33

G E O R G I E

✿

The portal spat me out in the middle of the forest and I landed on my back on the mossy forest floor. The impact knocked all the air out of my lungs and shards of glass lodged in my throat, yet I've never been happier to feel damp, leaf-covered earth beneath me. The stars twinkled behind the canopy of leaves in the black night sky, the wind rushed through the leaves, whipping them off the ground. The thick, musty branches above me swayed and swayed. I almost forgot who I had met seconds earlier.

Then a head moved into my field of vision. He stared down at me.

I blinked. Brown dirt found its way under my fingernails as I groaned and pushed myself off the ground, my back feeling like it was creaking like the old, dead branches above me.

"Where in all the hellfires had you been?!"

Beau stood in front of me. His dark pants sat low on his hips, magically drawing my gaze. My eyes wandered over his exposed torso, which seemed to consist only of hard muscles. Dark chest hair covered his steel abs. I would only have to raise my arm and I would be able to touch it with my fingers. Trace every crease in his abs. Glide deeper.

"Georgie!"

My head jerked up and my cheeks burned.

"Are you going to tell me where you've been? It seemed to me that I had made it clear to you that you should stay in the bunker."

"Yeah, but..." Blood ran down his upper arms, dripping from his fingertips into the brightly colored maple leaves on the floor. I was already on my feet. "Are you hurt?"

"It's not my blood," he said, ignoring the blood clot covering his skin. "The fight is over."

The wind howled through the night, swept over us. My hair was flying in front of my face and I was trying to tuck it behind my ears. "Everybody okay?" I thought about Blair. To Isaac. To all the other pack members who had become my family.

"Most. A few have been reported missing, but no one you know.” He opened his clenched hands and crossed his blood-stained arms. "They were stronger than we were with that stun gun."

However, the knot in my stomach did not loosen. I swallowed, pressing my damp hands to my legs. "Hades, Hades lives."

"What?"

“There was a portal and I… I went through it. And then all of a sudden I was in these catacombs and and...' I let out a shaky breath. 'I saw him. I know that sounds crazy. I don't know, suddenly I was in this...this tomb. And he was there.' Then I began to tell everything. I told him about the deathbringer that the pirate had mentioned. About the words of the cloaked attacker. About the islander. Just everything. He listened quietly, his face a blank mask. I wouldn't be surprised if he thought I was completely insane.

Beau eyed me when I was at the end of my flow. His brows drew together. "Second. So you're telling me that Arya knew about this and so did Xenos, but you didn't think for a moment to tell me that you're being threatened by someone calling themselves Ruindealer? What you think is a resurrected god of the underworld who had you imprisoned for years? And who you teleported to today? Did I understand all that correctly?'

I had to speak louder to get upwind. “I didn't believe any of this to be true myself. I thought I was going crazy, going completely insane."

He didn't say. Just stared at me, waiting for me to offer him a better explanation. Colorful autumn leaves, which looked like bats flapping at night, circled in the wind and danced between us with the gust.

With rough movements, I tried to clear the leaves from under my nose. “What should I have done, Beau? Nobody but the two would have suspected anything about a deathbringer and everyone else would have thought I was crazy. Nobody would have believed me or helped me. I had no choice."

He ground his teeth. “You should have come to me. Should tell me. I would have believed you from the first minute.”

My wagging stopped. "Are you... jealous? of Arya and Xenos?"

"Did he see you? Did he touch you?” His voice cracked over me like a whiplash. His wolf eyes burned like green beacons.

He spoke of Hades. I shook my head. "No."

He wanted to kill him. tear to pieces. But I didn't know where he was, and Beau couldn't kill him. Hades was a god and therefore immortal, could only be killed by the hand through whose veins flowed divine blood. Someone like Aramis.

"We're going to my place," he decided. His blood-soaked hand grabbed mine.

"Why are you even so far out there?" I asked him and followed him on shaky legs through the dense undergrowth. I had thought the fight would take place near the warehouse.

"I was looking for you, what else. You weren't in the fucking bunker where you're supposed to be, nor in any other room in the palace."

