“My wife’s desires have not been your concern for years,” Hunter replied, walking towards him. “I have placed Scott in Grayson’s care.”
“You can’t be serious!” Archer rose to his feet. “After everything I’ve told you?”
“I have much better things to concern myself with than a half-breed,” Gray drawled.
The comment was a punch to the gut. I thought abomination was bad, but the pure vitriol behind the words ‘half-breed’ knocked the air out of me.
I fought through memories, trying to understand what was going on. Gray professed to love me. He tried to fight for me in the council chambers. But that Gray wasn’t here. Had our time apart warped his thinking? Was I truly that repulsive to the elite Gods?
Words travelled up my throat and lodged there in a painful lump. I found comfort in the worst of the Gods and now I didn’t even have that. I knew I shouldn’t have relied on anyone but myself.
“You don’t care for anything but yourself,” Archer spat at him.
Gray shrugged. “True enough.”
Archer’s aura sparked to life and crept towards us, but Hunter struck out. Blue wound itself around Archer’s body, holding him in place while he struggled.
“Uh, uh,” Gray said, wagging his finger. “We don’t want to cause a scene in front of your guests.”
The crowd behind him had not left, but they didn’t make a move to save Archer. They watched with vested interest, a gentle hum of whispers starting again. Selfish. Unequivocally selfish. Gods looked after themselves above all else. No one would step into the fray.
My gaze slid to Gray. All the relief had morphed into anger.
“What are you doing?” I asked Gray spitefully, as if I hadn’t been hoping for his presence at every waking moment.
“There she is,” he said, turning his focus on me. “I was wondering if you’d lost the ability to speak.” The words were just as clipped as my own. “Hope you’ve enjoyed your little stay here, but you’ll be coming back with me.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks so hard that I could taste the ferric tang of blood as it coated my tongue and teeth.
“Grayson,” Hunter barked. “You’re forgetting something.”
My gaze flicked between the pair, heart hammering so aggressively against my chest that I worried it might actually punch a hole through my body and land on the floor as an offering in return for safety.
Reaching into the inner pocket of his jacket, Gray pulled out a single halo of copper that split open in his hands.
A short burst of laughter escaped my lips out of relief. “I’m already cuffed,” I bit, holding up my hands to show him the blatant evidence.
For the briefest moment, I was grateful that Archer had fixed them on me and hadn’t had the chance to remove them yet. I posed no threat, so the hole I was in grew no deeper.
“It’s not for your wrists,” Hunter informed me.
With a small tug, a chain leash fell from Gray’s jacket, and I shook my head as I realised what he held in his hands.
“No,” I snapped, taking a horrified step back. “You’ve got to be fucking joking.”
Gray clucked his tongue. “Language, Scott.”
My brain quickly stacked up the odds, firing up the sympathetic nervous system. A fight was out of the question. There was no way I could win. That left me with one other option.
I turned quickly, ignoring the three Gods that surrounded me, and ran. It was a week late, but my survival instinct had finally showed up instead of hovering like a vague idea in the background.
I’d barely made it a few metres down the hall, towards the front door and away from the Gods, when my heel got stuck in the tulle skirt and the floor rushed to greet my face. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited for the pain, but it never arrived.
Something solid wound around my waist, dragging me backwards, and turning my body until I was nose to nose with Grayson.
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed through my teeth.
His eyes were stormy, tumbling between deep blue and grey. Somewhere in their depths, I tried to find the man I’d grown to know.
