount Olympus. This was my home and where I felt comfortable.
“What’s eating you?” Hades asked when I emerged from the bathroom wearing shorts and a tank top, a lot more comfortable in my own clothes than the robes the gods wanted me in.
“I can’t just do that,” I said as if he’d been privy to the entire argument I’d had with myself in my mind. “I can’t just leave humans behind.”
“You don’t have to,” Hades said. “It’s your choice.”
“I grew up here.” He wasn’t arguing with me, but I felt like I had to make my case, anyway. I felt like if I said it enough times out loud, I would start to convince myself that a break wasn’t what I wanted. “I was a human. Maybe I still am, in a way. We don’t even know if I can die or not. And just because I’m something else now by definition doesn’t change the core of who I am.”
Hades nodded and pulled me against him. He stroked his fingers through my wet hair. It should have been reassuring. Instead, it felt condescending. Or maybe my anger was just so much that I couldn’t think straight.
“What if I don’t want to live on Mount Olympus?” I pulled away from him. He fought me for a moment, but then he let me go.
“Then don’t,” he said matter-of-factly.
Was it really that simple to reject the invitation, to throw it back in the gods’ faces? Was it right of me to stick it to the man?
“Elyse, you’re beautiful. Inside and out. You’re not like them. I’ve been around those assholes for long enough to know that you’re everything they will never be, even if you’re a goddess now, even if they want you there. You’re not them and that’s what I love about you. You’re thinking of the right things.”
“Am I?” I asked. “I feel selfish.”
“How is choosing to stay and save the people who have been placed under your care selfish?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know how to explain to him how unsure of myself I was sometimes, how there were days I wished none of this had happened at all. Sometimes I preferred we could turn back the clock and I’d head back to the training center to train with Heracles, to learn how to defend myself against centaurs and stupid mythical beings that didn’t even bother sticking their heads out anymore.
Sometimes I just wanted to be normal.
Whatever the hell that meant.
“You know,” Hades said, sitting down on my bed and leaning back against the headboard with that nonchalant manner that all the gods possessed. “It’s never wrong to reject the gods. They might want something from you that you choose not to give. Look at me.”
He was right. He’d rejected the gods and everything they were about for a very, very long time. Maybe he’d been tricked to end up in the Underworld, but it had been his choice to become so isolated from them, to be the stubborn son of a bitch that no one really related to anymore.
It wasn’t what I wanted, of course, but it proved a point. I didn’t have to be what they expected of me. What were they going to do? Strip me of my power? I’d earned this all by myself—the gods hadn’t helped me with it. Maybe if they had, they would have been able to take it away again.
But they hadn’t, so this was my power and they couldn’t do anything to me. Maybe staying here on Earth against the gods’ will wasn’t going to get me in trouble. Not any more trouble than I could handle. I mean, how long had Apollo stayed on Earth to get away from them? They’d left him alone.
“Why are you being so nice about this?” I asked Hades, crawling onto the bed with him and putting my head on his chest. “The others are very opinionated about it. Or completely uninterested.” I shouldn’t have been that upset about Ares and the way he was acting, but I was.
“Because there’s no point being a dick about it. You’re going to decide what you want in the end, any
way. And when you do, we’re all going to have to accept it. I accepted you a long time ago, so this just follows suit.”
I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around Hades’s torso and listening to his heart beating. It hammered against my cheek, and I lost myself in the sound. Having him be like this was a relief. I loved the way Hades was making things easier for me, not harder. He was everything I’d ever dreamed he’d be, and my chest blossomed with joy every day when I pinched myself to make sure this was real.
“What will you do if I decide to live there?” I asked, lifting my head to stare up at Hades. “You hate the place.”
Hades shrugged, his expression stoic, not revealing a single emotion. “Technically, I hate Earth, too. But it’s more tolerable because you’re here. Something tells me it will be the same on Mount Olympus.”
I pushed myself up against Hades until I could reach his lips, and kissed him, adoring every single thing about him.
Chapter 5
The kiss was immediately fiery. I’d meant to kiss Hades to show him my gratitude for being amazing about everything, but the moment our lips touched, something between us exploded.
The lust was suddenly thick in the air and Hades pulled me tightly against him. I gasped when his hard body rubbed up against mine, his erection immediate in his pants.
His tongue was in my mouth and he probed me as if he were already inside of me, as if he wanted to consume me. I moaned into his mouth and his hand slid onto my breast.
When he broke the kiss for just a moment and I looked up into his dark, curious eyes, they were drowning deep and filled with desire. The way he looked at me made me feel like he was going to devour me and I shivered. It was how he’d looked at me since the day we had met and even though we’d been together for a while now, and we’d fucked for much longer than that, I couldn’t get enough of him.
I lay against Hades’s chest, but in one swift movement, with his strong arm wrapped around me and his able body powerful enough to break me if he wanted to, he spun me around and I was horizontal underneath him.
