Color to my gray.
And that was the fucking problem.
Because every instinct in me screamed to lock her away. To guard her. Toownher.
I couldn’t stop looking at her. Couldn’t stop memorizing her face. It wasn’t the polished lipstick-slicked version of her I was attracted to, butthisone. The girl who was barefaced, tear-streaked, and soft.
Untouched in all the ways that mattered.
I should’ve let her go the second I saw that. Should’ve cut her loose the way I’d done with every other fragile thing that came near me.
But I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t.
Because somewhere in the middle of her story—while she had been twisting her fingers in my shirt and whispering about honoring her sister’s memory by living her future for her—I’d felt something give inside me. Something deep. Something I hadn’t ever let surface.
And that was when I’d known.
It was when she was telling that quiet, tragic story that the truth of her—the true essence of Lacey—had been revealed to me with a primal force.
She was Persephone.
Pure spring caught in the harsh reality of my dark domain.
And I?
I was Hades.
King of an underworld forged not of myth but of concrete and blood.
I knew, in the gut-wrenching way only a man like me could, that what I was about to do was wrong. I knew every fiber of her being would scream against the chains I hadn’t even yet forged—but I couldn’t stop the inevitable.
I would make her mine.
My craving consumed me—an overwhelming longing that defied logic, morality, and every rule I lived by. Everything about it screamedviolation. But as I watched her, seeing the fragile strength beneath the pain, theabsolute virginityof her soul laid bare…
A hunger I had never even known existed devoured me.
I couldn’t stop.
I wouldn’t.
Because now that I knew who Lacey Grace Oakley really was?
There wasn’t a force on this goddamn planet that would stop me from protecting her.
Her cheek shifted against my chest, and her fingers grazed the chain around my neck where my henley had slipped open at the collar. She gently pulled the pendant out and studied it.
“Why a wolf?” she asked as it glinted in the firelight.
I looked down at the small white-gold wolf frozen mid-howl. “I’ve had it since I was a kid. It’s a part of a pair.”
She glanced up at me, curiosity sparking in her eyes. “Where’s the other one?”
“Somewhere safe,” I said softly. I wasn’t ready to tell her about Anastasia. Not yet.
Her thumb brushed over the wolf’s muzzle. “It suits you.”
I huffed a dark, quiet laugh. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a reminder of what I am.” My gaze held hers. “Wolves are predators; they guard their own fiercely.”
