Page 50 of Wildfire

Wilder snatched the fork out of Hermes’s hand, turned it, and stuffed it into the man’s mouth. “This isn’t a joking matter,” he said, glaring into those clear blue eyes. “Your family is concerned for your life, and this isn’t the time to prolong the situation and make everyone worry.”

He pushed the fork into the jar, spearing the next mouthful of golden whatever-the-hell-it-was and bringing it back up to Hermes’s lips before the man even started chewing the first bite. When Hermes just continued to stare at him, wide-eyed, Wilder lowered his own head like an angry bull. He could be as stubborn as any god, and he was done sitting there worrying Hermes would die and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

“Eat.Heal. Stop making people worry about you.” He pressed the fork against Hermes’s lips, brows raised in his most no-nonsense glare, and waited.

For once, for this single, blissful instance, Hermes didn’t throw back snark. He just opened his mouth, wrapped it around the fork, and when he pulled back, finally started chewing. He stared into Wilder’s eyes as he did so, and Wilder wasn’t sure if the reaction was confusion or challenge. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, but they hadn’t been reacting correctly since the man had damned well been poisoned, so who knew what that even meant.

When Wilder went back to the jar a second time, he found Hebe still kneeling there, watching him. Unlike Hermes’s bleary uncharacteristic expression, she wasn’t hard to read at all. She was amused.

Well, she could find it funny all she wanted, Wilder was going to force-feed Hermes every scrap of this golden goop, if that was what it took to make him better.

“You have no idea what you just did, do you?” Hebe’s goth friend asked, a smirk on her crimson-painted lips.

Hebe passed her back the knife, then a moment later reached up and took her hand, pulling herself off of her knees. She turned to the woman. “You’re wrong.” Then she looked back at Wilder, and for some reason, her eyes were glassy. “He said himself that Theo is immortal now because of ambrosia. He knows what it’s for.”

The goth woman’s brows drew together, and she looked over at Wilder in confusion.

Wilder turned back to Hermes and the ambrosia. No offense to them, but now that they had a course of action, nothing else mattered. This was going to heal Hermes. It had to, because Wilder didn’t have any other answers. He sure as hell wasn’t going to waste any of it chasing the idea of immortality that he wasn’t even sure he wanted.

He stabbed the fork back into the jar and looked to see if Hermes was finished with the previous bit.

The goth woman couldn’t let it go, though. “He can feed himself, you know.”

At that, Hermes turned a glare on her. “Don’t you have nightmares to haunt?” His voice was less hoarse than it had been even a moment earlier, so Wilder decided that yes, this was going to work. He took the opportunity of Hermes’s open mouth to stuff more ambrosia into it.

He did not think of other circumstances in which he’d like to see something shoved into the god’s mouth. As though reading the thoughts Wilder had clearly not had, Hermes turned to look at him, waggling his brows as he chewed.

The goth woman sighed and rolled her eyes. “He’s gonna be fine. Can we go now?”

Hebe was clearly more hesitant to walk away. She twined their fingers together and met the woman’s eye, biting her lip, and the woman sighed miserably, throwing herself into a plush wingback chair and then pulling Hebe into her lap, muttering, “Fine.”

Hebe leaned in and kissed her on the temple.

Ah, not just friends, then. Well, perhaps Hebe was good at tempering her girlfriend’s darker instincts.

Hermes twitched in his arms, and he looked back in time to see the man finish his bite and then let his mouth hang open, baby-bird style. He was enjoying Wilder feeding him. And Wilder did not smile as he pushed the next bite into Hermes’s mouth. The mirror hanging on the opposite wall was clearly lying.

Hermes was smiling, though, and it looked less pitiful and wan than literally any expression that had crossed his face since the poisoning. For a moment, Wilder wondered what god he should thank for the deliverance he’d asked for. He almost smacked his own forehead in realization a second later.

Hebe, an actual goddess, had come with the answer. The Greek goddess of youth; a beautiful, vital woman who controlled access to ambrosia. He continued to feed Hermes, but also wondered how one was supposed to thank gods for answered prayers.

The fourth or fifth time he glanced over at her, she gave him a bright, even smile. “You should follow me on Instagram.”

Wilder wasn’t even sure which one Instagram was, but he’d figure it out. As long as she didn’t tell anyone else that he was doing it because he’d been praying for Hermes to be okay. He could handle social media, but he wasn’t sure if he could handle the indignity of his own growing affection for the irritating god in his lap.

Strays & Stumbling

Hermes had offered Wilder Pratt the biggest gift a god could offer a mortal—unending life, the great hereafter, boundless opportunity—and Wilder had turned it around and shoved it right back in his mouth.

Okay, so Hermes wasn’t entirely sure he’d meant to follow through on the offer. He liked Wilder, but Hermes wasn’t one to settle down, and he wasn’t at all sure that Wilder actually liked him. But he’d dangled ambrosia in front of him anyway, and he’d felt the faintest prickle of fear afterward that Wilder had no interest at all in forever.

It’d taken him a minute of Wilder’s scowling to realize that he wasn’t the kind of man who made selfish choices. Oh, it was easy to mistake all his finery, his perfect appearance, apparent confidence, and grating arrogance for pure selfishness at first. But when faced with an ancient evil, Wilder had chosen to stand by his students. When Hermes was hurt and dragged down to the underworld to chill with the goth kids, Wilder hadn’t thought twice about accompanying him.

Even the brownies. Wilder Pratt was willing to float the idea of boxed brownie mix to secure help for his students.

So while Wilder might be a prick, he was a prick with heart. More importantly, he was Hermes’s prick, and Hermes was ready to get them home.

“You could stay here,” Hebe offered once Hermes was starting to feel a little better. He grabbed Wilder’s hand and helped him to his feet.

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