Erebus skidded to a stop at the edge of the sinkhole and stared down at the rushing river thirty yards below. Sera’s scream was drowned out by a splash of water that echoed in his ears.
His heart lurched into his throat as he used his enhanced sight to scan the river for any sign of her. Come on, come on, come on...
The surface of the water broke twenty yards from where she’d gone in, and a gasp echoed up to him.
He didn’t pause to consider what could be in the river below. Just stepped off the cliff and fell feet first into the frigid liquid. Water bubbled above his head. Something green and totally out of place flashed in the corner of his vision, but he didn’t have time to see what it was. Instinct urged him up toward the surface.
His head popped out and he sucked in air, treading water as he turned and searched for her. The current was strong, quickly sweeping him downstream. He whipped right and left, scanning the darkness. The sound of labored breaths met his ears. He twisted back around and squinted. Then spotted her clinging to a boulder, fifteen feet away on the edge of the river.
Relief overwhelmed him, forcing air into his one-size-too-small lungs. He swam toward her, but the swift current slammed his body against the boulder she clung to before he could stop it from happening.
He grunted. Pain shot up his spine. Ignoring it, he worked his way around the rock to her side, then wrapped an arm around her shivering body and drew her against him. “Agápi? Talk to me.”
Her eyes were closed. She sagged against the rock. Water dripped from her hair over her face. She opened her mouth to answer but no sound came out. And when her arm slipped from the boulder and slumped into the water, he realized she was losing consciousness. He grasped her before the current could whisk her away.
“Shit. Stay with me.” He tugged her with him as he climbed out of the water and hauled her up onto the rocky ledge.
Blood dripped down her temple. Her head lolled to the side. Before he even let go of her, she started to shake, not just a shivering shudder of muscles, but full on tremors that told him she was going into shock.
Nymphs weren’t immortal, not like the gods—not like him. Her race had been blessed with a long life-span—over five hundred years in most cases—but her body was still fragile and she could definitely die from injuries and hypothermia. Moving quickly, he tugged off his shirt and pants, then went to work stripping her of her clothing. Once she was dressed in nothing but her bra and panties, he pulled her onto his lap so her slim body was pressed up against his chest and he could close his arms and legs around her. As he leaned back against the rock wall for support, he grasped his wet T-shirt and held it against the wound on her head to slow the blood flow.
“You’re okay, Sera. I’ve got you. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Long minutes passed where she continued to tremble, and it felt as if his heart had taken up permanent residency in his throat. But slowly, as the heat of his body seeped into hers, her shakes slowly subsided, and she relaxed against him. He took that as a good sign. Lifting the shirt from her wound, he breathed easier when he saw the blood flow had lessened. She was going to have a nice-sized goose egg, but swelling outward from the impact was better than swelling inside the brain, and he knew that was an even better sign.
His pulse inched down. Glancing at her familiar face resting against his shoulder, he brushed a lock of wet hair back from her cheek, and as he did something warm and sweet slid through his chest. An emotion he hadn’t felt before. A yearning that wasn’t just sexual.
The feeling was so strong, so foreign, it threw him off kilter. He didn’t have emotions. He was a god who’d learned long ago that emotions were dangerous. And yet... Somehow he recognized the feelings taking up space inside him now had been spawned by fear. Not fear that she was going to drop to her death and that he was going to miss out on the rough, hot sex he’d been envisioning since the moment he’d recognized her in the woods, but fear that something bad would happen to her. That he’d never see her again. That he would lose her.
Sweat broke out along his forehead, and an odd tingle started in his chest. He told himself it was her heat making him feel weird. Not denial. Not anything else. But even that didn’t sound right, and he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do next.
“Sera.” The word was a whisper, a plea, a demand. “Sera, wake up and look at me.” He needed to see her eyes. Needed her to explain what was happening to him. Needed to know if she felt it too.
She didn’t move. He knew she was breathing. Knew she wasn’t in any real danger. But the danger to him was suddenly all he could focus on. “Agápi. Open your eyes. Look at me, baby.”
She sighed and snuggled closer. But the reaction didn’t fire him up and make him ache to take her as he expected. It brought a calm over him that was more unsettling than the fear he’d felt before.
