Chapter 14 The Eldest Heir #2
She sighed at my words, eyes closing, her head once again lolling forward as she trusted me to take care of her.
Her back was a mess of ruined skin.
And she was thanking me.
The smile fell from my face. Eyes blurring, I cleaned her hair gently, biting down on my lower lip to stifle a sound of distress.
Angelus Romae, indeed.
The humans had seen the truth of her. I’d seen it in their reverent expressions and heard it in their choked voices. They’d seen her for what she was.
Unlike most Spartans, Alexis cared for others, even to her own detriment.
She protected everyone—but who protected her?
We should have.
Tears streamed down my face.
Months ago, Kharon and I had immediately recognized her goodness.
I’d seen it during the crucible.
She’d spent every free minute hunched over a textbook, calmly helping Drex understand Thagorean.
She’d been much smarter than the idiot Olympian boys, but she never bragged, even though she had the type of mind that scholars searched for centuries to find.
Pine would never admit it aloud, but while half starved and delirious, she’d solved complex Thagorean problems that even he couldn’t. And he’d spent over a century teaching Thagorean at the highly competitive Rhodes Olympian University.
Her intellect was astonishing.
Pine had whispered with awe that she was a prodigy, the likes of which he’d never seen.
Alexis was an enigma.
An angel.
So, we’d manipulated, tricked, and trapped to get exactly what we wanted. Her.
Regret crushed my chest, a heavy weight of shame.
I moved Alexis, so she was leaning back on me, and grabbed some conditioner, slowly working it through her long tresses.
“We don’t deserve you,” I whispered, as if saying the truth aloud could atone for what we’d done. “Angels don’t deserve this … You’re so much better than us.”
“No shit—ow—fuck.” Kharon stumbled naked into the dark shower, collapsed onto the bench beside me, and tipped his bloody head back, groaning as he leaned against the wall under the spray. “We’ll never deserve her as long as we live.”
I glared over at him. “Stop shouting.”
He rolled his eyes and tapped his missing ear.
“Figure it the fuck out. Don’t agitate her.”
Instead of getting mad, Kharon raised an eyebrow. “Get out of your head—I can practically see you thinking from here.”
Gritting my teeth, I focused on separating her curls with conditioner. “We’re bad for her,” I said, the words hanging heavy in the hazy darkness. “She deserves someone … nice.”
Kharon laughed, a harsh cruel sound. “Oh, fuck off with your melodramatic, self-loathing, eldest heir bullshit.”
His voice was too loud in the quiet shower, his words jarring.
My fingers stilled.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Kharon dumped the bottle of shampoo over his hair, hissing as the suds burned his wound.
When he’d finished grunting through the pain, he looked at me pointedly. “Alexis is our wife. No, we aren’t good for her … We’re cruel, possessive, aggressive—”
“I got it,” I snapped, cutting him off.
Kharon sprawled with his legs wide on the bench, and our knees knocked together as he lathered soap across his scarred chest.
“The point is,” he said darkly. “She’s too good for all of Sparta, not just us. Achilles and Patro fucking abandoned her.”
We both fumed.
They’d be dealt with. Brutally.
“So—what do we do with someone who’s too pure for this world?” Kharon’s white teeth flashed in the dim. “We protect her. We make her so irrevocably ours that everyone is afraid to look in her direction.”
I shook my head. “That’s a fool’s dream.”
“No.” Kharon’s voice rose. “That’s what Hades did with Persephone. No one dares look at her wrong, and we need to do the same.”
I paused.
He had a point.
Kharon reached over and wrapped one of Alexis’s curls around his finger.
“She needs monsters,” he said, turning his head to reveal the mutilated side of his head. “Precisely because she’s not one.” His smirk was rabid, a carnivore in the body of a man. “That’s why she has us.”
I cleared my throat.
“So, you … gave her your ear.”
“I did.” His eyes flashed as they met mine. “Do you have a fucking problem with that?”
I raised an eyebrow at his hostility. “Just an observation.”
He smirked with satisfaction.
“So,” I said. “Do you want to talk about why you—”
Kharon slumped over and fell onto the shower floor. Water splattered on his naked sprawled form as steam rose.
He was out cold.
I sighed.
Thirty minutes later, Alexis and Kharon were dry, warm, and asleep in the middle of the bed.
I’d given them each a shot of purified adrenaline mixed with an insanely expensive sleeping agent. It was the newest Olympian technology and there’d only been two vials in the medical kit. It would send them into a light healing coma, but they’d wake up almost fully healed.
Afterward, I’d sprayed a healing mist on all their wounds, the Rod of Asclepius golden on the sides of the container, signifying it was Olympian medicine. Finally, I’d wrapped them both in fresh bandages and placed them under the covers.
Taking my time, I tucked the covers under Alexis’s toes and legs, just like Helen always liked.
I tossed the other side haphazardly over Kharon.
He snored, wrestling a pillow from my hands in his sleep, and then he turned over, wrapping his arms around Alexis. He held her like he was afraid someone was going to take her away.
Poco clambered up onto the bed. His gray fur was still wet and plastered to his little form, and he was shivering.
“Come here,” I said, and he held up both his hands like he wanted to be picked up.
I obliged.
After another thirty minutes in the shower, this time scrubbing Poco’s fur with shampoo until he was clean, I wrapped him in a towel and sat him on my lap, then brushed him in long strokes until he was fluffy.
When I was satisfied he was clean and I dry, I carried him back to the bed. He looked up at me, black eyes wide and trusting, as I raised the corner of the blanket up for him.
He snuggled under the covers, chittering with contentment as he wrapped his little black hands around Alexis’s neck.
I tucked him in with only his little gray ears peeking out, just like he preferred.
Satisfied that everyone was taken care of, I quickly stripped off my clothes and scrubbed myself clean as fast as possible.
Rushing, I pulled on a pair of sweatpants stashed in the bedside table, then I dug through my discarded clothes, found the two loaded Spartan guns, and tucked a sheathed dagger into my waistband.
With guns in both of my hands, I leaned back against the front door. Eyes wide, mind alert. If anyone tried to mess with the lock, I’d feel it immediately.
No one was getting inside.
Not under my watch.
I stood guard as Alexis, Kharon, and Poco slept peacefully in the bed. Head fuzzy with exhaustion, I ignored the aches in my body.
On the floor, the hellhounds were curled together around Fluffy Jr., the lump on his back quivering.
Some beasts underwent molting transformations, but none looked remotely like he did. Another mystery.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
I counted the rise and fall of Alexis’s chest, watching every breath she took as the candles burned low.
As the hours passed, calm descended, the kind that only occurred when purpose met passion.
Duty was melting away into something new.
Alexis was going to be okay, because there was no other option.
I was going to make sure of it.
Warmth filled my chest, and for the first time since it painfully settled into place, the marriage bond hummed with contentment.
“Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo,” I whispered into the shadows. “For you, my carus. Always.”
It was a promise.
If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise hell.