Chapter 17 The Hunter
THE HUNTER
KHARON: EARLY JUNE
Thud.
Whoosh.
Thud.
Whoosh.
The heavy punching bag swung in the dark as I pounded my taped fists against it.
The clock on the training room wall read six in the morning, but time didn’t matter when you didn’t rest.
My nights were spent standing over Alexis, watching her sleep.
Every morning at five, I ripped myself away from her side and took out my aggression in the gym.
Missions had been paused after the Rome incident, aka the worst day of my fucking life.
There was nothing to do but run through Titan simulations, stalk Alexis, and prepare for the SGC.
August was fast approaching.
We’d started incorporating battle weapons into our daily exercises, mostly sword and dagger work, since guns weren’t allowed in the Dolomite Coliseum.
The modern weapons dishonored the Kronos blessed sands—only knives, swords, and fists were allowed.
Alexis did okay, but she was a novice, and it would take years to master a blade.
We didn’t have years. We had weeks.
On top of all that, Alexis hadn’t talked to us since we’d fought with Patro and Achilles a few weeks ago.
She hadn’t said a single word.
Not one.
The Crimson Duo had fucking left her to die. We’d saved her, and yet she was mad at both of us.
Little did she know, we’d shown them mercy.
They were still alive.
Bouncing on the balls of my feet, I kicked out. The bag careened violently to the side, spinning. I kicked it back in the other direction. The need to slaughter, kill, hurt, was a constant urge.
Thud-thud-thud.
I jabbed with all my might.
Bloody prints smeared the bag’s surface as my knuckles split.
I punched faster.
The sound was muffled strangely without the shell of my left ear, but I hadn’t lied when I said I was glad Alexis had it. If she’d been permanently marred by the fucking Titans, Achilles and Patro would be dead right now.
I kicked harder, my ruined knee on fire.
It was a Kronos damned miracle that Alexis couldn’t feel my or Augustus’s pain. Thank fuck the connection only went one way. Embarrassment churned inside my gut at the mere thought of Alexis knowing how I felt.
If she knew just how weak I was, how much my leg hurt daily, she’d be disgusted.
She’d think I wasn’t good enough to be her husband.
At this point, I’d do anything for a single word from her. I’d strip naked and crawl. I’d stab myself in the heart.
At night, I found myself delicately tracing her cheeks, her nose, her eyebrows, with the tips of my fingers, desperate to connect with her.
“Fuck!” I screamed as I kicked, and the chain snapped. The punching bag flew across the room, slamming into the wall in a cloud of chalk.
I fell to my knees.
“You need to come to our room and see this!” Augustus shouted down from the entrance hatch. “Now.”
Neck prickling at the uncharacteristic fear in his voice, I staggered to my feet.
A few minutes later I stood in front of a black computer screen, as Augustus rapidly clicked buttons on the keyboard.
“What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked, as I dragged my bloody hands down my face and attempted to wipe away my exhaustion.
Augustus didn’t answer, stabbing at the keyboard like he had a personal vendetta against it.
The screen flickered on.
It was a grainy video with the watermark of a popular Spartan chaser. I rolled my eyes at the crowd of elderly humans on the screen. “What did the stupid bastards film now—”
The camera panned to the Roman Colosseum, where two Titans stood tall on the grass in front of it, their wings larger than I remembered. They looked revolting.
The camera turned, zooming in on the humans again.
Both Titans were headed straight toward them.
They were dead.
Shots echoed off screen and the cameraman gasped, the picture shook—Alexis lunged out of nowhere and threw herself in front of the humans with her arms spread wide.
I leaned closer.
She raised both her guns and fired.
Hair blowing behind her back, face determined, she held her ground like certain death wasn’t stalking toward her.
The bullets barely slowed the Titans.
I waited for her to leap away; I waited for her to save herself.
In a blur of white, Fluffy Jr. jumped on one of the Titans and tackled it to the ground. The usually docile creature, who seemed to constantly be suffering from digestive issues, was more vicious than I could have ever imagined.
But there was still one Titan standing.
“Why isn’t she leaping away?”
Augustus’s frown deepened. “Oh—just you fucking wait.”
I didn’t like his tone.
Hands fisted, I watched the winged fucking monstrosity approach my wife until it was close enough to kill.
I gritted my teeth. “Tell me she leaps away right now.”
Augustus scowled and shook his head, his eyes locked on the screen.
“WHY isn’t she saving herself?” I asked, unable to watch, but unable to look away.
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.
We weren’t the only ones obsessed.
Everyone wanted her.
They can’t have her.
“We have to earn her trust,” I said. “We have to do something to show her how we feel. She won’t accept jewelry, clothes, or money. We have to come up with—”
“I’m already ahead of you.” Augustus stood up and rummaged through a dresser drawer until he pulled out a sleek black box.
He opened it and I grinned. “That’s genius.”
Augustus smiled back, the first time in weeks that he’d made the expression. “We’re going to get her back.” His eyes dimmed. “We have to …”
Or we won’t survive was left unsaid.
Either Alexis broke the silent treatment and spoke to us, or we perished.
It was just a matter of time.
Muted rays streamed in through the windows as doves cooed outside, heavy clouds hanging over the choppy waters of Lake Como.
Morning had arrived.
It was time to train.
Augustus sighed heavily and rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. The circles around his eyes were darker than they’d ever been. He was as ruined as I was.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“To get our wife.”
I cracked my knuckles. It was about time.