Page 65 of Leashed

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bo’s eyes snapped open as screams pierced through his drunken stupor and he leapt to his feet, knocking over the coffee table when he caught sight of Sage scrambling over the arm of the sofa. He spun around, ready to fend off whatever or whoever was there, freezing when a leash slapped against his bare thigh.

“Fuck!” he hollered, bolting into the hall and slamming against the door before Sage could get her frantic hand to turn the knob. “Sage! Sage, stop screaming okay.” He held his hands out, his heart dropping into his stomach when she stumbled away from him and bolted down the hall toward the bathroom.

He dropped his head back against the door with a thud.

Goddammit, Dio.

With the old bastard gone, there was no way Bo could hold hound form topside when he was drunk without the influential power of the god keeping him that way. And that asshole knew it.

Knew it, and used it against him.

The bathroom door slammed, the lock clicking as Sage barricaded herself out of his sight. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, making contact with his collar and yanking ruthlessly at the buckle until it fell to the floor.

He barreled down the hall, pausing at his bedroom to grab a pair of jeans from the floor and tugging them on as he approached the bathroom. “Sage?” he called out, resting his forehead on the door. “Please open up. I can try to explain.”

When the only response was the sound of a drawer slowing opening, he flattened his palm on the door. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, his eyes closing as his balance swayed. “Dammit, Sage. I told you the chicks in those books wouldn’t just smile and be cool with it, right? This is a little closer to what I figured would happen.”

He could hear her rifling around for something, her rasped breathing slicing through him.

“You don’t need a weapon,” he said quietly, tapping his thumbs on the door. “I won’t come in there. I just…open up, Sage.” Losing the battle for his balance, he slunk to the floor, leaned against the frame, and chuckled wryly. “This isn’t helping my case, is it?” When she didn’t respond, he inched his fingers under the door, his stomach knotting when he heard her scurry back. He took a deep breath, desperate to clear the drunken fog in his head while he decided on the best way to explain. “So, uh, once upon a time—”

*

Sage adjusted hergrip on the straight razor in her hand, her eyes locked on the fingers still visible under the door.

“…so that pretty much sums up why the Fates and I tend to hang in different circles now. I mean, Clotho is cool. You’ve met her. She goes by C up here. She was kind of like my babysitter when I was a pup, so she and I are tight. Atropos pretty much sticks to herself, so I haven’t had many opportunities to get on her bad side. But Lachesis has had it out for me since I stopped banging her. Not like I have some magic dick or anything, she’s just a vindictive bitch.” He cleared his throat. “I probably didn’t need to get into those details.”

Bo had been talking nonstop for probably two hours outside the bathroom door. His slurred ramblings had covered everything from Cerberus to Hades to the myth of Pirithous, peppered with casual comments on the mythological gods and goddesses of Olympus as though he knew them intimately. He’d jumped all over—drunken rants about Dionysus intermingled with snide commentaries about Hercules and his musings about just how charitable the Charities were.

Her hand twitched in protest at her tight hold and she eased the blade onto her lap, massaging her fingers.

The fingers that had been tangled in the fur of a dog one minute, in Bo’s long hair the next.

It had taken her a few seconds to realize she hadn’t fallen asleep, that what she was seeing wasn’t a nightmare. The dog’s morphing had occurred so quickly, she hadn’t had time to react before the enormous beast on her lap shifted into Bo.

Lifting the razor in her other hand, she continued to listen without a word until he fell silent. She wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned forward, unsure if he was still conscious.

“Sage?”

His fingers wiggled for a moment and she closed her eyes tight, burying her head between her knees.

“I don’t know what else to say,” he muttered. “I mean, I could probably sit here and talk for another month about the messed-up shit that goes on down there, but…please say something.”

She held her breath for a moment. “Prove it.”

His fingers disappeared from under the door and she could hear him moving outside the door. “Prove it,” he echoed, his voice clearer than it had been all night. “Prove it. Okay. Yeah. Okay.” His footsteps retreated down the hall for a moment and she listened, watching the knob to make sure he hadn’t doubled back to try to enter the bathroom.

A gold chain was pushed under the door, followed by another one and two earrings.

She inched her foot forward, pulling the jewelry toward herself with her toes. The pieces were beautiful, heavy and obviously handcrafted, but she didn’t have enough training to identify their origins. She pushed them back under the door. “These don’t prove anything.”

He groaned and flopped onto the floor, thumping against the door. “The earrings are Demeter’s. Melete left the chains and pendants behind after…yeah. I have a couple armbands here, too, but they won’t fit under the door. I brought them back thinking you might think they were kind of cool or something. Show and tell for one of your classes kind of thing. Maybe for your dissertation thing.”

“Not good enough,” she called out, her voice stronger than she felt, trapped on the bathroom floor of a man she’d seen shift from dog form.

Hound form.

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