He didn’t know what was happening. This female was doing something to him he didn’t understand. He needed to get her back upstairs and into a bed. Needed to give her time to rest before he decided whether he was going to go ahead with his seduction plan or haul her back to Zeus without touching her. And he needed to think. Because the only thing he knew for sure at the moment was that he wasn’t ready to let her go. And he had no idea what that meant or how it was going to impact his service to Zeus.
You can’t take her back to Zeus...
The thought circled in his mind, unwilling to disappear. He glanced back down at her again, wondering just what the hell was really going on and why Zeus wanted her so bad.
“It’s female,” a raspy voice said in the darkness.
Erebus’s head came up, and his adrenaline surged all over again.
“We haven’t had us a female in forever,” another low voice answered.
He squinted through the darkness, searching for the source of the voices, and spotted two sets of beady eyes peering out from behind a large boulder. Two sets of gnarled fingers wrapped around the stone. Two sets of claws, digging into the rock.
Fuck me.
Kobaloi. The gnome-dwarves who mined and protected Hades’s invisibility ore. Erebus’s gaze shot back to the river, and he easily picked out the spots of green glowing from the bottom of the riverbed that he’d noticed when the water had rushed over his head, but which he’d ignored because he’d been so intent on getting to Sera.
His jaw clenched down hard at his stupidity. The green glow was the ore, the therillium that powered Hades’s invisibility cap. No wonder this colony was now fucking empty. Because Hades had discovered it sat right over his precious ore. The kobaloi clearly had free run of the ruins. He’d sensed another creature in the tunnels with him when he’d been chasing Sera. While they weren’t particularly dangerous in small clusters, they often congregated in hordes. And while he knew he could fight off two or three or even ten, a thousand gnome-dwarves with razor-sharp teeth and knife-like claws could spell imminent doom for Sera.
He pushed to his feet, hefted her in his arms, and held her close to the protection of his body. Oblivious to the sudden threat in front of them, she sighed again, hooked an arm around his neck, but otherwise didn’t wake.
“It’s not just a female,” Erebus declared in a deep voice, hoping it would scare the shit out of the scavengers and make them scurry. “And you do not want to mess with me.”
A hiss echoed in the darkness, followed by a rapid clicking sound. “Erebus,” a voice growled. “His scent was masked by the female.”
Yeah, you better cower, dumbass.
“Hades wants him back,” the other murmured. “This will bring us great reward.”
The cavern filled with hundreds of rapid clicks, telling Erebus there weren’t just two or three kobaloi hiding behind those rocks, there was an entire horde.
His adrenaline went sky-high. Stepping back toward the river, Erebus glanced up at the ceiling toward the hole Sera had fallen through. Options, strategies, possibilities ignited in his mind.
“We’ll take him to our lord,” a voice growled, closer this time but still hidden behind the stones. “And then the female will be ours.”
Fuck that. Erebus tightened his arms around Sera. She was his. And this time no one was taking her from him.
* * * *
Sera was in a dream. A hot, sweltering fantasy that was extremely arousing.
She opened her eyes, blinked several times against the warm glow, and tried to focus. A fire burned across the room, which made zero sense since the last thing she remembered was darkness, running, and the bitter bite of frigid water.
She glanced down at her hands and spotted the comforter wrapped around her body. Rolling to her side, she realized she was in a bed. A comfy, soft, soothing bed that seemed to cocoon her in safety. And at her back? Something solid, warm, and muscular that felt incredibly tempting.
She rolled to her side, then stilled when she spotted Erebus lying on his side facing her, sharing space on her pillow. His dark eyes were closed, his shirtless torso relaxed, and his arm was entirely too possessive wrapped around her waist, holding her against him.
The beat of her heart turned to rapid fire in her ears, pounding blood through her veins. She’d been running. He’d been chasing her. Not because he’d wanted her as he’d led her to believe when he’d pressed all his succulent heat against her in the caves on their trek to these ruins, but because Zeus wanted her back so he could get his slimy hands on the medallion.
Panic condensed between her ribs. She needed to get up. She needed to run. He was asleep. Now was her chance to escape.
She rolled to her opposite side as quietly as she could. Lifted her head from the pillow. Reached out one hand and gripped the sheet a foot away to pull herself across the mattress.
