Page 45 of Hades

“Well, as long as you don’t kidnap Persephone and make her your wife, all should be good,” I joke.

Hades’ lips quirk. “I don’t plan on kidnapping anyone.”

“Are you sure?” I tease, making everyone laugh.

As the conversation shifts once again, Hades relaxes next to me. He reaches behind me, his hand squeezing my shoulder once. I hate to admit how good that made me feel. That he was saying thank you in his own way for helping divert the topic from him.

I’m not quite sure where things between Hades and me stand. We aren’t quite friends, but we aren’t enemies. The man still drives me fucking crazy, but at the same time, I feel protective of him. We’ve only been around his former brothers for a few hours, and I can tell it’s already cost him something he won’t be able to get back. Not for a long time, and I fucking hate it.

Right there at the table, surrounded by a bunch of men, I decide that if Hades needs someone to watch his back, it will be me. I mean, it’s the least I can do with the way he’s protected me.

Hades looks over at me and frowns.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs.

“I’m good.”

He doesn’t need to know that I’ve decided if anyone’s going to drag the king of the underworld anywhere, it’s going to be me.

No, he doesn’t need to know that at all.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hades

With a key Reaper gave me, I let myself into Mav’s apartment and wait for him to show. Walking over to the couch, I sit down and rub my hands over my face.

I’m alone for the first time in what feels like forever. Sitting in the silence, something I used to do often, feels wrong. Almost as if I’m forgetting something.

Or someone.

My mind drifts to Evelyn, something it does more and more nowadays. I don’t know what happened or when exactly it happened, but it feels like things have shifted between us. I don’t tease her as much, hoping to get a rise out of her. At least not in a bad way. She doesn’t bite my head off every chance she gets. It’s like we have a better understanding of each other now than we ever did before.

Evelyn’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know. She fully listens to her patients and their concerns before doing everything in her power to help them. Anytime the club calls for help, she jumps. No matter how tired she is or how much her feet hurt, she goes. It’s clear as day that she loves all of the brothers and their women as if they are family.

What the woman doesn’t do is take time to herself. To fill her own cup. I swear if it wasn’t for me, half the time she would face-plant into her bed without changing or eating after getting off a shift.

I can’t even deny at this point that I like what I see. Not just physically, because fuck me, is she gorgeous, but also who she is as a person.

I don’t deserve a woman like Evelyn Kingston, but goddamn do I want to. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want her, which is something new for me. I’ve never thought twice about a woman, let alone thought about coming back for seconds and thirds. Everything with them has always been transactional. I’ve always made it known that there would be no happily ever afters. Yet something about Evelyn makes me want to take the chance, even though I’ve never had even a taste.

You’re fucking losing it, man.

“You good?”

My body tenses, and I look over and watch as Mav walks in, shutting the door behind him.

Jesus Christ, I was so wrapped up in thoughts of her that I didn’t even hear him slide the key into the lock.

“Hades?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

I shake my head. “I’m good. How was it?”

He studies me as he takes a seat across from me.

“It was fine. A normal first day at a place like that. I’ll tell you one thing, though, the people who work there either think that the man hangs from the moon or they are tight-lipped. There is no in between. It will be a while before they all relax enough to talk openly in front of me,” Mav says after a minute.

I nod. “You’ll wear them down.”