fifteen -Brynn-
fifteen
-Brynn-
I wake to the sensation of Ares’ arms draped heavily across my waist, his body radiating heat against my back like a furnace. Although I still want to fight the sensation, I can’t stop myself from waiting to hear each one of his heartbeats.
I’ve been awake for a few minutes, my body aching in places I didn’t think could hurt. But the evidence of last night's surrender is still written in purple bruises across my skin.
I still can’t believe I cried in front of him. More than that, I feel like I’m gonna cry now for crying in front of him, for letting him see me weak.
I should feel shame, even hate, but instead there’s only a hollow emptiness where resentment used to live, as if he fucked it right out of me.
His breath rests against my neck, stirring the fine hairs there.
I could kill him right now, without him even realizing it.
His guard is down. His throat exposed. But my hands don’t go searching for a weapon.
Instead, they rest against the expensive sheets as I try to process everything that has happened.
I crawled for him. I surrendered to him. I admitted I belong to him.
Where do I go after this?
What’s left of me?
His phone rings, snapping me out of my thoughts and Ares is instantly awake beside me, fully alert like the predator he is. I feel his muscles tense, fueled with his raw energy as he reaches across to the nightstand.
“What?” He answers, his voice is so deep and ready for anything that might come his way, no one could conceive he was just sleeping a moment ago.
I prop myself on my elbows, wincing at the pain in my leg. But I’m even more aware of the one between my thighs. A persistent reminder of what happened earlier, just like he said.
I watch his face as he listens, his perfect features sharpening with each second his body moves next to me.
“It’s 404,” he says, letting me know what we’re dealing with.
“Put him on speaker,” I whisper, needing to hear whatever information is important enough for him to call at 4 AM.
Ares looks at me, then puts 404 on speaker, like I asked.
“— been going through records,” 404’s voice crackles through the encrypted line, sounding hyped, overdosed on caffeine since he’s probably been working through the night. "Cross-referencing participants against hospital admissions, morgue reports, missing persons... There's something weird, boss."
"Define weird," Ares says, his eyes fixed on some invisible point in the darkness.
"The no-shows for Kharon. Players who are selected but never make it to the motel." 404 pauses, the sound of rapid typing echoing in the background. "It's been increasing. Four years ago, it was around ten percent. Now we're looking at twenty-three."
I sit up straighter, pulling the sheet to cover me. The numbers mean nothing to me, but Ares' eyes narrow, and this tells me they should.
"Expected variance," Ares dismisses, but there's an anger in his voice that wasn't there before.
"That's what I thought too," 404 continues, unfazed. "Until I dug deeper. Every year, six of our potential players show up in police records as missing persons. And I’m not talking about those who actually enter Kharon. Families file reports... searches are conducted. Dead ends, all of them."
A cold chill runs down my spine like a premonition; we hit gold.
"And?" Ares asks, growing impatient.
"There are two anomalous years where the numbers don't match. Including the year Elias was killed."
At the mention of his name, my body goes rigid. Elias. The reason I'm here. The reason I've done everything. His ghost follows me around, lurking in the corner of every room, watching me now as I was sleeping instead of being out there, searching for justice.
"Both years, only five were reported missing," 404 continues, oblivious to the guilt storming inside me. "But Elias doesn’t show up in any police record."
"I couldn’t go to the police with this. They wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway. But what you're saying is that someone else besides Elias might have gone unreported," I conclude.
"Exactly." 404 sounds pleased, like a teacher whose slow student has finally understood the lesson. "And if you think about it, there is a high chance of that happening since our players don’t usually have ties with friends and families."
"So that means, every year, six of our potential players go missing," Ares finishes, his eyes now burning with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
"These aren't random disappearances, boss. Someone's been picking off specific players. For years," 404 says, and I can swear the temperature in the room just got colder.
We both know what this means. Someone’s been targeting Kharon players.
“Keep digging,” Ares orders. “No one else sees this information. Understood?”
“Crystal clear, boss,” 404 confirms and the line goes dead, leaving us in total silence.
My mind races to a thousand places, my teeth clenching so tightly that my temples throb.
