Page 10 of Taming Winter

I shut the iron doors behind us with a dull click. Filthy from days on the road, I shuffled toward the bathing chambers. Though before I could make it past the threshold, her sultry voice stopped me in my tracks.

"Wait, Wolfe."

I waited, ever the obedient pet. My eyes flickered shut at the idea, because it didn't disgust me like it had before I murdered the remnants of my cabal. The truth was, I had always been a dog, my shifting of masters had changed nothing. The pill was hard to swallow, but I accepted it despite the foul taste. Regardless of how sick and twisted, I enjoyed killing for her. There was familiarity and comfort in accepting orders and ending lives, and I was fucking good at it. I'd never had friends or loved ones. My cabal had treated me as a useful freak of nature on a chain, but they hadn’t truly cared for me. My job—my skills—were all I had. They gave me a sense of power and pride Hades had stripped from me. If I could, I would do it again, and that said more about me than I wanted to admit.

There was a pause before she finally spoke. "I don't want to fight you either."

My eyes widened with surprise at her confession, and I turned to her. I wasn't sure what I expected from my earlier olive branch to the goddess, but her acceptance was not it. My lips were parted, ready to respond until I saw her.

Her black slip had fallen from her voluptuous curves and crumpled into a pile around her heels. Hades was a beautiful woman, I had never denied myself that fact. She was all legs and curves with breasts that wouldn't fit in my hands, and her skin was perfection. There was no hiding the increasing stiffness in my cock at the vision that was her naked body.

She knew it, too, which was infuriating to a level I couldn’t comprehend. She used her body as a weapon, allowing us both to bask in the discomfort of her statement as she writhed into a ridiculously indecent slip. The skirt was silk, but the bodice was all lace that still showed the curve of her tits and the dark pink of her nipples. I stifled my groan and berated myself. Poisonous insects were often beautiful. She would kill me if I dared to take a bite, but my dick didn't care.

I cleared my throat and finally tore my gaze from her body. "Alright, what does that mean for us?"

Her fingers gripped my chin and forced me to return my attention to her. This close, her heat melted the layer of frost that had built over my skin. Her exotic scent settled over me like a toxic fog ready to pull me under.

"Rather than threats, let’s try positive reinforcement."

My brows furrowed. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Her hand trailed from my chin to my throat, where she gripped over the gemstone fused there. "I know how you look at me, handsome. Do as you're told, and I may just reward your good behavior. Let's see how loyal you can be when," her lip quirked up, "properly motivated."

My words abandoned me. My throat was dry, and I gulped against the fuzzy mass that had blocked my airway. I was a fucking disgusting, pathetic man. She was using her body against me, and it was fucking working, though I’d never admit it. We both knew, but uttering the words would be a betrayal to myself.

She let go of me, a sardonic smirk twisting her face into something evil. "Well, in two days you're going to leave on your next mission. Since you eavesdropped on my conversation with Hermes, you know Zeus is falsely accusing me of causing a blight. We are going to squash those rumors, because you're going to terminate every single one of those affected.”

"You're going to kill innocents." My voice came out flat. The horror that should have resonated through me at the acknowledgement of what she was asking me to do didn't come. Maybe it was the night before, or maybe I was truly evil, but a pool of acceptance was settling within me. This was my life, for an eternity. It was fitting, in a wretched way. I had committed my life to murder, now my death was stained with it as well.

Her lip curled in disgust. "They're dying anyway. Give them a quick, respectable death instead. I am not the monster here."

CHAPTER 11

WOLFE

This was the farthest I had gone from Hades to date, and the wear was eating away at my soul. It was a fight for each step; my ties to her were warring with the drive to heed her command. I plowed through Zone 8 without pausing, determined to finish my task and go home.

I was now within Zone 3, or Apollo's zone. Skyscrapers of white marble towered above me on all sides with gilded trim of filigree. Multiple buildings boasted ornate murals of the immortal donned in gold garb—the arrogant asshat. The streets were cleaner than those in Zone 8, too clean for my taste. It felt artificial, and that made my skin crawl.

There were hospitals and medical spas on every street within the confines of Zone 3, but Hades’s command tugged me toward the grandest of them all. Alexikakos sat at the end of Main Street and towered as tall as the skyscrapers surrounding it. Large, clean-cut marble pillars held up a stately set of front steps that led to massive double doors, opened wide.

I had holed up in the outskirts of Zone 3 during the day, staying far enough from the electric fence that separated the two zones to not attract border patrol, but close enough to avoid the city residents. The outskirts held smaller, worn buildings picked over by stray monsters that crept through Olympiara's defenses.

The newspapers would have the people believe that the immortals had eradicated the monsters within Olympiara's limits. Monsters were a problem for the wastelands lying outside Olympiara, not for within our walls, well protected by Poseidon. That was the reason the immortals had come to power. Zeus and Poseidon had put a stop to the never-ending tsunami of beasts that came to hurt us. However, as someone who spent their life creeping through the shadows, I had learned that wasn't entirely true. Smaller, more cunning monsters like the Cerastes or the occasional Diomedes Mare scrounged their way through our defenses and feasted on the remnants of the old city and the poor sons-of-bitches that tried to live there.

I hadn't feared monsters while I was alive, and I certainly didn't now. I had sat within a desecrated building with a gun in one hand, ice creeping from my body as I waited for the sun to descend.

The witching hour was upon Apollo’s Zone, and darkness cloaked my frostbitten movements. I walked into the hospital, the indoor plants browning and curling as I passed.

Hades had explained how to sense the blight. As an undead soul, I could taste death in the air. The disease left a foul, sickly-sweet flavor on the tip of my tongue that made me grimace. It was overpowering and easy to follow.

There had been a separate, contagious wing in Zone 8 that held those affected. I had expected the same in Alexikakos, but I soon found I was wrong. My senses led me to the emergency wing of the hospital. It was the largest wing, marked with a set of swinging double doors that led to a hallway with rows of rooms on either side. I evaded the hospital staff by dipping into the shadows as they passed by me, unaware of the death that lingered close.

I wasn’t worried about reconnaissance of the room. Like the other hospitals, there was no fight to be had. These were innocent, sick people meeting Charon at the end of what were likely short, miserable lives. Thus, I entered the room with only a quick scan of what it held.

The cramped room within revealed two patients lying in adjacent beds. Both were sleeping, attached to machines that flashed and beeped in the navy darkness, but only one reeked of that wretched sweet smell. There was something incredibly wrong here.

There was a lurch in my chest like the tug of a leash, urging me to get on with it. I sighed. As a mere pawn at play, it wasn't my job to question such things. I strode to the inflicted man’s side. Black phlegm stained the crevices of his lips, and blisters coated his sweat-slicked flesh. Every breath held a dangerous rattle, making my chest clench.