direction with her sharp violent eyes.
My dick doesn’t worry about the consequences of fancying a reaper woman, but I sure as fuck do.
“She isn’t here,” Ryker cuts into my search of all the people in the room. “She left with Seb an hour ago.”
“Why?” I sharply ask, forgetting that Ryker is my friend and I trust him with my life. He and Seb are my brothers, the only family, bar my mother, who has ever given a shit about me. We might not be related by blood or by species, but they always have my back. Ryker looks pissed off as he looks away.
“I don’t want to fucking know, mate,” he says. Without a reply, I storm off through the crowds and to the back of the room, using the secret wall to get into the throne room. Seb always goes here when he wants to escape the world around him, but I’ve never known him to bring a girl back to this place. I’m sure Ryker has once or twice. I hear Daesyn’s laugh, followed by the sound of Seb talking as the wall spins. Neither of them notices me as I step behind a sword, watching them both lying on the steps up the throne. Daesyn’s perfect and curvy body is on show in her dark blue dress, and the urge to kiss every bit of her exposed tanned skin is all I can think of for a moment. Her black hair, which looks soft and silky, is falling around her shoulders in waves, and I want to know how her hair would feel in my hands. I want to know what it would be like to kiss her, to own her body and soul.
“Mortals can be enchanting, can they not?” Queen Annalee Husk softly whispers right behind me. Appearing out of the shadows, she walks to my side. Seb and Daesyn are too busy drinking and laughing to notice us, and we are too far away for them to hear our conversation.
The queen touches my arm, and I resist the urge to flinch away from her touch. I don’t have to look down at her to see how she looks at me, the desire building in her eyes. If I wanted to, I could have her in my bed in two seconds flat.
But I’d rather chop my own dick off with an axe.
“Some are, yes,” I counter, keeping my expression neutral. No one can suspect how I feel for Daesyn, it would ruin many of the plans my mother and I have put together so I can stay here and not in Olympus.
“I am surprised to see affection in your eyes for this reaper girl,” Annalee comments, watching Dae with me. Daesyn’s laugh is as enchanting as she is, but that is not the main reason I like her. It’s her bravery, it’s how fearless she is in the face of everything. It’s the shadows I see in the corner of her eyes that she never lets win.
It’s how she reminds me of myself, and yet I feel myself losing control when I am around her. The memory of showing her my past comes to mind. That was a stupid fucking move. Since when do I ever show anyone my real past or even think of it myself?
I felt pity for her past, the flashback she showed me of herself, a little girl lost in the mortal world.
Annalee keeps on talking when I don’t reply. “Affection is not something I ever thought I’d see from you. Ever since you were sent here, you’ve been cold and distant from the mortal world. You longed for the gods.”
“Perhaps,” I reply. She isn’t wrong. When I was here as a teenager, all I wanted was to turn eighteen and find out who my parents really were and go home. Only adults can enter Olympus, a cold rule of the gods, and now that I’ve been up there, I never want to go back.
“She has no god blood in her soul, it would be apparent if she did, like my bloodline. Therefore she cannot be a mate to you,” Annalee dryly comments, a vindictive snip to her voice.
I turn and look at her for the first time since she came in here. Annalee might be beautiful by some people’s standards, but to me, she will always be a cruel monster who treats her son like shit under her shoe. “Some people are more beautiful and enchanting than the gods could ever