His arm immediately tightened around her waist, and he tugged her backside into firm contact with his hips. “Should be sleeping, agápi.”
She froze. Agápi? My love? She had to be hallucinating. No way he would ever call her that.
Her pulse roared in her ears, but she knew she was stuck at least until he drifted back to sleep. Trying not to do anything to wake him further, she breathed deep and worked puzzle pieces around in her mind to figure out what the heck he was doing.
Where was she? Why was he in bed beside her? And why the heck couldn’t she remember what had happened?
Pain lit off behind her skull, and she lifted a hand to rub at the spot, only to realize a bandage covered part of her forehead near her hairline on the right side.
The arm across her waist lifted, and he gently tugged her hand back to the mattress. “Let that heal. It’ll be better in the morning.”
A flash of something green flickered in her memory. She remembered hitting a rock. Remembered...voices.
“What did you do to me?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own. And her accusation clearly wasn’t threatening because he only wrapped his arm tighter around her waist, pulling her even tighter against him.
“Rescued you,” he said in a sleepy and sexy-as-hell voice.
Holy gods. Stop thinking he’s sexy. That will only make things worse.
“From what?” she asked, ignoring how warm and perfect he felt pressed up against her back.
“Kobaloi. Shouldn’t run off without me, agápi. All kinds of bad shit out there trying to take you from me.”
Gnome-dwarves? Her eyes widened.
Okay, she was seriously dreaming because gnome-dwarves weren’t even real. And he’d called her agápi again, which made zero sense, especially when he claimed things were trying to take her from him. He’d been the one to toss her aside on Olympus, not the other way around. If he’d wanted to hold on to her, he’d had plenty of opportunity long before this.
He sighed and pressed his face into her hair. His warm breath tickled the hairs on her neck and sent a shiver straight down her spine. A shiver that felt way too damn good. “Sleep, Seraphine. You wore me out. Need to rest before you get all feisty with me again.”
Feisty? He thought she was feisty? Another shiver rushed down her spine, only this one wasn’t because of his sexy breath but because his words had sounded like a compliment.
Logic told her to get up. To climb out of this bed. To run while his defenses were down and she had a chance. But her head was already drifting, her limbs heavy, her body too warm and comfortable to move. And his heat at her back was exactly what she’d been missing for so damn long, part of her just didn’t want to go.
Not even if leaving meant saving the world.
* * * *
The second time Sera woke, she knew she wasn’t in a dream. Her head was clear, her limbs still heavy and sore, but there was a realness to the room as she glanced around, a recognition that told her she was back in the suite at the half-breed ruins where Erebus had taken her.
Slowly, she pushed to sitting and slid the covers back. She was dressed in a black tank and cotton pajama bottoms he must have found in another room. They were old and musty, but surprisingly soft. The fire smoldered, but the curtains on the wide windows were pushed back to let late afternoon sunlight spill across the floor.
The last time she’d awoken—if she could call that being awake—she was sure it had been night. She didn’t know if a day or more had passed since then, but when she lifted a hand to her forehead, the bandage she faintly remembered Erebus telling her not to touch was gone and a thin, one-inch long scab ran along her hairline. She pressed all around the scab, trying to recall what had happened. The skin was tender but not swollen, but she couldn’t remember anything other than running, darkness, and falling.
Falling...
Pressure condensed beneath her ribs. Before she could figure out why though, footsteps sounded to her right. She looked in that direction just as Erebus appeared in the doorway carrying something flat in his big hands.
“You’re awake. Good. I won’t have to wake you.” He rounded the bed, balancing whatever he was holding in one hand, and reached for the pillow at her back. “Lean forward.”
Sera’s stomach tightened. She had no idea what he was doing, but she couldn’t find the words to ask because something kept spinning in her head. A word. Spoken in his voice. Repeated several times. Something that started with a...
The word was on the tip of her mind but wouldn’t formulate into something solid she could reach. Had he said it when he’d been chasing her? Had she imagined it in her dream?
“There, you’re good. Lean back.”
One glance over her shoulder told her he’d fluffed her pillow against the wooden headboard and added another. Confused, she glanced up at him, then stared down as he set a tray of food on her lap.
