Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Hades
Asclepius looked like absolute shit. That was the first goddamn thing I noticed when I walked into church three days after Rhea took off with Pegasus.
Not Zeus sitting there like he was two seconds from ripping the fucking table out of the floor.
Not Apollo quiet in his chair with that grim set to his mouth he’d been wearing since Nebraska.
Not Coeus with three laptops open and that manic gleam in his eye that meant he’d found something ugly as fuck.
No. My eyes went straight to Asclepius.
He sat two chairs down from Apollo, shoulders hunched like he’d taken a gut-shot. Beard untrimmed. Eyes bloodshot and hollow. He’d always been steady. The doctor, the fixer, the man who could stitch a brother’s artery closed with bullets flying and still crack a joke about our shitty life choices.
Now he looked gutted.
Fucking destroyed.
And it was Rhea’s departure that had done it.
Not Kronos dying. Not the funeral. Rhea leaving.
He’d wanted to go with her; that much had been clear to every man in the clubhouse, even if nobody said a damn word.
I’d watched through the window as he argued with her beside her car, Pegasus already straddling his bike a few feet away, engine idling.
I didn’t hear the words. Didn’t need to.
His hands moved too much. Hers stayed still. Chin lifted. Eyes hard. Spine straight.
He’d been pleading. She’d been refusing.
Then he reached for her. She shoved his hand away.
Sharp. Final. The kind of rejection that said you don’t get to fucking touch me anymore.
Asclepius stood in the driveway long after her car disappeared, staring at the dust like he could will her back by punishing himself hard enough.
I understood that kind of pain. Didn’t mean I had patience for it, though.
He wasn’t the only one bleeding in this room.
Zeus slammed the gavel down hard enough to make the wood jump. “Let’s get this shit done.”
I took my seat at his right, feeling the tension vibrate off him like a live wire.
Three days without his mother had carved him down to something raw.
Every hour Rhea stayed gone stripped away another piece of his control.
Zeus liked enemies he could shoot, bribe, threaten, or bury.
He didn’t know what the fuck to do with a mother who looked him in the eye and told him she wasn’t asking permission.
The call came yesterday morning. Unknown number. Zeus put it on speaker because he thought it might have been Rhea needing help, Pegasus checking in, or some lead on where the hell they’d gone.
It was Rhea. Calm. Steady. More like herself than she’d sounded since the funeral.
“I’m safe, Kane.”
Zeus went still. “Where are you?”
“No.”
“One word ain’t gonna cut it, Mom.”
“It’s the only word you’re getting.”
The silence that followed was brutal. Every man in the room froze because Rhea Cooper had never needed volume to remind us she’d raised half the monsters at that table.
“You need to tell me where you are,” Zeus said, his voice dangerously controlled.
“No, I don’t. I’m a grown woman. I am your mother, Kane. You are not mine.”
His face changed then. Not rage. Well, not only rage. Something wounded underneath it. Something childlike he would kill a man for noticing.
“Mom.”
“I love you. I know you’re worried. I know you think control is protection because your father taught you too fucking well, but I will not be ordered around by my son.”
“Where is Pegasus?” Zeus snapped.
A pause. Not hesitation. Calculation.
“He’s at the Pine Ridge Motor Inn outside Tyler. Room twelve. Don’t worry, he’s alive.”
Zeus’ hand curled around the phone. “What the fuck did you do?”
“I removed your leash.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom.”
“No, Kane. Pegasus is fine. He will recover. You can be angry if you need to be, but don’t you dare confuse discomfort with harm.”
Zeus’ jaw worked like he was chewing glass.
“You need to come home.”
“I will come home when I’m ready, and not one minute before.”
“Mom.”
“No. You don’t get to use that voice on me. I changed your diapers. I held you when you were sick. I just buried one man who controlled me. I’ll be damned if I let another one take his place.”
No one moved. No one breathed too loud.
“I am safe,” she said. “That’s all you get. Tell Pegasus I’m sorry for the way it had to happen, but not for leaving.”
Then she’d hung up.
A few hours later, we found Pegasus exactly where she said he’d be.
Dehydrated. Weak. Pissed as hell because he’d been unable to do his job.
He remembered stopping with Rhea. Remembered helping to carry her bags inside.
Remembered drinking water she handed him after he complained about the heat.
Then nothing. No assault. No weapon. No obvious injury.
Just forty-eight hours of misery. Vomiting, sweating, and being too weak to crawl across the room for his phone.
Whatever Rhea had used to get loose hadn’t been meant to kill him.
That was the detail I kept coming back to.
Because it mattered. Zeus didn’t see it that way.
