The magnificent creature dipped her head toward me and whined low in her throat, a sound of fierce affection. She remembered me, just as I remembered her.
And on her back sat Nero.
The God of Death. My mate. My king.
He wore black armor streaked with blood that wasn’t his own. An obsidian sword was in his hand, trailing shadow and hellfire even here where magic shouldn’t work. His green eyes blazed with fury as he swept the battlefield.
The Mortis Bloom had worked. It had cured him.
“You came for me,” I whispered.
Joy sang through me, pumping new strength into me in a violent, bright current. I leapt, burying my blade in the throat of a spiked beast.
Dante swept down in his archdemon form, his skin like cracking magma, horns protruding from his skull. He wielded a battle-ax fit to split mountains. His bellow shuddered through the ground.
Orren charged in his hellhound shape—three heads, each a boulder of snarling fury, eyes like live coals, fangs dripping hellfire, and jagged wings of fiery nightmare.
They hit the monsters like a tidal wave of destruction.
Dante’s ax carved through three creatures in one swing. Orren’s jaws closed around a monster’s torso and ripped it apart. Nero dropped from Belladonna and moved through the horde like death incarnate, his sword piercing hearts with brutal efficiency.
But Nero wasn’t focusing on the monsters.
He was looking at Sebastian, his expression promising murder.
Nero charged straight for him, sword raised. He meant to end the God of Sun here and now.
“No!” I threw myself between them. “Nero, don’t!”
He wrenched his strike aside at the last instant. The blade halted inches from my face.
“He saved me,” I said, grabbing Nero’s arm. “Sebastian saved my life.”
Nero’s jaw clenched. His eyes burned into Sebastian with pure venom. But he lowered his sword.
The monsters swarmed us. Even with reinforcements, we were outnumbered. These creatures fed on gods. And none of us could wield our full power here.
“We need to work together,” I said. “Or we’re all dead.”
“Never thought I’d fight beside the fucking playboy,” Dante said in disgust, his voice deeper and more guttural in this form.
No one argued. Because I was right, and they had to put their differences aside.
We formed a defensive circle—Nero, Sebastian, Dante, and me on the ground with Orren wreaking aerial havoc, spearing into the largest of the Fae horrors.
Nero carved through the ranks with savage efficiency. Each strike was death. Each step carved our path to escape.
A massive creature—a bear-spider hybrid with too many legs and mouths—charged. Orren’s middle head caught it, jaws clamping. The thing shrieked. He shook it like a rag and hurled it into a cluster of smaller beasts.
Sebastian and I guarded Nero’s flanks. I moved on adrenaline alone, my body pushed far beyond its limits. But seeing Nero, knowing he had come for me—it forged a second wind from sheer will.
Finally, Nero carved a clearing through the horde—a narrow path to survival.
He whistled. Belladonna answered, diving toward us, her hooves striking sparks from the volcanic rock. Then she knelt before me, making it easier to mount.
“Donna has never knelt for anyone,” Dante murmured.
I’d always had an affinity for plants and animals, but Belladonna had loved me long before I became Hades’s queen.