“Who else could know about Kharon? And what’s the point of killing the other players?” I ask, more to myself than Ares.
“Too many people over centuries know about Kharon. Their ancestors maybe, my team. So fucking many trails to follow,” he groans, and I can tell his mind is racing everywhere, just like mine.
“I don’t understand. He was wearing a Kharon uniform. And he had gashes from a sword covering his chest. How was he in the game if he wasn’t in the game?”
Ares doesn’t answer, but I know he’s thinking about all possible variations.
My head spins with everything this could mean, with the leads we should chase. Elias’ death has just become even more complicated, the trail not leading only to Kharon now, but straight into the shadows. The breakthrough I hoped we were making earlier has now just turned into plain confusion.
I suddenly get out of bed, pulling the sheets along with me as I race toward Ares’ dressing room and pull one of his shirts on.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing at 4 AM?” he asks, showing up right behind me.
“I need to train,” I say, knowing how ridiculous this might sound.
Yet it’s the only thing I can do right now to deal with this.
“I need to be ready.” I don’t know what I’m up against, or what exactly I need to be ready for.
But there’s something inside me that tells me a hunt is coming, and I refuse to be unprepared in becoming the hunter.
“What you need is to get back in bed and get some fucking rest so you can have a clear mind in the morning when we’ll deal with this,” Ares snaps, but judging by the look on his face, he won’t be able to sleep either.
“You know as well as I do that’s not an option,” I say, pacing the length of the room like a caged animal.
At this point, I don’t even feel the wound in my leg, and I’d run for miles chasing whatever I should be after.
“I need to train,” I repeat, feeling like my body is too weak and my mind too blurred after those weeks spent in bed. I need to get in shape.
“What you need to do is sit your ass on the bed,” he counters, his voice a little too calm. The kind of calm before the storm.
I can’t deal with his attitude right now.
I ignore him, continuing my restless circuit of the room.
Everything is too soft here, too fancy. Everything inside costs more than anything I’ve ever owned.
Right now I need mystery, I need pain, I need my hate back to fuel me.
“You don’t understand,” I say, hating the desperation that slips into my voice.
“I can’t just sit here doing nothing, feeling defeated when I know I’ve lost a whole year for nothing. ”
“For nothing,” he repeats, the sound almost inhuman.
My eyes go to him. “No… that’s not what I meant,” I take a seat at the edge of the bed beside him.
“Yesterday…” I swallow the knot in my throat without losing eye contact, but for some weird reason, I feel like I’m having trouble breathing.
“Yesterday you were right. No more lies,” I reach for his hand.
“Still, you can’t ask me to become someone else...
to forget everything that happened. This is who I am.
” I pause for a second, letting the silence clear our thoughts. “But you can let me be ready.”
“Ready for what, exactly? We don’t even know what we’re up against.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I explain, “I feel weak… and I need to be stronger, faster, better… I… I need to stop thinking about how useless I am… about how maybe I won’t get to the bottom of this.” I’m desperate as I say this. Almost out of breath.
Deep down, I’m expecting Ares to sympathize. He knows I never open up like this to someone.
Instead, he laughs, as if what I said was a joke to him.
“It seems you don’t know me, little curse.
I never leave loose ends, things unsolved, or holes in the balance.
We will get to the bottom of this, even if I have to burn this fucking city to the ground to do it.
” He studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
“But fine, if that’s what you feel like doing now to help you calm down, I’ll train you. ”
“You?” I ask, like that couldn’t be a real possibility. I did see Ares as more than the man who takes me to bed. I’ve seen him fight, even defeat me, but somehow this never crossed my mind.
“I trained hell’s legions and more warriors than are people around alive today.
So, I think I could train you. Don’t you agree?
” He looks at me like he's surprised I didn’t ask him for help in the first place.
“Besides, your leg isn’t fully healed, so we’ll need to do this in a way that won’t put additional stress on it. ”
“Fine,” I answer, knowing that disagreeing with him won’t solve anything. Besides, I’m getting trained by the God of War. That should be an honor. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” he asks like that wasn’t even an option.
“Now,” I drop to the floor, positioning myself for push-ups, and lower my body until my nose nearly touches the carpet.