AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jaxon
“Where the fuck is Athena?”
Dean and Cayde stop screaming at each other just long enough to turn and look at me and then back at each other.
“I thought she was with you,” they say at the same time as I do, all three of us in unison.
It’s well after midnight, pushing the witching hour, and the party is finally fucking over. Everyone has trickled out, back to their dorms, leaving behind an absolute garbage dump of dropped cups, spilled liquor, sticky floors, and surfaces that will require an entire team of maids to clean up tomorrow. But that’s the last thing on my mind right now.
The first thing is that I’ve gone through this entire fucking house and the outside top to bottom, and I can’t find Athena.
The second is that once I know where she is, I’m seriously considering killing both Dean and Cayde for what they put her through tonight.
And then I’m never speaking to Athena again for what she put me through.
It’s proof of how fucking far she’s gotten inside my head that I even care to find her after that. My chest feels like it’s cracked wide open, bleeding out all over the fucking place after having to watch her beg Cayde for his dick after everything he’s done to her. And it wasn’t just a show. I know she wanted everyone, including Dean and me, to believe that. But I know our little pet better. I’ve seen her when she wants it, and I know the look on her face, the sounds that she makes, the way her body moves. I know that some part of her wanted everything she did with Cayde, and that tears me apart, even though I know it’s not entirely fair.
It could have been me. It should have been me. But it wasn’t. And I feel like that knowledge is destroying me from the inside out. I’ve never wanted anything as fucking bad as I want Athena, and I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hate her right now, after what she made me bear witness to.
“What do you mean, where is Athena?” Dean says finally, recovering enough to glare at me. “I assumed she was with Cayde, gloating somewhere about that fucking ridiculous stunt they pulled tonight.” His glare whips back to Cayde. “Which, by the way, isn’t going to make any fucking difference because I still—”
“It makes all the difference!” Cayde roars, his shoulders bunched so tightly I can see the corded muscle through his shirt. “Your pet gave herself away, begged for—”
“Can you shut the fuck up for one goddamn second?” I shout, and both men turn to face me again, startled. I rarely raise my voice like that, and they both know it.
“Athena is gone,” I continue. “I looked all over the house—”
“What about outside?” Cayde frowns. “The pool?”
“I looked all around the house—the pool, the back deck—”
“The maze?” Dean narrows his eyes. “Did you look in the maze?”
The fucking maze.Despite the fact that it takes up a serious section of the land that the manor is built on, I frequently forget about the garden maze. I’m not even sure I’ve ever been in it.
“Maybe she went out there, got lost, fell asleep, passed out—” Cayde purses his lips. “She had a drink, maybe it was too strong, and she couldn’t find her way back in—”
“Let’s go look,” I interrupt. There’s a pinging alarm in the back of my head, a gut feeling that something is very, very off. That something is wrong. It’s an instinct that’s always served me well. It’s also bringing back memories that twist my gut and make my pulse rise up into my throat, memories of the last time I didn’t know where a girl I cared about—a girl I loved—was, and what happened after that. The last time someone close to me went missing.
I think the other two feel similarly because they don’t argue with me. They just follow me out into the house, stepping over cups and puddles of spilled drinks as we make our way through the manor to the side garden maze.
It’s very dark outside, and I turn on the flashlight on my phone, holding it up so we can see better. Usually, the floodlights from the back and side of the house light up the garden fairly well, but they’re off now post-party, and I hadn’t thought to turn them back on before we walked out here. All I can think about is finding Athena.
Dean and Cayde do the same, moving the beams of light over the grass as we make our way through the maze. It smells clean and fresh outside, a nice change from the stuffy, rank air in the house right now, but as we make our way to the far side of the maze, I can smell something else. Something very familiar, to me at least.
Engine exhaust and grease.
“Fuck.” I pick up the pace, shining my light over the grass as my heart beats faster in my chest. And sure enough, as we make our way closer to the exit, it’s clear that someone was here. Multiple someones, from the trampled grass—and they drug someone out of here, from the way the grass is flattened and torn up in places.
Athena.
I stare down at the ground, feeling my pulse speed up in my throat as a sick feeling curdles in the pit of my stomach.
“They took her.” Cayde’s voice floats through the air from behind me, disbelieving. “I didn’t think—shit.”
“Who?” Dean and I both round on Cayde at once, and I see the deep frown on Dean’s face. Clearly, Athena hadn’t said shit to him about her stalker—but from the expression on Cayde’s face, he knows more than either of us do, including me.
That makes me even angrier—at them, at her, at whoever took her. I’d have protected her, if she’d just told me everything. I could have helped. But our little Saint has to do things her way.