So he thought I went to him. We silently made our way through the dense forest. Pine needles caress my black top, tangled in my hair. I probably wouldn't have made it through the forest on my own. My knees were shaking. The encounter lay over me like an abyss of darkness that threatened to swallow me, only the wet, warm hand in mine still held me to reality. grounded me

As soon as we got to his house, he started the fire and made a beeline for the kitchen. I had kicked off my boots, on the soles of which leaves and clods of earth stuck like heavy ice moths, and now I padded through his apartment with bare feet, numb from the cold. The uneven surface of the charcoal-grey slate ground rough under my fingertips as I stood there as if ordered and uncollected, watching Beau busy himself in the kitchen.

The long, bulging welts on his back moved under the muscles. It was a work of art. A work of art of his story, his dark past that he had survived. Just like the scar on my temple.

"There's a lighter in the outer drawer."

Without a word, I went to him in the kitchen and was about to open the drawer when I saw the small box on the kitchen counter. The earthy, malty and slightly caramelized smell of cocoa hit my nostrils. I stared at Beau.

He acted unaffected. "Rose had one left." Then he reached over me and pulled out the drawer. He handed me the small leather pouch that held the lighter.

Why this cocoa threw me so off track was beyond me, but I couldn't take my eyes off him and it caused me almost physical pain to accept the leather pouch and move away from him.

Then I lit the candle on the slate table, making sure they didn't burn the pretty petals of the poppy bush in the vase.

After I had lit all the remaining candles in the house and a warm, dim light was now illuminating the rooms with the crackling open fire, I went to him. My hand gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. The urge to shrug off those dirty workout clothes and wash the memories from me became almost overwhelming.

Beau half-turned to me, then surveyed the scattered lights around his house. "Better?"

There was a proper distance between us. I wondered if he would still wrap his arms around me today, or if he was too angry for it. I looked at him in astonishment.

Beau turned away again and reached for the pot on the hearth. "What? You thought I hadn't noticed?” He roughly poured the heated water into a wooden kettle. He spilled some of it and it spilled over the counter, dripping down onto the wooden floor. With a force the copper-colored saucepan didn't deserve, he slammed it back onto the stove. "How you were shaking with discomfort?"

"You're angry," I stated.

He spun around, a cool, sly smile gracing his mouth. His razor-sharp fangs flashed. "That's the understatement of the century, little one."

The skin stretched over my knuckles and numbness overcame my fingertips from gripping the kitchen counter so tightly. “Believe me, if I had known where this portal would catapult me, I certainly wouldn't have gone inside willingly. I could have been spared such an encounter.”

"Yes, she would have, if that sparrow-brain weren't hiding things from me!"

I let out a dry laugh. "Oh yeah, you're holding that against me?" I jabbed my finger at his chest. "You're the one keeping a whole bunch of unsaid things under wraps!"

He grabbed my finger, stopping me from digging further into his blood-covered flesh. "It's not the same," he growled softly. 'He could have spotted you. He could have tied you up and tortured you. Able to drive you insane with its powers. He could have killed you, fucking Georgie!"

"I know, okay? I know.” I felt ashamed to taste the salty evidence of my tears on my tongue. "Don't rub it in my nose too."

He reached for a clean washcloth, tossed it carelessly into the wooden cauldron, and then placed it on the dining table. He grabbed my waist, lifted me up and sat me down on the slate. As calm as I had seldom seen him, his thumb caught the tears and he wiped them from my cheeks.

My throat was tight, unable to make a sound. I watched him pull out the washcloth and then wipe my neck with it.

"You've got dust on your face," he said harshly, guiding the cloth higher to my face. Slowly stroked my skin. I let him, sucking in his touch, his attention, and the little twinkle in his eyes like it was air I needed to breathe.

He splashed the cloth into the cauldron and then tugged something out of my hair. An orange-colored leaf tumbled onto the tabletop next to me and lay motionless at the foot of the iron candlestick. One sheet after the other landed on the table. Green blades of grass and moss joined them.

"Ready?" I asked him softly as he blew off my hair. He nodded curtly.

The lukewarm water in the kettle sloshed slightly as I dipped my hand in to fish out the rag. After wringing him out, I dabbed at his stubbly chin, and my hand shook slightly as I briefly caught his blazing green gaze, which was fixed on me. Like there was something in my eyes that he wanted to see. From which he could not turn away.