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But he hovered close. “Take it easy on her, Bele.”
Her hold on me loosened a little. I felt her chest rise. “Thank you.”
“For what?” I murmured into her braid, patting her back awkwardly because I officially gave the worst hugs.
“For Aios,” she whispered hoarsely, reaching between us to touch the necklace. “If I’d lost her…” A tremor went through her.
I squeezed my eyes shut, having forgotten there was the hint of something intimate between the two, something more than just friendship. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“I just did. I’m not taking it back.” Her voice strengthened. “And you can’t reject it.”
My lips quirked. “Okay.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.” Bele drew back then. “I hate to ruin this reunion but…” She trailed off, inhaling sharply. She dropped her arms as her mouth opened, then closed. Eather lashed across her eyes—irises that had once been a shade of hazel that leaned more toward gold but were now silver. “Please tell me you got at least one good beatdown in on that motherfucker.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had provoked the question, but then I realized she was looking at my neck—the bruises and the wound left by the scrape of Kolis’s fangs.
“She got in more than just one beatdown,” Ash stepped in, taking my hand again.
Bele’s chin lifted. “Really?”
“Yeah.” My normal tendency to be a braggart when it came to gaining the upper hand in any fight wasn’t there, which likely meant I was more tired than I realized. “He’s down for the count right now.”
Approval flashed across her stunning features, along with a savage smile. “I wish I’d been there to see it.”
I started to smile when I realized something about her. Bele had Ascended as the Primal Goddess of the Hunt, but her arms were bare. “You don’t have a cuff like the others?”
“Not yet.” Bele eyed the one around Ash’s biceps. “Apparently, it will appear when I’m ready.” She squinted at Ash. “And exactly when will that be?”
“I am under the impression it varies. Odin didn’t appear until a few years after I became a Primal of Death.”
“A few years? That’s annoying.” Bele rolled her eyes. “Anyway, we heard that Kolis was out of commission from some god named Elias, but we didn’t let him say much more before we bound his mouth.”
I blinked. “Before you did what?”
“We tied him up and bound his mouth,” she repeated. “Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t know him. None of us does. All that we know is that Attes popped in, dropped the asshole off with his gold-painted face, and then said he’d be back before any of us could even address the fact that that fucker was here.”
“Oh, my gods,” I muttered as Ash made a noise that sounded a lot like a laugh. “Elias is not a bad guy. And Attes…I’m not explaining all that again.” I shot Ash a glare. “Is Nektas here? He would know all of this.”
“Nektas is doing his draken thing.”
“As if he couldn’t have shifted into his mortal form at any point to tell you all that Elias didn’t need to be bound?” I started walking toward the Temple, where I assumed Bele had come from.
“Yeah, he could have. He didn’t.” Bele fell into step beside Ash and me. “Look, the god’s alive. No harm. No foul.”
I wasn’t sure tying someone up fell under no harm, no foul.
“By the way, I apparently have even more bad news for you.” Bele glanced at me. “Veses is—”
“Freed. I know. I saw her,” I said. “Was anyone hurt?”
Bele shook her head. “We didn’t even realize she had escaped at first. Went down there and saw that she’d basically chewed her damn arms off. I think she was more concerned with getting the hell out of there than vengeance.”
So Veses had been telling the truth.
The trees thinned out, revealing more of the old Temple I now saw sat below some rocky cliffs.
“See.” Bele gestured at the sweeping columns. “The god is alive.”
