Page 133 of Hades

“Yeah. We keep phones open. Put riders on standby. Wait for Poseidon’s next check-in unless the situation changes.”

Zeus stared at me for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine. But the second we don’t hear from him, we move.”

“Agreed.”

Eros clocked me watching him. Our eyes met across the room. I walked over and stopped in front of him.

“You staying?” I asked.

Eros looked at me. His eyes were hard. Unreadable.

“For now,” he said.

That landed.

“Alex?” I asked.

“Not to be hunted,” Eros said. His voice was flat. Final. “Not by the Gods. Not by anyone. She saved my life. Whatever anyone thinks about what she did, she earned the right to run.”

I understood that more deeply than he knew.

Another woman made a lethal choice. Saved someone. Walked away with blood on her hands.

Eros respected that.

I was fucking living it.

The clubhouse noise pressed in from all sides. Conversations bleeding together. The crack and thud of bottles and glasses. The scrape of chairs. All of it felt distant. Muffled. Like I was underwater and the world was happening somewhere above me.

Poseidon was still out there somewhere on a stretch of highway with Satan’s Angels circling. Zeus was unraveling in slow motion, grief and rage pulling him apart piece by piece. The club was stretched so goddamn thin, we were one crisis away from snapping completely.

But none of that was what sat heavy in my chest.

Lettie.

I needed to get to her.

Needed her to see my face. Feel my hands. Know that nothing had changed except that I loved her more now than I did before I knew the truth.

Because she’d trusted me with the darkest part of herself.

Something dark in me recognized something dark in her. And I wasn’t letting her sit alone with her fear. Not for one more fucking minute.

I knocked back the rest of my whiskey and headed for the door.

The ride took less than ten minutes.

I killed the engine in her driveway. The farmhouse sat quiet in the fading light. Peaceful. Like nothing dark had ever happened here.

But I knew what lived behind that locked iron gate. What grew in the shadows. What Lettie was capable of when she decided someone needed to die.

And I loved her more for it.

Cerberus barked once when I reached the back door. A warning. Then silence.

The door opened before I could knock.

Lettie stood there in a flowing skirt and a gray sweater, hair pulled back in a loose braid. Beautiful. Guarded. Afraid.