Bonds of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #2)(38)

Nyx slithered over and flicked her tongue against my cheek. I tried to raise my hand and feel her scales, one last time, but I couldn’t find the strength to move. I turned my head, resting my cheek against her face.

“I … love … you,” I whispered between gasps. I love you, Fluffy Jr., Charlie, Helen, Drex, and maybe— A whistling sound cut off my potentially disturbing revelation.

Pops, grunts, shouts, and slaps echoed.

It took a second to decipher the blur of bronze skin.

Augustus stood over the Titan.

His black and white hair was undone, blowing behind him—he strangled the Titan with one hand wrapped around a metal chain, and fired a gun with his other, pumping its chest full of bullets.

Has ambidexterity always been so hot?

Splattered with black, teeth bared, crimson dripping from his eyes, Augustus looked positively feral.

Maybe it was the blood loss.

Maybe it was the pain.

Maybe it was the fact that Augustus was disturbingly capable of eliminating evil.

But suddenly, I couldn’t understand how I’d ever thought I was asexual.

The chain was attached to Augustus’s hip, the end tied around a third wingless Titan—it was trussed up with a tag stabbed through its bottom lip, and he was using the middle part of that metal chain to choke the Titan that had been attacking me.

Whatever this is, I’m into it.

Augustus holstered the gun, buried two knives into the Titan’s eyes, then resumed firing from point-blank range.

A hand grabbed my face, turning me away from the carnage.

Kharon tipped my chin to the side and froze, staring at what felt like a hole in the side of my skull.

Oh yeah, my ear’s on the ground somewhere, chopped into tiny pieces.

His eyes hardened into chips of unyielding ice. Kharon reached for his holster and raised up a wickedly sharp dagger.

Wait …

He sliced the blade clean through his left ear.

Someone screamed silently in horror.

It was me.

With a determined expression, Kharon pulled a small box out of his cargo pants.

A needle and thread glinted.

Augustus came back into view as he stalked across the lawn.

His gun was raised high as he fired at the last Titans. Poco perched on his shoulder with narrowed eyes—his fluffy raccoon arm was raised, pointing at the Titans, his thumb flexing rapidly.

Wait, is that a finger gun?

Kharon leaned down and blocked my view as he brought the needle and thread up to the left side of my face.

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t; I tried to tell him with my eyes not to do it.

Kharon bent closer, his jaw clenching with resolve as he sewed his appendage onto the side of my head.

“Per angusta ad augusta, carissimus,” he whispered.

Through trials to triumph, my dear.

Augustus appeared and Kharon leaned back to give him space. They patted my pockets until they pulled out two tags engraved with Hercules.

A single droplet fell from the sky, splattering across the golden name.

Augustus leaned down.

He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. I couldn’t feel a thing, yet my skin tingled where his lips brushed. He smelled like gunpowder, lightning, and sin.

Poco patted my cheek.

As they pulled away, the heavens opened up and rain drenched the world.

Kharon resumed sewing.

I was alive when I should be dead.

The Roman Colosseum loomed above, an ancient reminder—this was Sparta, and for better or worse, we were the gods of this new dark age.





13


THE HUNTER




KHARON

The world hissed as rain poured down, mud gathering beneath my knees.

Gunshots echoed, Titans screeched, chains rattled, and Augustus grunted as he fought behind me.

Soaked to the bone, pain throbbed across the fresh wound on the left side of my head.

All that mattered was her.

Alexis Hert was lying in the muddy grass covered in blood, looking ruined and ethereal.

My wife is injured.

It was nothing short of devastating.

With perfect precision, I stitched my ear to the side of her head.

In, out, in, out.

Fixing Alexis was the only thing of consequence.

The fucking Titan had sliced her ear into pieces, and I had a perfectly good one that she could use. It was that simple.

I was also no stranger to stitching appendages back on. I’d lost fingers, toes, and even an entire hand once in battle.

Spartans couldn’t regenerate anything that was hard tissue, like appendages and limbs, but we could fuse.

If you stitched an injury within a few hours of receiving it, our bodies would re-heal the damaged appendage, and the same applied to the body parts donated from other Spartans.

My wife’s body was going to accept my ear. It didn’t have a fucking choice.

Hell and Hound prowled protectively around us, flame eyes flickering, ready to maul anyone who dared approach.

A Titan screeched close by, but I didn’t turn and look.

Augustus would handle it. I trusted him with my life, and hers.

But when the fuck did the Titans start mutating into bats?

I finished the last stitches as Alexis drifted in and out of consciousness.

Rain splattered across bronzed skin, and her golden curls were a tangled halo around her head as she lay in a muddy puddle of pink.