Page 89 of Hades

Still breathing.

Still fighting.

And if Lettie was Colette, if she was my baby sister, then I’d finally found her. After years of searching. After decades of guilt and grief and wondering if she was alive or dead or suffering somewhere I couldn’t reach.

I’d found her.

And I wasn’t letting her go.

Not again.

Not ever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Hades

Apollo’s voice cracked on the last word. Something in my chest twisted. Sharp. Vicious. Not sympathy. Recognition. The sound of a man who’d been carrying weight too fucking long and finally felt it crushing him. Bones splintering under pressure. Lungs collapsing. Heart giving out.

I leaned back in my chair, my eyes on Apollo without really seeing him anymore. All I saw was Lettie. Golden hair catching sunlight. That soft smile hiding something darker underneath. The way she’d looked at me in my room after I’d made her come apart on my cock. Like she’d found something she’d been searching for without knowing she was looking.

If Apollo was right, if she was Colette, then someone had stolen that from her.

Stolen her family. Her history. Her fucking identity.

For five fucking years she’d been living two miles from the answers she didn’t know she was supposed to be looking for.

The rage that thought triggered was immediate. Visceral. The kind that made my hands curl into fists on the table, knuckles white, tendons straining. The kind that made me want to find whoever took her and make them suffer in ways that would make Kronos’ death look like a fucking mercy killing. I’d peel their skin off in strips. Break every bone in their body one at a time. Make them beg for death and deny it until they’d paid for every second they’d stolen from her.

But underneath the rage was something else.

Fear.

Cold and sharp and fucking terrifying.

Because if Lettie was Apollo’s sister, then she had a family. A real one. People who’d been searching for her. People who loved her before I’d ever laid eyes on her.

And what the fuck did that make me?

The man who’d claimed her without knowing she already belonged to someone else? Would she still want me when she realized she had a family who wanted her? Would she look at me the same way when she understood I’d been keeping her from people who’d been searching for twenty-three years?

Fuck that.

She was mine. Vote or no vote. Blood relation or not. She was mine the second I saw her standing in the clubhouse yard with sunshine in her hair and darkness in her eyes. Mine the second she let me touch her. Mine the second she came apart under my hands and looked at me like I was the only man who’d ever made her feel that way.

If Apollo wanted his sister back, he could have her.

But he’d have to go through me first.

And I’d put him in the fucking ground before I let that happen.

“You think it’s possible, Rykard?” Zeus asked, his eyes locking on Apollo’s father.

Rykard took a deep breath before nodding. “Possible. Not certain.”

“What would make it certain?” Atlas asked.

Rykard didn’t answer right away. His gaze moved to the table, then to Apollo. “I don’t know,” he said. “Seeing more of her. Talking to her. Maybe nothing. Maybe a test.”