Page 122 of Bonds of Hercules
They stared at us.
Helen froze mid-motion—she was holding out a black box to Alexis. It was the gift we’d left outside the door for her. Theone I’d spent months working on. I’d gotten it commissioned the day after our marriage day, after Alexis leapt away.
Awkward silence stretched as the group cautiously moved forward down the hall, straight toward us.
Nothing to see here. Just two men hanging out by the entrance to a dungeon.
Alexis had purple smudges under her eyes.
Is she sleeping?
I swallowed down the urge to beg her to talk to me.
She crossed her arms over her stomach and purposefully looked away from us as she got closer.
It felt like I’d been slapped in the face.
“So, um,” Kharon said. “Augustus—how did you … sleep?”
“What?”
“How did you sleep?” Kharon repeated.
I stared at him with incredulity.
He knew we’d been out all night killing and torturing people for our wife.
Kharon narrowed his eyes and tilted his head in Alexis’s direction.
“Amazing,” I deadpanned as I realized what Kharon was doing. “I feelsowell rested.”
Kharon stretched his arms above his head in an imitation of someone waking up. “Same—I think I got a full ten hours last night.”
Real smooth.
Helen made a sound as she she neared, openly staring at the scar on the side of Kharon’s head where his ear used to be. The fuckingFalcon Chroniclesstill hadn’t stopped writing articles about what Kharon had done.
The headlines called it “the most romantic sacrifice of the century.”
They should have been working on finding outwhythe fucking Titans were mutating, not glamorizing my wife’s suffering.
Heart thudding painfully, I turned to Alexis, mouth opening to ask her to—
My jaw clicked shut.
Poco was sitting on Fluffy Jr.’s back, holding his ears like reins, and his gray fur looked more unkempt than usual.
Is anyone spritzing him with water? He clearly needs a trim. What are they doing?
“Is anyone brushing Poco?” I asked. “He needs four brushes a day.”
Helen laughed. “Yes, we do it constantly. His fur just looks puffy because he keeps wrestling with Fluffy Jr.”
Since my wife’s protector was borderline obese, that did not make me feel better.
Poco chittered shrilly as if agreeing with her.
I glared down at him. “Don’t youdaretake that tone with me, mister.”
