Page 71 of Muzzled

He felt the hit to the gut as hard as he would have had it been physical. “Impossible. It’s a male-only line.”

His boss dropped his gaze to the floor. “I spent many hours listening to my wife explain what she was shown in the waters. Dio was brought in as well.” He shook his head. “I finally reached out to Atropos.” Taking a deep breath, he exhaled loudly. “Two babies conceived by two fathers. The artist’s lifeline was stronger and fused with that of the Pirithous in the womb, absorbing it.”

Stretching the neck of his shirt to fight the tightening in his throat, Ryan moved a fraction closer to her as Alex stood and towered over their boss.

“You can’t make him do this, Hades,” Alex growled, almost pleading.

“And you can’t do it without me,” Bo stated defiantly.

Hades’s dark eyes looked over at him. “I’ve been consulting with the Pantheon. The curse cannot be undone, and it cannot remain incomplete. There is no absolution, Orion.” Clasping his hands, he took a deep breath. “But nothing binds us to when or how.”

“That’s bullshit,” Bo snarled. “He kills her now or he kills her later? How the fuck is that better?” He stormed across the room and put his hands on Ryan’s shoulders. “We’re going home and getting Atropos to switch our lines back.”

Ryan shook his head, completely calm from the overwhelming numbness that had settled over him. “That wouldn’t erase the Pirithous curse from her blood.” His thumb traced circles along her ankle as a memory shot through his head of flaming red hair and a startled gasp on a street corner the first night he patrolled the deserted festival streets. The first sighting. “She should be feral by now.”

His boss stood and looked out the window. “It’s possible the Pirithous influence is too weak to fully overpower the part of her that isn’t cursed.”

“She showed early stages of the changes in her suite,” Alex said quietly. “The darker artwork, the single-mindedness, the madness. She may be subconsciously fighting it, but she’s losing, Ryan. We can wait it out. Maybe focus on eliminating the shade first and see if that reverses or stalls the change.”

“We’re not helping him murder her,” Bo hissed.

“You think I like the idea?” Alex growled back. “We need to think about where this is going to end, Bo. Think about where this is going to end, and not about goddamn what-ifs and if-onlys. You think Micah wants to live out her remaining days killing for sport? Lose all that’s left of her humanity and become some feral animal slaughtering her way through the city?”

Ryan stared at the floor while his brothers debated Micah’s life, frozen in place.

“What if it was Charlotte?” Bo countered. “Could you do it?”

Alex’s shoulders dropped and he ran his hands through his hair. “I couldn’t take on that decision,” he said softly. “And we can’t ask Ryan to, either. We need to take it out of his hands and own the weight of it.”

*

Micah blinked androlled over, pushing the blanket off of her face and sitting up to find four sets of eyes on her. “Um, good morning?”

The twins gave her brief waves as Ryan pushed himself to his feet and walked to the side of the bed, crouching down. “Good morning,” he said with a smile. “Why don’t you hop in the shower and get ready. We have some information to go over before Hades heads home, then we have the day to hang out.”

Eying Hades as she walked over to her suitcase, she grabbed a pile of clean clothes and disappeared into the bathroom, the quiet murmurs in the other room almost reassuring with their presence while she showered and got ready for the day. She was brushing the tangles from her hair when there was a knock on the door.

“Purse?”

She opened the door to see Ryan standing there, her bag in his hand. “How did you know?” She grinned, opening it and emptying her makeup onto the counter.

“Lucky guess,” he replied, leaning in the doorway and watching her line her eyes. “How are you feeling?”

Lifting her brows, she uncapped her mascara and bent toward the mirror. “Good. What’s he doing here?”

He seemed to fall into a daze for a moment, snapping out of it with a visible jolt. “Why do you open your mouth when you do that?”

Moving her lipstick away from her lips to avoid smearing it, she laughed. “I don’t know. Mascara comes out, mouth opens up. It’s just a thing.”

Resuming her careful lipstick application, she could feel him watching her, his attention on her every move while she recapped the lipstick tube and snapped open her blush. She blew across the brush bristles and turned her head, feathering it along her cheekbone before repeating the move on her other side.

“Done,” she announced, backing away from the mirror to assess her work. “Good?”

“Stunning as always.”

Pleased, she followed him back to their bed and sat, waiting while the men exchanged serious looks. “What?”

Ryan stood against the dresser, his hands in his pockets. “We’re taking out the shade tomorrow night.” He shifted and crossed his arms. “We’ll need you to lure it toward the train bridges where we can ambush it and bring it back to the underworld where it belongs. The isolation there should keep us undetected.”

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