Page 133 of His Eternal Claim

My wife.

A shadow moves in my peripheral. The first thing I see is the raised gun, followed by the face of the woman, making my stomach churn.

Hannah hovers over me as rain drenches her red dress. Hair plastered to her face. Gun steady in her hand. Raised straight at me.

A coward.

Her expression is unreadable, almost calm like all those times when I found her in my Father’s study, when I kidnapped Selene, when we lost our child, when I lost everything.

It’s that infuriatingly calm expression that always irked me. She knew her games before; she knows them now too. I bare my teeth. Her eyes travel down my red-stained shirt to the phone. “Where is she?”

Hannah’s eyes flick to the tracker in my hand. Then back to me.

“Still worried about her. After everything she did?”

I push myself upright despite the burn in my shoulder.

“Where?”

Hannah takes a step back. Despite the fierceness in her eyes, her hand shakes. “She saw an opening, and she ran.”

Lightning flashes, and I see Hannah’s dark eyes. It always annoyed me how much Selene resembled her Mother. But that’s what it all is, the superficial resemblance, because my Selene will never hurt a fly. “Funny thing.” Her voice shakes in a whisper. “She never ran from me before.”

I step toward her, though blood drips down my fingers. “Tell me where she is.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.” My blood boils at her words. “She thinks you are a monster.”

“We both know she’s wrong and who the real monster is.”

“She doesn’t care.” Hannah lifts the gun higher to my head as I take a step toward her.

“Don’t.” She shakes but hides her fear behind that face. I step forward again until the gun presses against my forehead.

“Shoot me.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Do it.” I spit the blood at her feet. The rain feels fantastic against my face, but it’s doing a piss-poor job of washing the blood off beneath me. My blood. Messy, messy. “Because if my wife is hurt, I’ll hunt and haunt you for life, Hannah.”

“Your wife?!”

Her calm, icy façade shatters, and the bitch laughs. It’s a spectacular, screeching sound of someone who I can kill anytime, but what’s the fun in that? I wanna see her lose everything I did, and watch it burn, turn to ashes and wash away with this fucking rain.

“She was never supposed to be your wife, Zagreus! You ruined it. You ruined everything!”

A dark smile pulls at my mouth. There it is. That crack in the porcelain. I’ve been waiting years to hear it split.

“Everything?” I ask softly, feigning calm. “What exactly did I ruin, Hannah?”

Her chest rises sharply. “What did you not ruin, boy? Don’t fucking push it.”

“No?” I take another step. The barrel presses harder against my forehead. My fucking blood pools under my shoes. But all I can feel is rage.

Taciturnly and beautifully entangled with hers. But our rages are different, so fucking worlds apart, but only because of one person.

“Tell me, Hannah. You have the upper hand here; you can shoot me straight in the head whenever you feel like. So, isn’t it better if you give me what I want to hear?” Her eyes flash. “Or are you terrified that if you finally say it out loud, you’ll have to admit every ruin in our lives started with you?”

The gun shakes in Hannah’s hand. I love when her face twists into something uglier, mimicking a rabid dog. Like she can feel everything slipping through her fingers all over again. “Terrified of what?!” she screams into the storm. “Whatever I’ve done, I did it for love!”