Page 42 of Wildfire

When he finally went to bed, Melly curled up against his belly purring, his mind wouldn’t turn off and go to sleep. So he heard when Hermes arrived. Listened to him strip off his clothes, and felt the bed dip under his weight as he slid in behind him.

For some reason, when Hermes’s arm came around him, pulling him close and giving Melly a pat, Wilder didn’t pull away.

What he did was finally sleep.

Poison Skin

Hephaestus was no more willing to make Hermes a bazooka than Ares was willing to consider giving him that destructive a weapon. Still, Hermes felt somewhat better after spending the evening annoying the shit out of his antisocial brother.

Hephaestus lived in a cavernous workshop near the underworld. The tunnels had been formed by the movement of magma and remained sweltering while he worked his volcanic forge. Hermes didn’t know how he could stand it, big as he was. Even a god sweated in that kind of heat, and as much as he enjoyed watching the uncomfortable frown tug at Hephaestus’s lips or trying to translate the varied grunts Heph gave him in response to all the most inane questions Hermes could think of, he could only stand the heat for so long.

He returned to Wilder’s home long after the professor had gone to bed, and he woke up before Wilder could rouse and grumble about Hermes’s flightiness or pull away from him in the morning.

He was scrolling theWashington Poston his phone in the breakfast nook when Wilder came downstairs. He rustled around in the kitchen for a while, making breakfast, and even set a plate of toast in front of Hermes.

When Hermes looked up at him, Wilder avoided eye contact. So what if he was still mad? Hermes was definitely not the sort of god who needed to chase mortal approval.

“You gonna be Ares’s number two?” Hermes asked, taking a nibble off the corner of his toast and cocking a challenging brow. “What kind of fatigues do you think they make for mages? You’ll probably need something flame retardant.”

“I’m not wearing fatigues,” Wilder grumbled.

Hermes’s gaze flitted over him. “Well, sure. You look mighty fine in your bespoke suits and all, but this isn’t an army of one situation.”

With a long sigh, Wilder took a sip of his coffee. “We’re having another training session today. Are you coming?”

Hermes licked his lips. Sure, it was definitely in character for him to promise to do something and then back out of it. But he hadn’texactlygiven Wilder any reason to think that. Not really.

“I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Are you going to make me brownies?”

Wilder stared at him flatly, and that was it. Hermes stuck his hands under his knees to keep from shaking his legs, and he thought about darting off again.

“At some point,” Wilder agreed after a moment, but there was no inflection in his tone to make Hermes think that all this was anything more than an inconvenience to him.

And why not? It wasn’t like Hermes had rushed into his life and made things any better. He’d run away from a crime scene, twice. He wasn’t a particularly great warrior. Hell, Wilder was convinced, maybe reasonably, that he could handle Typhon on his own. And maybe he could. Maybe Hermes was just a distraction and a nuisance.

Heaving a sigh, Hermes got up, dumped the rest of his toast into the garbage, and shrugged. “Guess I’m coming then.”

What else did he have to do to prepare for the end of days?

On the way to campus, he felt listless and unmoored. He wasn’t getting a bazooka, but it was more than that. Everything was changing, and he had the worst feeling that it wasn’t something he could stop. Zeus had called in Ares, they were going to war, and on the other side, Hermes was going to have less than he’d had going into it.

He glanced at Wilder’s profile and bit his lip. Once Typhon was dealt with, Hermes could leave. And fine. He would. He didn’t want to hang out at Banneker with Athena anyway.

But he did want...

Shit. This was ridiculous. He was getting old; that was all. Old and lonely.

Wilder parked on campus, and Hermes had to pace his steps to match the professor’s slower ones. These were the kinds of feelings he ran from, but he’d made a promise, and he was getting those brownies. He just wished Wilder would talk to him. Or—

Something?

Across the lawn, in front of the faculty building, a big, brooding man with enormous arms covered in intertwining tattoos was leaning over a female student. She had a backpack on, at least, so Hermes assumed.

She was showing him something on her phone when he leaned over. His hand brushed across the back of her neck.

And for a second, Hermes didn’t know what he was seeing. He watched in a curious, detached sort of way as her legs buckled. He felt the heat when fire flared over Wilder’s hands. But it took him a moment to realize—

That was Typhon. And that student on the ground gasping for air?

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