Zeus saw his mother gone, and a prospect dropped like a stray dog in a hotel room. The rest of us saw a clean escape.
I didn’t know yet what I saw. And that was becoming a problem.
“Coeus,” Zeus said.
Coeus looked up from one laptop. “We have another death.”
“Cause?” Atlas asked.
“That’s where it gets interesting.”
Ares leaned back in his chair. “It’s never fucking good when you say that.”
Coeus grinned. “Not for the dead woman, no.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Darlene Kessler. Forty-seven. Ran the Willow Bend Girls’ Home on the east side of Henderson County.”
Apollo’s eyes narrowed. “Group home?”
“Private placement facility,” Coeus said. “State contracts, emergency housing, foster girls waiting for placement, girls whose parents didn’t want them, girls who were too much trouble for regular homes. You know the type.”
The room shifted. Not much. Enough. Men like us heard “group home” and thought one thing: vulnerable kids. Targets. My chest tightened. Zeus sat forward. “How’d she die?”
“Officially? Cardiac arrest brought on by complications from acute gastrointestinal distress.”
Ares blinked. “The fuck does that mean?”
“It means she shit herself inside out until her heart quit,” Coeus said cheerfully.
“Jesus,” Hermes muttered.
“Was it wolfsbane?” I asked. My fingers curled against the armrest.
“No.” Coeus tapped a few keys. “Different plant toxicity.”
Asclepius lifted his head for the first time. “Which one?”
“Castor bean exposure is my best guess, but I’m waiting on confirmation. Could also be oleander or another cardiac glycoside. Severe abdominal pain, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, dehydration, cardiac collapse.”
I stared at him. “How the fuck do you know all that?”
“I have her medical report.”
“Already?” Cashien asked.
Coeus smiled like a kid who’d stolen candy. “Small-town hospitals have terrible cybersecurity.”
“Focus,” Zeus snapped. “Does she fit?”
“Fits the pattern,” Coeus said. “But this one’s worse.”
“How much worse?” Asclepius asked.
“Willow Bend’s had nine girls reported missing in twelve years. All classified as runaways.”
Hermes whistled low. “Nine?”
“Nine officially. I found chatter about more, but nothing documented. Former residents claimed abuse. Physical. Sexual. Medical neglect. Isolation. Punishment rooms. Forced labor. Staff involvement. A few allegations said Darlene let men visit after hours.”
The table went silent. Ares’ face went blank, which was never a good sign. My pulse kicked up. I could feel it in my throat.
“Anything stuck?” Atlas asked.
“Nope. Complaints dismissed. Girls labeled troubled, attention-seeking, manipulative, mentally unstable. Two caseworkers flagged the home. One got reassigned. One quit.”
Zeus’ jaw flexed. “And now she’s dead.”
“As of yesterday morning.”
“Who found her?”
“Assistant director. Darlene didn’t answer the office door.”
The word killer sat heavy on the table. No one argued. We’d danced around it long enough. Someone was killing people. Not randomly, not sloppily, not with guns or knives or anything a badge would look at twice. With plants. With fucking plants.
I looked at Coeus. “You said different toxins.”
“Yeah.”
“List them.”
He flipped another page. “Wolfsbane on Harlen. Suspected foxglove in one. Hemlock symptoms in another. Jimsonweed in the bloodwork of a woman who survived, though that was listed as accidental ingestion. Possible oleander. Possible castor. I can’t prove all of them because most bodies were buried or burned and standard screens missed the specifics.
But the symptoms fit plant toxicity better than natural causes. ”
Asclepius rubbed a hand over his face. “Most doctors won’t look for obscure plant toxins unless there’s a reason.”
“Exactly,” Coeus said. “Horses, not zebras.”
“Don’t start that shit again,” Zeus snapped.
Apollo’s gaze slid toward me. I didn’t like it. Didn’t like the weight of it. The knowing in it.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away, which made me like it even less. My hands flattened on the table.
“Who would know that much about plants?” Apollo asked.
No one spoke. The question wasn’t complicated.
That was the fucking problem. A farmer might know what killed livestock.
An herbalist might know what helped a headache.
A doctor might know what symptoms looked like after the fact.
But this was different. This was precision.
Different toxins. Different presentations.
Different ways to make death look like something else.
“Gardeners,” Hermes said.
“Botanists,” Asclepius added.
“Herbalists,” Apollo said quietly.
My blood cooled. Not froze. Cooled. Like the door to my underworld had cracked open and let in a draft. Lettie. The thought came so fast I almost missed it. Then I rejected it just as fast. No.
Not my queen.