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17
ADDIE
Ihad to make a promise to Ryder in order to get him to leave. I just hoped that I could live up to it. On the surface, I was more than capable. My arcana was just fine. I was more afraid of myself than anything else.
Though I was so tired that I nodded off on the back porch more than once, I stayed and waited for Maddox to return. The sun had long set, and bugs were buzzing in the air. I could barely feel them as they pinched my skin. I was too full of worry.
“Come back, Maddox,” I whispered into the night.
There was a pizza on the counter waiting for him. I didn’t even know if he liked cold pizza. I sure hoped so because it wasn’t going to get any warmer.
While I wanted to lift a middle finger to the skies and curse the gods, I knew that Hel was down in the underworld. All the gods could screw themselves for all I cared. Fate was one thing, but the gods were fickle children with too much power.
They never had to struggle against their arcana. They didn’t have panic attacks when they accidentally raised the dead. There was no guilt when someone they cared for got caught in the middle of a fight with an undead shifter and became a so-called abomination.
Bitterness swirled inside me until Potato came to rub along my legs. I bent and scratched her head.
“Thanks, Pot. You’re the best little dead kitty I could have asked for.”
A shadowed silhouette ambled into view. I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Potato jumped off the porch and ran up to Maddox to meow loudly at him. He looked down at her with narrowed eyes.
“I’m not bending over and giving the world a view of my asshole just to pet you. Go back to Addie if you want affection.” Maddox kept one hand over his groin as he strode past the cat.
The only thing on his person was the dog collar, which made my cold cheeks turn warm. Something about the big, capable man in a symbol of ownership stirred sensations unlike any other inside me. I clenched my fists to keep from grabbing the collar and pulling him close.
“I’m glad you’re home,” I said.
Maddox stepped into the light of the porch and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. Panic turned my blood cold when I saw the rusty red on his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he said when he caught me staring. “It’s barbeque sauce. I might have stolen a pork butt off someone’s grill earlier.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t help but guffaw this time.
Maddox didn’t give me time to laugh as he went on.
“I would have been back earlier, but I still can’t jump through portals. One opened when Hel visited me, but I haven’t been able to access them on my own.” His upper lip curled when he mentioned the goddess.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s how you made it to the quarry?”
Hel had intervened on my behalf? It made sense, and it made her seem kind, though she’d turned on me in that very same afternoon. She was the only family I had left. I should have known she would make my life infinitely more difficult, if only because she was related to me. No one else in my family had ever made my life easy.
“I have a pizza inside for you,” I told Maddox.
He probably didn’t care after eating an entire pork butt, but the man surged inside and tore open the box without even turning on the lights. I flipped them on as I followed. He flinched before his eyes adjusted to the light.
Of course, my attention dropped low because he wasn’t covering his groin anymore. I quickly looked away, towards the sink, the fridge, anything that wasn’t Maddox’s cock.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, testing the waters.
I had a promise to uphold. It was the only way I’d been able to keep Ryder from hunting Maddox down. Maybe Ryder thought Maddox was a threat, but I knew better. Maddox hadn’t been out hurting people. The man and wolf didn’t have the best relationship, but they’d proven to me that there was little to worry about.
A killer wolf didn’t attack a jar of strawberry jam or steal a pork butt from someone’s grill. Maddox was good at heart. So good, in fact, that he refused to partake in the one rule of the supernatural community: kill to keep others safe.
Maddox grumbled through a mouthful of pizza. “I’ve been better. My head aches like I spent the night drinking straight from the bottle.”
I sighed. “Hel did something to stir your beast. I’m willing to bet you’re reeling from the aftereffects of that.”
He made a noncommittal noise.
