13. Jealousy
Jealousy
Alexander
“I want you to know, Lord Stormwright, that I don’t trust you. But for Andie’s sake, I’m willing to accept you.”
Seated across from me with her arms crossed over her chest, Danae Wayland cut a strange picture.
My mate’s best friend was a small woman and Andie’s complete opposite.
Unremarkable where Andie was divine, she wouldn’t have impressed any Alpha with her looks.
But there was something about her, a hidden fire, that told me she was far more than she seemed.
“For Andromeda’s sake, we’ll all work together,” Cassandra Reed said. She’d set up a makeshift workspace in one corner of the healing room. Her diagnostic equipment looked half-Olympian and half modern medical. I wished it had given me hope, but at this point, few things could encourage me anymore.
Helena stood by the window, her regal posture rigid with tension. She hadn’t looked at me directly since I’d arrived.
Danae pulled a slim tablet from her bag, her movements precise and efficient. “Since my argument with Andie, I’ve continued to investigate. I went to the venue of her last wedding.”
Her fingers moved across the tablet screen, pulling up readings I barely understood. “I discovered traces of energy still lingering in the air. Not from any of the wedding party. Not from any identifiable source. It was just… there. Ambient. Like radiation, but magical. A kind that persists.”
Helena’s shoulders stiffened further. “Hera’s Gaze,” she said quietly, still not turning from the window.
“It is not the Gaze that matters right now,” Cassandra said, her tone gentle but firm. “It is the curse’s persistence. This is a chronic illness. We have to treat it as such.”
It was a different perspective. Helena and I had looked at cures coming from the gods or had searched for miracles in new, revolutionary drugs. But maybe that was never what we were supposed to find. “Chronic conditions can’t be cured,” I mused. “But they can be managed.”
Danae set the tablet down on Cassandra’s cluttered desk, her expression thoughtful. “I’ve been doing some reading,” she said. “In ancient times, Alphas favored collaring Omegas. It’s distasteful and not a practice we’ve kept, but I think there may be more to it than aesthetics.”
Helena turned sharply from the window. “You cannot be suggesting—”
“Let her finish,” Cassandra interrupted her. Helena pursed her lips but said nothing else.
Danae pushed her glasses up her nose nervously.
When she spoke again, her voice was steady.
“I think Cassandra and I can work together to create a collar that could interfere with the curse. Not magic, per se, but science. Making sure brainwaves are aligned normally and using the patterns of House Zeus’s aura powers to do so. ”
My breath caught.
House Zeus aura powers. The subtle electrical influence we carried in our blood, the charisma that made others want to listen, to trust, to follow.
I’d always favored it over brute strength.
It was useful in negotiations, dangerous in its potential for manipulation, and often our most valuable asset.
But during the ritual at Maracaibo, my father had gone a step further. He’d used his aura to trap me, just as Agamemnon had been trapped in the bath.
The conclusion was simple. Influence didn’t have to mean manipulation. It could mean stabilization. Grounding. The way a lightning rod channeled dangerous energy safely into the earth. Like the temporary bond I’d given Andie.
“The collar would need to be worn constantly,” Cassandra added. “And it would require regular adjustments as we learn more about how the curse manifests in Andromeda specifically. This isn’t a cure. It’s management.”
“But it could work,” Danae said firmly, meeting my eyes. “It could give her back some semblance of normal life. Not complete freedom—the curse will always be there, lurking. But control. Agency. The ability to function without constant spiraling.”
I didn’t hesitate for a moment. “When and where do we start?”
Danae’s lips curved in a small but determined smile. “I’m a firm believer in efficiency, Lord Stormwright. Andie has waited long enough.”
Cassandra straightened and assessed me with clinical detachment. “I’ll need to examine the bond structure first. Take your shirt off and lie down on the examination table.”
I moved to comply, shrugging out of my jacket and unbuttoning my shirt with steady fingers. As I lay down on the metal table, Cassandra’s hand settled over my chest. I had to force myself not to flinch.
Her touch was warm, the healing fire creating a tingling sensation that spread outward. It was professional contact. Even in its kindness, House Hestia remained impersonal. The clinical efficiency of a healer who’d touched hundreds of bodies in her work. It felt wrong.
No one should be touching me like this except Andie. Even this innocent medical contact was a violation of something primal and possessive that lived in my bones. The temporary mark I’d left on Andie’s neck might be fading, but whatever fragile connection we’d forged was still there.
Helena and Danae moved closer, flanking the examination table. Danae pulled up more data on her tablet, her eyes scanning information I couldn’t see. Helena’s hands remained clasped before her, but faint purple-gold energy began to gather around her fingers.
“If my understanding is correct,” Helena said, “I will have to work to isolate the incipient bond between Andie and Alexander, correct?”
Danae nodded without looking up from her screen. “Yes. We need the information. The bond structure, the electrical patterns, how the curse is interfacing with the natural connection. All of it.”
A jolt of panic shot through me, sharp and visceral.
The last time I’d seen Helena touch a bonded Alpha was at the Olympian Council. Damon Blackwood’s bond with Cora Ellis had snapped under Helena’s power. And then the shadows had swallowed him whole, his own power turning inward, devouring him from within.
It hadn’t surprised me then, not really. It had been a possibility from the moment Damon had gotten in our way. But that didn’t mean the memory didn’t bother me, now that I was the one at risk.
I didn’t fear for myself. But every survival instinct I possessed howled at me to move. I had to get away, to protect what little connection I had with Andie before it could be destroyed.
I forced myself to stay still.
