Page 51 of Hades

She lifted her hands and framed his face, that light touch enough to keep him where he was. Apparently, she didn’t need to hold him in the steel bands of her arms to stop him from leaving.

If he was honest with himself, she only had to look at him.

A look was often enough to keep his feet rooted to the floor, bewitched by her.

“Wemust find him,” she softly corrected, that little furrow between her fine black eyebrows going nowhere as her jade gaze met his. “You are not alone in this, Keras. All of us share the weight of this burden.”

He wanted to believe that, but centuries in charge of leading his brothers and being the firstborn of Hades meant he would always view himself as the one responsible for everything. His father was missing and it was his duty to find him before he did something reckless.

Enyo’s look called him on his train of thought.

“Do not argue,” he muttered, aching at the thought she might.

She gently smoothed her fingers across his brow. “I will not. Not right now, anyway. There are more important things to be done right now. We must gather everyone.”

“Ares is already on it. I came… I need…” He swallowed thickly, unable to bring himself to say it while she was looking at him with such soft eyes filled with tenderness. He wanted her to keep looking at him like that. He didn’t want to see disgust and disappointment in them as he had when she had learned of his addiction. Never again.

Rather than doing as he feared, she stepped around him and went to the nightstand where he kept his pills, reminding him that she understood his needs and that she supported him, making him feel like a bastard for doubting her. He scrubbed a hand down his face. One that was shaking.

Keras drew it away from him and looked at it, clenched his jaw and curled his hand into a fist as he silently cursed himself. He was stronger than this.

But as he waited for Enyo to return with his pills, he grew jittery, the thought of feeling the cold rush sending anticipation swirling through him and making him restless.

He looked over his shoulder, about to ask what was taking her so damned long.

Surprise coloured her eyes, followed by confusion. “Did you put them somewhere else?”

An unpleasant kind of cold shot through him, not the one he needed to feel. “What?”

Keras stormed around the bed, pushed her aside, and stared into the drawer. He blinked, stared. Blinked again. But the pillbox still wasn’t there.

“Where is it?” he snarled and turned on her, and drew up short as she glared at him, that withering look so firmly putting a hold on his rage it was as if it was a leash.

“I would never take it. I know how much you need them.” Her clipped retort reeked of the anger he could sense in her and he couldn’t blame her for being short with him considering this wasn’t the first time he had accused her when he had simply misplaced his pills.

He dug his fingers through his hair. “I haven’t taken a pill in over a day. I put them back in the nightstand. I know I did. Someone must have taken them… and if it wasn’t you… then who—”

He cut himself off as dread and a rage so dark it had shadows bursting from him rolled through him.

He stepped, teleporting to the war room this time, where Calindria, Ares and Megan, Valen and Eva, and Daimon and Cass had assembled, and flashed his fangs as he snarled at his family.

“Who took them?”

Ares arched an eyebrow at him and then the confusion in his dark eyes turned to wariness and he eased in front of Megan and slowly raised his hand, his palm facing Keras.

“Easy, brother,” Ares murmured, as if he was talking to a wild animal, attempting to soothe it before it savaged him and everyone present. “No one took your pills. You know we wouldn’t do that to you.”

The rational part of Keras did, and the looks on all their faces backed up what that side of him was whispering in his ear—they knew he still needed the pills and wouldn’t do as he accused.

The part of him that craved the sharp relief of one of his pills growled, “Who else would take them?”

“Mother?” Valen put in as he slung his arm around Eva’s waist and tugged the Italian assassin closer to his side, acting casual when Keras could sense his mounting tension and see the desire to protect his female in his stormy golden eyes that held banked lightning. His younger brother shrugged off that suggestion before Keras could respond. “She wouldn’t take the pills from you. Even she knows what a dick you are without them.”

Keras slanted him a warning glare. He wasn’t in the mood for Valen’s usual joking around. Apparently, Ares wasn’t either, because he issued Valen a similar look before his dark gaze shifted back to Keras.

“It wasn’t any of us.” Ares wisely kept his eyes fixed on Keras as Enyo burst into the room, a little out of breath.

In fact, every male in the room kept their eyes off her.

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