Page 18 of Hades

Much like his wife.

Thinking about the times they had sat in the arbour that overlooked a small, tiled fountain, passing hours together while breathing in the sweet fragrance of the wisteria that twined around the marble columns, had him drifting through the house unaware of the present as he lost himself in the past. It had been too long since they had sat in that garden, enjoying the quiet.

He smiled as he recalled how Persephone had often stumbled across him there whenever their sons had been causing mayhem, and how they had chuckled to find the other there escaping the madness. Centuries together had forged a bond between them that was both unbreakable and deep, and connected them on many levels.

Including making them think alike.

Persephone had once teasingly declared they shared a psychic bond and that she knew his every thought without trying, because they were her thoughts too. His smile grew a little wider when he remembered how he had asked her what he had been thinking at that moment. She had taken one look into his eyes and her cheeks had flamed red.

Nine months later, Keras had come into the world.

Hades was still smiling as he pushed the door of her drawing room open.

It dropped off his face when he realised that Persephone wasn’t alone in the elegant green-walled room. Ares and Megan sat with her at the circular mahogany table positioned near the French doors that were open to reveal the garden.

All three of them stared at him with strange, stunned looks on their faces and unmistakable warmth in their eyes.

“What?” he growled, putting force behind that word to ensure they answered him. His smile had disappeared before they would have seen it, so there was no reason for them to be looking at him in the way they were, as if he had grown two more heads to match Cerberus.

He frowned as he heard little squeals and giggles.

Adora.

The sound was loud. In the room. Hades stepped into it and scoured it with his gaze, seeking the child. There was no way she could have reached this place before him. He had only just left her. Even if Megan or Ares had gone for her, they wouldn’t have beaten him here.

Unable to find Adora in the room, he scowled at the trio.

All of them looked towards the middle of the table.

Hades glared at the small white device there. The noise was coming from it. Cold slithered down his spine as he looked from it to his wife, and then his son, and then Megan. No. It couldn’t have. They couldn’t have.

Persephone confirmed his suspicions by rising from her seat and coming to him, the flowing lengths of her pale green dress swirling around her bare feet. A light entered her emerald eyes as they locked with his, her sweet rosy lips curling into a bright smile as she gave him an adoring look.

They had heard everything.

For a heartbeat, embarrassment swept through him, an urge to lash out at everyone rolling in on its heels, but before he could put them all in their places to make them stop grinning at him like idiots, Persephone caught his cheek, angled his head towards her and kissed him.

He instantly forgot his shame over being caught talking to Adora and swept his love into his arms, stealing control of the kiss from her as he assuaged his hunger for her. Her kiss was love and light, a balm to his soul that had him considering allowing her to hear him speak his heart to the child more often.

And then Ares said, “It’s sweet of you to vow our daughter will have a bright future… and I’m getting the feeling your protecting her is going to extend to chasing off every guy who so much as looks at her. I can get on board with that. We’ll form a coalition. Maybe we can talk the others into joining.”

Hades scowled at him, aware what his son meant by that. He intended to tell his brothers about what he had heard.

“Go to Tartarus and question every occupant about our enemy,” he snarled as he straightened and set Persephone aside, coming to stand at his full height. He stared his son down, showing him that he was serious.

The initial shock that shone in Ares’s dark eyes upon hearing the order gave way to a hard frown that put fire in his irises.

Oh yes, Ares was well aware the task would take him years to complete.

Meaning he wouldn’t be able to speak to his brothers about what he had overheard.

Persephone laid her hand on Hades’s chest, capturing his attention, and he shifted his gaze to her. There was a little pout to her lower lip, and he knew what was coming, and that he was already defeated before she so much as opened her mouth to petition him.

“Do not blame Ares,” she said, her voice as soft as a summer’s breeze, warming him as easily as one and making him long to escape this realm and laze with her in the sunshine in their secret realm—the closest he could get to being in the real sun.

The mortal world couldn’t withstand his power, buckled too easily under its dark influence. He had learned that the hard way.

His brothers hadn’t been very impressed when he had lingered too long in the mortal world and caused the destruction of several coastal villages. Poseidon had been particularly annoyed since one of them had been devoted to him, and the temple that had taken the mortals a decade to build had been destroyed in minutes. The villagers had taken it as a sign Poseidon was angry with them. Convincing them otherwise had kept his brother busy for a year.

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