My fingers gripped the edges of the examination table so hard the metal creaked. Cassandra’s hand remained steady over my heart, her healing fire a constant warmth. Helena’s power descended toward the fragile bond I couldn’t afford to lose.
“This won’t hurt,” Helena said softly, though her eyes said she was lying.
Helena’s power touched the center of my chest like ice water poured directly into my veins.
Her bond manipulation ability dove beneath my skin, searching for the threads of connection between Andie and me.
It didn’t hurt exactly—not the way physical pain did—but there was a wrongness to it, an invasive quality that made my teeth clench.
“Steady,” Cassandra murmured, her healing fire flaring hotter to counteract the cold. “We need you to activate your aura now. Just a small amount.”
I called up the electrical influence that lived in my blood, the charisma that was as much a part of House Zeus as lightning itself. It rose easily, crackling beneath my skin.
The display of Hephaestus crystal Danae had set up near the table flickered to life. Waveforms and energy signatures pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
“More,” Helena said, pushing her power deeper.
Pain flared this time, sharp and sudden, like the shock of a live wire. My back arched slightly off the table. Cassandra’s hand pressed down firmly, her healing fire soothing the damage Helena’s probing caused.
“Good,” Danae said from somewhere to my left. “The bond structure is responding. Can you see how the curse is wrapped around it? Like a parasitic vine.”
Helena’s face had gone pale, a sheen of sweat visible on her forehead despite the cool evening air. She was putting in effort to be precise, to map the connection without destroying it entirely. Her hands trembled slightly, purple-gold energy wavering.
I knew it wasn’t for my sake.
Sometimes I wondered how Helena’s mind worked.
She’d never seemed to blame me for what had happened to Andie.
Even though I was the one who’d triggered the curse, she never looked at me with hatred.
Helena’s focus was singular: protecting her daughter, even if that meant working with the Alpha who’d poisoned her.
“Flex your aura again,” Cassandra instructed. “We need to see how it interacts with the bond at different intensities.”
I pushed more power into the electrical influence, feeling it strengthen and spread. The Hephaestus display reacted immediately, new patterns appearing in crystalline light.
Another spike of pain, deeper this time. I felt something inside my chest pull taut, like a string being stretched to its breaking point.
“Just a little further, Mr. Stormwright,” Cassandra said gently. “We have almost everything we need for today.”
For today. The words registered dimly through the haze of discomfort. There would be more exams. More sessions with Helena’s invasive power, more of Cassandra’s healing fire, more lying on this table while they dissected what should have been private and sacred.
It would be worth it if she were better.
“This has real promise,” Danae said suddenly, excitement creeping into her voice. She looked up from her tablet, eyes bright behind her glasses. “Yes, I think we’re headed in the right direction.”
The door slammed open with enough force to crack the ancient wood.
Andromeda stood in the doorway, her eyes blazing with a fury so intense it distorted the air around her. The temperature spiked. The atmosphere wavered and blurred, like the view through extreme heat rising off summer pavement.
“The right direction?” Her voice was raw, savage. “And what direction is that?”
The three women recoiled as one. Helena’s bond manipulation energy vanished instantly, and Cassandra’s healing fire guttered low as she pulled her hand back from my chest. Even Danae took a step backward, her tablet nearly slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers.
I pushed myself up from the examination table, shirtless and still crackling with residual electrical energy.
“It’s not what you think, Andie!” Danae cried.
The fury in Andie’s expression intensified, twisting into something uglier.
“Oh, really?” She took a step into the room, her fists clenched tightly.
“You know, I felt bad for what happened at the noodle restaurant. But I see how it is. All this time, you were working against me, too. Drooling over my Alpha like a bitch in heat.”
My Alpha.
A dark, primal part of me reveled in those words. I knew this was the curse speaking. Her possessive rage had been twisted by Hera’s touch into this toxic parody of natural Omega instincts. But some base, terrible part of my nature still reveled in hearing her claim me, even like this.
Helena moved forward, her hands raised in a placating gesture. “Keep your distance! Don’t look directly at her. The Gaze will harm you too.”
As if to prove her point, one of Cassandra’s healing crystals cracked with a sharp sound. The Hephaestus display flickered and died, its readings consumed by the corrupted energy pouring off Andie in waves.
The three women backed toward the far wall, putting distance between themselves and the curse’s epicenter.
I slid off the examination table and stepped directly into Andie’s path.
Her eyes snapped to me, wild and unseeing. The heat around her intensified, making sweat bead on my bare chest.
“Andie, enough,” I said. I let my Alpha voice rise, flooding every single word with a command. “You want me? Here I am.”
She froze, her expression caught between a sneer and raw desire. Then her lips curled, and she hissed at me. “I’ll never want you.”
The words should have hurt. Maybe they did, somewhere beneath the layers of guilt and desperation I’d been carrying since the yacht. But I’d heard her claim me as hers just moments ago. I’d felt the possessive fury that flared when she saw another woman’s hands on me.
“You’re a liar.” I moved forward, closing the distance between us. “But that’s all right. I can drag the truth out of both of us.”
I grabbed her wrist—felt the jolt of connection, the way her pulse jumped beneath my fingers—and pulled her toward the door.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
She struggled, but I was stronger, and my Alpha command was still thrumming through the air. Her body wanted to obey even as her curse-twisted mind screamed in protest.
I dragged her out of the healing quarters, away from the terrified women. I couldn’t protect her from the suffocating wrongness of Hera’s Curse, but maybe I could reach whatever part of her was still real beneath the poison.