It was some kind of soup, hot and steamy. Basil and rosemary drifted to her nose, and her stomach rumbled as if on cue.
Erebus chuckled and stepped away from the bed, stopping to use the poker to move the embers in the fireplace. “Sorry there’s no bread. Baking is not my specialty.”
Sera had absolutely no clue what was going on or what his end game was here, but she was suddenly too hungry to care. When was the last time she’d eaten? Before she’d stolen the medallion. Before running from Olympus. Long before she’d been tackled by Erebus in that meadow.
She reached for the spoon, ladled a bite of the warm broth, and realized there were carrots, celery, noodles, and some kind of white meat in the soup. Bringing it to her lips, she sipped slowly, in case it was too hot. The broth was warm, not scalding, and it stimulated her salivary glands. She took a big bite and moaned before she could stop herself.
Erebus glanced over his shoulder and grinned. And even though she was looking down at the soup, she caught the mesmerizing smile and the way it brightened his entire face, transforming him from devil-may-care to absolutely irresistible.
“Guess it’s safe to say you like that.” He turned back to the fire and added another log to the flames.
Sera’s brow wrinkled. She wasn’t sure what she liked. She wasn’t sure of anything at the moment except that she was hungrier than she’d ever been.
She finished off the soup, and when there was nothing left but a spoonful of broth she couldn’t quite scoop up, she set her spoon down, lifted the bowl in her hands, and poured what was left into her mouth.
It wasn’t until she set the bowl down and used the napkin that she realized Erebus was standing at the end of her bed. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his jeans, his head tipped to the side, and he was watching her with a very amused expression. Not one smoldering with heat like she remembered from before, but one that was rooted in something else. Some kind of tenderness she didn’t understand.
Erebus? Tender? Those were two words that definitely did not go together.
Nerves bounced around in her stomach as she lowered her napkin to the tray. He was her captor, nothing more. She needed to stop looking at him like some kind of hero—because he isn’t.
Ag... Agi...Aga... Shit. Whatever word he’d said in that husky sex-god voice of his kept pinging around in her brain, unwilling to leave her memory. Or fantasy, or...hell, she didn’t know what now.
She cleared her throat, working for nonchalant when she felt anything but. “So what did you do to me?” Her fingers drifted to her forehead again, and she felt the edge of the scab, knowing without a doubt that whatever had happened was totally his fault. “And how much time has passed since you did it?”
Instead of growing angry, as she expected, the corner of his lips curled. “You’ve been asleep for two days. You had a concussion. Hit your head pretty hard when you fell into an open cavern in the tunnels and tumbled into an underground river.”
His words shot hazy memories through her mind. She remembered climbing out of the bathroom window, rushing down to the tunnels beneath the ruins, running in the dark. She remembered his voice calling her name. She remembered him chasing her. She remembered air whooshing past her face, something ice cold cocooning her body, then...absolutely nothing.
She’d fallen into a river. Knocked herself unconscious. Gotten a concussion. And he’d rescued her?
He must have read the confusion on her face because that amusement twisted his lips even higher. “You look surprised.”
That he’d rescued her and didn’t look like he was about to jump her bones? Hell yeah, she was surprised.
His expression took on a serious note. “There are kobaloi in the tunnels beneath us. I barricaded the door into the ruins, but I’m fairly sure I trapped a few in the castle with us, ones that were skulking around in here unnoticed. You don’t need to worry, though. I lit fires in every fireplace from here to the kitchen, and I’ll keep them all going. Kobaloi don’t like flames. They’ll keep their distance. Plus, they won’t risk coming out where they could get caught in sunlight.”
That didn’t exactly put her at ease. She racked her brain for what she’d learned about kobaloi on Olympus. The gnome-dwarves were thought to be a fable, but if Erebus had seen them, that meant they were real. Her brow wrinkled. “All the tales I’ve heard about kobaloi claimed they congregate near therillium.”
“Hades’s invisibility ore. Yep. Those tales were correct. It’s beneath us.” He looked up and around the bedroom suite. “There’s no telling how long this colony existed without Hades even realizing the half-breeds were perched right on top of his precious ore. Kind of fitting, don’t you think? A way for the half-breeds to stick it to the god-king of the Underworld.”
