“Help?” he repeated, the word soft and poisonous. His lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “She’s wearing my ring.”
I looked down—instinct, shame, something else—and there it was.
That band of metal.
Cold. Heavy. His.
“She needs someone who can actually help her,” Cliff shot back, voice hardening.
Hades stepped forward.
I felt the shift in the air—like static rising off the walls.
“And what do you think you can do that I can’t?” he asked, every word dipped in menace.
Cliff’s fists clenched at his sides. “Stay out of her life.”
The laugh Hades gave wasn’t loud—it was low and dark, like the growl of thunder right before the lightning hits. “You think she wants you here?”
I stopped breathing.
The two of them stood there—shoulder to shoulder in defiance, in fury—and I was trapped in the eye of it.
The walls felt smaller. The floor felt thinner. The shadows seemed to shift with every breath Hades took.
I swallowed hard, my voice barely finding a way out. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
It came out quieter than I wanted. Weaker.
But it was the truth.
Still, neither of them moved. Neither of them blinked.
Because this wasn’t about me anymore.
It was about power.
Possession.
And the terrifying realization that I was standing between two men willing to tear each other apart?—
One to protect me.
The other to keep me.
The air shifted.
Thick. Suffocating.
Like a storm pressing down on the roof, waiting to crack the house open.
Hades stood there—my husband—cut from fury and shadow, the low light clinging to the sharp lines of his body like armor. His eyes locked on me, then Cliff, and something inside them darkened.
“Bringing men into my house has consequences,” he said, voice calm. Too calm.
Each word slid like a blade across my skin.
“Cliff is my best friend!” I snapped, the words bursting out of me, fire rising to meet ice.
