Bonds of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #2)(50)

Alexis reached down and unsheathed two of the knives I’d given her.

My breath caught. “No … she doesn’t.” I’d assumed she’d gotten her wounds because the Titans had tracked her down, ambushed her before she got away.

Never in a million years could I imagine this.

“Yep,” Augustus said.

My jaw dropped as my barely trained wife leapt toward the Titan with two daggers raised, stabbing it at point-blank range.

The creature shrieked in pain as it spun, trying to dislodge her.

She held on.

I covered my mouth as talons sliced through her back, exposing bone. I waited for her to fall back, to pass out, to collapse.

Alexis shook her head and tightened her grip. Somehow, with her back torn to shreds, she held on and dug her knives deeper into the Titan, dragging them down through its belly.

The Titan collapsed and she straddled it.

Two-colored eyes wide, black blood splattered across the delicate bridge of her nose, Alexis stabbed at the creature without mercy.

She was the most powerful, beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my fucking life.

Without help, Alexis had incapacitated a Titan that was more powerful than any we’d ever seen. It was limp beneath her. She reached for her cuffs. She’s doing it.

The camera panned to the side.

The other Titan was getting to its feet.

No.

Alexis’s hands slipped as she desperately fumbled with the cuffs. She didn’t have time, and she was badly injured.

“RUN!” I yelled at the screen.

The Titan was on her before I could blink.

She was gone.

The camera tipped back. Alexis was rising through the air, locked in the Titan’s grasp as it flew straight up—higher and higher, until she was nothing more than a dot in the sky.

Human voices screamed with horror as they pointed.

Crack.

A concrete table exploded as Alexis and the Titan slammed into it.

The camera zoomed in on where my wife was crawling through the smoke and rubble.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“She somehow leapt from midair to a controlled spot on the ground,” Augustus said, pure awe in his voice. “While she was badly injured … with a Titan.”

“That shouldn’t be possible.”

“No fuck.”

“And it’s such a short distance—how is she doing that?”

“I have … no idea.”

The House of Hades was known for its might, but this was next level. We both watched in shock as our blood-covered wife stumbled to her feet. She focused on the pathetic humans, like she was more worried about them than herself.

Then she was kneeling over an injured woman, the camera view mostly blocked by other people.

What is she doing?

“Savior,” the humans called out as they cried and prayed.

She staggered to stand again. Golden curls were messy around her head, resembling a halo.

What the fuck is she doing?

“She’s an angel,” someone shouted.

“A hero.”

“She saved her.”

Another voice said, “The Angel of Rome.”

The picture shook and there was a watery gasping, like the cameraman was sobbing.

Humans prayed loudly. From the sound of it, they were praying to her.

Alexis said something weakly, then she threw up.

Everything got blurry as the picture swung back and forth between the two Titans who were both standing up.

It focused back on Alexis. Her expression was determined even though she had deep wounds.

Augustus looked at me, and the unspoken holy fucking shit hung between us.

Our wife was a beast.

I forced my gaze back to the screen.

Again, she leapt across the field—Crack! Then she leapt again. She kept fighting, long past when she should have passed out from blood loss.

I didn’t look away until we appeared on the screen.

I didn’t look away as I sobbed over her in the rain, cut off my ear, and sewed it onto her.

I watched as Augustus carried Alexis against his chest, Titans dragging behind him, as I hung off him half delirious, glaring at all the humans.

I didn’t remember there being such a crowd.

The camera panned out.

There were hundreds of people.

“Angelus Romae,” echoed loudly as the young and old chanted for her.

When the screen went black, long moments passed as Augustus and I stared at it in silence, neither of us knowing what to say.

“She’s fucking insane,” I croaked hoarsely, when I finally regained the ability to speak. “She’s …”

“Perfect,” Augustus whispered reverently.

I nodded in agreement.

“The problem is—” Augustus’s voice hardened “—all the humans think so too.” The keyboard clicked as he toggled between screens.

The Spartan Lifestyle Page came up, the bane of all our existences. But instead of the usual images of Achilles and Patro, the page was covered in pictures and videos of our Alexis.

“The Hero We’ve Been Waiting For” spread across the top of the page in big bold letters.

Augustus clicked.

Image after image of Alexis in the fight popped up. There were also drawings of her. Paintings. Sexual paintings of her falling from the sky with wings. Thankfully, they were fully bullshit and looked nothing like her—but it was the principle of it.