The fact he found amusement in that unsettled her. Erebus was a minor god from the Underworld. He’d served Hades for a thousand years before being lost in a bet to Zeus. There’d been a time—when she’d been so enamored by him during her seduction training—that she’d convinced herself he wasn’t the epitome of darkness she eventually realized he truly was. But why would something created from darkness seem happy to know his true master—Hades—had been duped?
She couldn’t come up with a logical answer. And that damn word...agi, aga, agap... It wouldn’t leave her stupid brain. The only thing that remotely made sense was that this story about the kobaloi was just that...a story. A ploy to convince her she was safer with him than without him.
She knew how to take care of herself, dammit. She didn’t need him.
Except...
The way her chest tightened when she looked up at him told her she was safe with him. Way safer than she’d been in years. And that didn’t just unsettle her, it completely unnerved her.
Hands suddenly shaking, she moved the tray to the far side of the bed, tugged the covers up to her chest, and leaned back into the pillows. Her instincts screamed to get up, to retreat into the bathroom, to escape again, but her muscles wouldn’t listen. Yes, she felt better than the last time she’d awoken—and now she was almost sure that hadn’t been a dream. But she wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent, and if she ran like this, he’d easily catch her. Which meant she needed to rest. To think. To plot. And act on that planning later.
She closed her eyes, not because she was anywhere near falling asleep again but because she couldn’t keep looking at him, not when she had no clue what was really happening and why he was being so damn nice. “Thank you for the chicken noodle soup. I don’t know where you found the ingredients but it was very good. I’m just more tired than I guess I realized.”
Liar.
Okay, why did she feel guilty about lying to him now?
“You’re welcome.” A shuffling sound echoed from the far side of the bed, and the mattress jostled, just enough to tell her he’d picked up the tray. Footsteps faded as he crossed the room, and she exhaled, thankful he was leaving. “It wasn’t chicken, though. It was rabbit.”
Oh great. On top of all the other stuff in her head, now she’d be thinking of boiled bunnies the rest of the night and that old movie she’d watched when she’d been with the half-breeds in Russia. The American one about the guy who’d had the affair with the psycho woman who tormented his family.
“I’ll let you get some sleep,” Erebus said. “When you wake later you can tell me what test you failed on Olympus.”
“I didn’t fail a test on Olympus.”
“You didn’t?” His footsteps silenced. “Zeus said you failed your last benchmark.”
Her eyes popped open wide. And in a rush of understanding she realized that Zeus had lied to him about why he wanted her back and that she’d just given herself away.
Shit.
Shiiiiiiiit.
Stay calm, Sera. If you accidentally spill the real reason you escaped Olympus and what you left with, you’re as good as dead. Forget about how nice he’s been to you tonight. Forget about that stupid imagined emotion in his eyes. His loyalty is to Zeus, the king of fucking everything, not you.
“Fail?” Her heartbeat whirred in her ears, but somehow she found the strength to close her eyes and breathe deep, feigning exhaustion. Rolling to her side away from him, she tucked her hands up by her face and added, “I thought you said fell. My balance improved quite a lot on the training field after you moved on to a new class of recruits.”
Silence met her ears, but she knew he was still there. Staring at her back. Wondering what the hell she was hiding. Her pulse raced even faster.
Stay calm...
“Can we talk about the Sirens and my failures later?” She faked a yawn and forced her muscles to relax so it looked as if she were about to drift to sleep. “I’m really tired again.”
Still no response from him. But seconds later the sound of his receding footsteps drifted to her ears.
She lay still a long time after he’d left, listening, waiting, afraid if she looked he’d still be there. But when she finally rolled to her back and peered toward the doorway, it was empty.
She threw back the covers and lurched to her feet. The room swayed, but she grasped the post at the foot of the bed and waited until her blood pressure regulated. When she felt steady, she scanned the room, searching for her clothes.
They were gone. He’d taken them, probably to prevent her from running again. Her boots were missing too.
Dammit.
Her heart raced with indecision but she decided it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting away from him before he learned the truth.
She bolted for the open door and headed for the back stairs she’d used before to escape. And hoped like hell this time she chose the right tunnel to freedom.