Page 2 of Captured

Dimitri bolted forward, fists clenched, arms pumping. Another bolt of lightning ripped through the night sky, and Dimitri roared with wild, ecstatic joy. He was made for battle, he was made for storms. He was made to kick this asshole straight onto Hades’ trash heap.

If he struck the monster god before the asshole poofed, it meant the deity consented to do battle, which further meant he was free game. But the minor god’s eyes widened with legitterror as Dimitri pounded toward him, and Dimitri knew it was because he’d guessed right: wormboy had undoubtedly pissed off the god of the underworld at some point in the last three thousand years, and Hades wasn’t great at forgetting. If he could just—get—to him?—

Dimitri lunged the last few feet, arms outstretched?—

And soared into open space. He tucked and rolled, well used to chasing the gods back to Olympus. He came up to his feet again just a few feet shy of the water’s edge. Wormboy was nowhere to be seen.

Dimitri’s phone buzzed again.

“I hear you,” he muttered, pulling the waterproof unit free from his pants. He stared down at the screen and scowled.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” The entitled blonde ice princess hadn’t been back in Oûros for five hours, and already she was causing problems? This night was getting better and better. Still, he punched back a quick response.

He’d find Lauren Grant and get her back to the castle, then head to his office and do some research on the current crop of Typhon fanatics worldwide. If wormboy’s little dig meant there was a bunch of the monster god’s fanboys about to stage a convention, the Crown needed to know about it. More likely, though, it was empty threats from an idiot with snakes for brains.

He turned away from the pool when a splash caught his attention. He glanced up, then shook his head with a smile.

Two dozen nymphs now floated at the far end of the pool, their collective glow rising at his attention, lighting them up like Disney fairies. “Thank you…” Their whispers flowed across the pool toward him, though they were too timid to come closer.

“Yeah, yeah.” He lifted his hand, waving them back to their party. He didn’t have to warn them to be more careful next time.The nymphs also didn’t forget, and were smart enough not to make the same mistake twice.

The blonde he was about to go babysit was another story.

Shaking his head, Dimitri set out again toward the bright lights and music of the city.

One

Tonight wasn’t about doing everything perfectly. Tonight was about letting go.

Flipping thetsipouroglass over with a flourish and smacking it down onto the table, Lauren Grant smiled with the first surge of honest pleasure she’d felt in weeks. After a whirlwind tour of Europe, she and her friends had returned to Oûros today, reuniting with the last of their group—who was also the soon-to-be newest member of the Oûros royal family.

Lauren loved Emmaline like a sister, but she’d only been trapped behind the palace walls for a few hours before she’d started getting antsy, too jittery in her own skin. She’d had to work way too hard to find this dive bar in the seaside paradise of Timiménos, and harder still to ditch her friends and the persistent tagalongs from the palace security. But it was worth it.

She’d spent most of her life under the careful watch of others, and that hadn’t kept her safe. For safety, she’d had to rely on herself. Same for having fun.

Two men and one woman were left facing her across the table. The woman listed to the side, supported by her husband, who kept shaking his head and grinning. The pile of cash in the center of the table was barely enough to buy a pair of shoes, butcash was never the goal anyway. It was simply a way to keep score.

The goal was to be the last woman standing.

“Another!” Lauren called out, and a cheer went up from the crowd circling the tiny table, along with laughter and catcalls, the usual fare of late-night drinking contests. The waitress moved forward, a new round oftsipouroat the ready, but the husband waved her off as his wife slumped fully against him.

That left two.

Lauren smiled saucily at the duo. She was almost certain they were brothers, which didn’t bode well for her. They were big men, swarthy, their Greek heritage not a distant echo but evident in every line of their sun-worn faces and thick, dark hair. These were the true backbone of the Mediterranean, not the people living in the vaunted castle on the hill, where her dear friend Emmaline was being courted by an actual prince. Hell, not even courted. She was going to marry the guy. And that was cause for celebration.

“Yamas!” She raised her glass with the word to another round of applause. Close enough to the Oûrois equivalent of “cheers,” her lapse into Greek made her competitors eye each other smugly. The three of them tilted thetsipouroback, and the potent grape liquor washed down Lauren’s throat in a fiery line of absolution. The distilled spirits might have been made of the dregs of the wine-making process, but it definitely packed a punch.

As she crashed her glass down on the table and more money changed hands, she saw him.

It didn’t take much. A shift of the crowd in exactly the right way, the right-dodging face that should have dodged left. She didn’t squint into the gloom surrounding their table to make sure, because she didn’t have to. The man was Dimitri Korba,ranking captain of the Oûros National Security Force. Kind of a high-rent shadow, but that didn’t improve her mood.

Dimitri Korba was everything Lauren didn’t need right now, here in this tiny little bar in the seaside capital city of Oûros on the one occasion in days she’d been able to escape her carefully cultivated world.

Granted, the man was mouthwateringly gorgeous in a big, iron-fisted kind of way. Six foot four if he was an inch, he wasn’t built like the guys she knew back at home, their lean muscles and sinewy bodies honed with miles on the bike and the treadmill. Dimitri Korba was a giant. Heavily muscled legs, powerful arms, granite-set jaw beneath his dark, flashing eyes. Everything about him angled dark, from his richly tanned skin to his black hair to his obstinate scowl. He was the quintessential bull, determined to tromp into any china shop in his way if it blocked him from his goal.

But in the end, he was simply another babysitter.

And Lauren knew how to handle those.

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