Page 26 of Queen of the Underworld

A male who sparked her interest and fanned the flames of her desire.

From there she would come to want him, for longer than a brief kiss before she lashed out at him. He wasn’t sure why she did that, but each time she had struck him, he had wanted to bare fangs and growl at her, had grown frustrated and had even come dangerously close to losing control.

He didn’t want to lose control around her.

But the darkness that flowed in his veins was strong, a heady drug that easily controlled him, promising pleasure if he surrendered to it. It provoked and cajoled, and just the thought of bloodying his claws was enough to have it slowly stealing control of him, slipping it from his grasp little by little, so gently he didn’t notice until it was too late.

Until his fangs were down and a hunger for violence consumed him and had him pivoting on his heel, filled with a need to return to Tartarus and drag another prisoner up from the spiralling depths for an hour in his interrogation room.

Hades welcomed the darkness.

Sank into it.

Clenched his fists and drew back on the reins, denying it. He breathed hard as he fought it, attempting to quell the hunger for bloodshed, to keep it in check so he didn’t undo all his hard work. He wanted to see the goddess today.

He wanted her to look at him as if he was a man.

Not a monster.

He drew down slow, steadying breaths as he wrestled for control, slowly stealing it back from the darkness, and unsure how long he could maintain it. The moment he was back in control, he felt it slipping from his grasp again.

His thoughts turned to the goddess, his mind replaying how his name had sounded on her lips, and the world fell away, the darkness receding again.

Curious how it did that.

He angled his head and frowned at the ground, studying the shift in his mood and how the darkness had loosened its grip on him purely because she had filled his mind. His thoughts drifted back to a moment in the tower, when he had pinned her to the wall, her soft curves cushioning the hard planes of his body, inflaming him as she had gazed up at him with heat in her eyes.

He had wanted to kiss her, and by the gods, he felt sure she had wanted his lips on hers too. He had wanted so much more than a mere kiss. He had wanted all of her, had been on the verge of surrendering to his need to sink inside her and satisfy her desires—to claim her body and soul and make her belong to him—when she had whispered his name.

The sound of it breathed on her lips had shattered the hold his darker desires had on him, pulling him back towards the light before he had gone too far with her.

And had made him feel like the monster everyone portrayed him to be as he had realised what he had been about to do.

Fearing what he might do if he remained, he had taken his leave.

And hadn’t returned.

Hades stared at the tower, a war erupting inside him, a battle between hope and despair—between light and darkness. If he went to her now, how would she react? Would she recoil in fear? Or welcome his presence?

Would she be pleased to see him?

He scoffed at that, the sound brittle and broken, reflecting how he felt inside. He felt on the verge of breaking, and he knew why. He looked down at his black talons, at the crusted blood on them. Fear. He feared her reaction.

He feared that despite his efforts to make his appearance more pleasing, she would continue to view him as a cruel, monstrous god.

One she wanted nothing to do with.

“I will win her,” he growled and curled his left hand into a tight fist. “She will be mine.”

If he had to mould himself into a softer male—a gentler male—then he would find a way to do that. If he had to vanquish the darkness to win her, he would try to do it. He would fight it with all his might, something he should have done long ago. She had given him a reason to defeat it. He would do anything to secure her as his queen.

Because in the scant few hours he had known her, he had come to realise he couldn’t picture a future without her in it. He didn’t want a future where she wasn’t with him, by his side, as close to him as he could get her.

He chuckled mirthlessly.

Countless gods and beings had attempted to defeat him during the long course of his life. His own father had devoured him and kept him prisoner. His own brothers had turned their backs on him, condemning him to the darkness.

But none of them had broken him.

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