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Perse lifted her gaze from Potato. “Do you think you have the strength of will to rewrite fate?”
“What kind of question is that?” Taken aback, I looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “Yes. I do think I have the strength. You haven’t seen the half of what I’ve had to put up with. It’s made me who I am right here and now.”
And I was right. A bit of pride blossomed in my chest. I’d become the kind of person that teenage me never would have expected. Teenage me would love who I was. Though, I wondered what she would think of my husband, a cop. The moment he took off his shirt, teenage me would understand.
Maddox washot.
Perse smiled. She bit her lower lip excitedly and wiggled her brows. “That’s good to know.”
Just like that, Perse vanished.
I threw my hands in the air. This had gotten me nowhere. I didn’t know who Per—
The look on the Greek Fate’s face…she’d recognized Perse. What was Perse’s full name?
Persephone.
My neighbor had been the Greek goddess of Spring this whole time. At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around this idea. Why would a goddess of Spring hang around me? I considered that maybe she’d been trying to get close to Cerri, whose arcana was similar to Perse’s domain. Then I remembered who Persephone’s husband was.
Persephone wasn’t just the goddess of Spring. She was also the queen of the Greek underworld. Everything clicked into place.
But I didn’t get why all these gods were playing mind games with me!
Maddox
Nothing satisfied me.I ate and ate, but my body still wanted more. Soon, I would run out of funds. I went to the one place where I knew there would be plenty of food, but the moment I laid eyes on my uncle’s roadside chicken shack, my stomach churned uneasily.
He couldn’t see me from where he stood, but I could see him opening the big smoker to rotate the chickens on the big metal spit. His wife, my aunt, came out with a stack of peanut butter pies that she loaded into the fridge in the far corner.
My hunger gnawed at me. It demanded I swoop in and steal everything I could get my hands on before escaping through a portal.
I couldn’t take from them. It wasn’t right. Even if I left them compensation, they would be scared and worried about the safety of their business. This was my family, the only relatives that I had left. My uncle was the only man to ever tell me that he was proud of me.
I backed away and opened a portal behind me so that I stepped through without ever breaking eye contact with the shack. Only when the portal closed in front of me did I lose sight of my family. Addie’s living room came into view, her scent rising to set my nerves at ease.
Potato came charging down the stairs. She let out a howl of greeting so that I would bend and pet her, which I did without thinking. The damn beast twisted and reached back to bite me. I jerked back and growled. Potato gave me a look of feline indignation before darting off once more.
“What is her problem?” Addie asked from the top of the stairs.
I looked up and felt every tight muscle in my body suddenly go lax. A sigh escaped me and left me deflated. The urge to run up the stairs and scoop her into my arms battled with the sudden exhaustion creeping into my body.
Addie came down to me, though. On the third step up from the bottom, she paused and reached out to cup my cheek. Here, we were about the same height. I gripped the banister and leaned forward to kiss her. She eagerly opened to me.
What was it about her that satisfied me more than any food? I’d learned that I was more like Fenrir than Vince. I wasn’t hungrily trying to fill the void of my soul the same way that Vince had been. This insatiable hunger came from the undead part of me. I felt like a zombie restlessly searching for brains, and it left me a little unsettled.
As I pulled back from Addie, I considered Hel’s offer. My descent into a hunger-driven madness was only a matter of time. I’d seen Fenrir. The man thought he was right, but I knew that he was very wrong. I didn’t want to become him.
Hel had a prison for those like me. She could keep threats out of the mortal realm by locking them away, deep within her domain. I shuddered at the thought of being trapped down there, but if it meant that the world was safe from what I would become, then I would gladly give myself over.
Addie’s hand moved to my chin where she gripped it tight and pulled my attention back to the moment. She stared me down with her cool gray eyes, determination filling them. I couldn’t help but let my gaze drop to the perfect heart-shaped pout of her lips.
“You’re bound to me in more ways than one,” she said. “I’m not letting you get away from me now. Don’t you dare think about Hel’s offer.”
I kept my face passive even though her deduction surprised me. I sucked in a breath and tried to gather my thoughts. Eventually, I would have to sell Addie on this idea. There was no guarantee that I would always be this man. She would have to come to terms with that eventually.
My wife refused, though. She had become an immovable object in the recent weeks. I admired her new resilience, but I couldn’t help but think of myself as an unstoppable force. When we collided, it wouldn’t be pretty. I wanted her to remember me as I was in that moment in her living room, not as what I might become.
“Listen,” I said, about to open this can of worms.
