Bonds of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #2)(4)

They shouldn’t have been visible.

“Alexis,” a baritone voice said, smooth as silk. “Look at me.”

I obeyed.

Augustus’s black eyes trailed down my body from head to toe, caressing, checking for injuries.

My name lingered between us in the icy air—three short syllables—yet he’d managed to make it sound like the most depraved of curses. He always did.

Midnight eyes locked on mine—I gasped.

Augustus’s expression was ravenous.

Black and white hair hung loose down his back, the strands blowing around his wide shoulders. The scarlet edge of his scar peeked out beneath his helmet.

Tendons strained in his neck.

Danger, a subconscious voice screamed as my pulse pounded in my ears.

Crimson pooled in the whites of Augustus’s eyes as he activated his Chthonic powers.

He looked enraptured.

Beside him, Kharon slowly licked his lips.

The world faded and there was just the three of us meeting in the snowy woods, the dangerous villains and their reluctant wife. A trifecta of lethal abilities.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even Lord Acton couldn’t have imagined the depraved power of Chthonics.

A droplet of blood spilled from Augustus’s lashes, streaking down his cheek like a tear and disappearing beneath his Spartan helmet. I’ve never seen a Chthonic do that before.

He’s going to invade my mind and smash it to pieces.

Terror crawled down my spine. He’d torn into my head during the crucible and forced his will upon me. He could do it again.

RUN.

Augustus was a monster.

So are you.

Poco screeched, black hands wrapping around Augustus’s neck as he climbed up onto his shoulder. Raccoon whiskers quivered, black eyes flashing.

Augustus didn’t move. He just stared at me with leaking, bloody eyes.

With tingling fingers, I rubbed at my chest where the new marriage bond strummed, the one that was supposed to make our powers stronger. The same bond that forged Persephone’s terrifying powers.

Augustus and Kharon were two indominable forces. There was nowhere to run from them, nowhere I could hide where they wouldn’t eventually find me, and even Crete wasn’t safe. I knew it in my bones.

Looking around, I focused on anything but the two dark gods bonded to my soul.

Branches clattered in the wind.

My neck prickled because my husbands weren’t the only ones staring.

Achilles and Patro stood beside them, watching me with an intensity that bordered on deranged.

My mentors.

Achilles glared, a cigarette hanging between the grates of his muzzle. Smoke rose around his face, red eyes bright through the hazy tendrils. Hair pulled back tightly with DEATH tattooed across his knuckles, he was a blazing presence in the frigid forest.

Nero, his mammoth shaggy black wolf, sat obediently next to him with a matching scarlet gaze.

Patro smirked haughtily, leaning casually against his lover. Poppae, his sleek jaguar, flicked her tail back and forth, emerald eyes bright.

A strangling pressure squeezed my neck. I touched my throat protectively.

Predators everywhere.

I looked away.

Hermos and Agatha were at the end of the line—two dark creatures with Chthonic blood somewhere in their lineage.

Hermos was an infamous Gorgon. Agatha was an Empusa, a rare type of shape-shifting creature that ate men.

She inspired me.

Crack.

I screamed as something huge leapt into the clearing.

A woman astride a monstrous black horse scoffed at me, crimson droplets sparkling in the air around her.

Artemis.

Ice-blue eyes peered down an aristocratic nose, the air around her full of fear, literally. Her power surrounded her in a mist of glittering red—it was terror incarnate.

The immense horse pranced in place.

A familiar stocky figure in a black exercise toga stood between the trees.

No.

This can’t be.

Drex shrugged sheepishly as his golden toucan flapped its wings with agitation.

“But y-you’re an Olympian,” I sputtered.

The entire point of the Assembly of Death was to oppress and punish Chthonics after they lost the Great War.

Drex stepped closer. “The Olympians exiled me because Theros was my mentor.” His voice cracked. “I had no choice—at least here I can fight Titans … with you.”

Sparta was still reeling over Theros’s betrayal and subsequent disappearance. The Falcon Chronicles reported that Ceres, a muse from the crucible’s library, had helped Theros kidnap me and other House of Zeus heirs. She’d planted the warning notes in my textbooks.

After the article dropped, Ceres had also disappeared without a trace.

“I’ll be fine,” Drex whispered. “Maybe.” He narrowed his eyes. “Hopefully?”

We’re both dead.

“We’re here,” Artemis announced, “because we have two new recruits to welcome—a fellow Chthonic daughter, and the first … idiot … to ever volunteer for induction.”

She bared her teeth, eyes manic, as she cocked a bloodstained bow and raised it to the full moon.

Yep, that’s definitely Kharon’s (Karen’s) mother.

“At the Spartan Gladiator Competition this August, we will showcase our powers and strike fear into the hearts of the Olympians.”