The helplessness in her voice mirrored the twisting knot in my own gut. I was the Alpha of House Zeus, accustomed to commanding the sky, yet here, I felt utterly powerless. I had political alliances, vast wealth, and the ability to level a city with a thought. But none of it could fix the broken wiring in Andromeda’s mind.
My hand clenched into a fist, sparks jumping between my knuckles. I forced them down, grounding the energy. Iremembered the hospital waiting room, the accusing stares of the men who had raised her.
“They’ll never let us come to the Heraion,”Robert had spat, his face red with grief and fury.
Elias had looked at me with the weary resignation of a man who knew the cruelty of the Olympians well.“It’s up to you and Helena now, Stormwright. Help her.”
The memory burned hotter than the lightning. I couldn’t disappoint them. More importantly, I couldn’t disappoint Andie.
“Show me,” I told Helena. “Take me to the orchards.”
The ancient, gnarled branches of the orchard cast skeletal shadows across the grass. It was a peaceful place, deceptive in its tranquility, masking the turmoil of the woman hiding within it.
Helena stopped at the edge of the grove, her hand tightening on her skirts. “It’s better if we keep our distance,” she said, her voice strained. “She’s always been extra hostile to me. The curse makes her see my protection as a cage.”
Cassandra nodded, her expression grim. “Good luck, Lord Stormwright.”
I left them behind, stepping into the rows of trees alone. The air here was thicker, crackling with electricity that didn’t belong to the storm. As I moved deeper, her scent hit me. But it was warped now. Underneath the delicate fragrance of white tea and pomegranate lay something sharp and metallic, a poisonous undercurrent.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a traitorous, frantic rhythm. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but the primal alertness of a predator entering the territory of something far more dangerous.
A rustle sounded above me. I looked up just as a figure dropped from the canopy.
Andie landed lightly on the balls of her feet, catlike and wild. She was barefoot, her designer clothes replaced by a simple white tunic. In her hand, she clutched a half-eaten apple.
“So you finally deigned to show up,” she sneered, her eyes flashing with a terrifying, unrecognizable light. It was the righteous, scathing rage of a goddess scorned. “No longer busy with all of your mistresses?”
I stopped, holding my hands out to show I was unarmed. “I don’t have any mistresses, Andie. There’s only one woman I want. But you already know that.”
Andie laughed. She drew her arm back and hurled the apple core at me. It struck my chest with surprising force, leaving a wet stain on my shirt.
“Liar,” she hissed. Her lips were pink and slick with apple juice, and the vivid burst of color sent a spike of pure lust straight to my groin. I hated myself for it. I hated that even now, seeing her mind fracturing under the weight of my House’s legacy, I wanted to cross the distance, lick the juice from her mouth, and claim her right there in the dirt.
“Do you think I don’t know what House Zeus is?” she demanded, pacing like a caged tiger. “What your father does to every woman he touches?”
“I am not my father,” I said, the denial a worn-out prayer I had repeated my whole life.
Andie stopped pacing. She tilted her head, her gaze piercing through me, seeing the monster I was trying to keep chained.
“No,” she said softly, “but maybe you should be. Maybe then, you’d leave me alone.”
The words echoed the taunts of Orion Maris, the accusations of her fathers, and everything I’d been telling myself for months. And the worst part was I wasn’t sure if it was the madness speaking or the only moment of clarity she had left.
Her mood shifted with the terrifying speed of a squall line breaking over the coast. The righteous fury vanished from her face, replaced instantly by a predatory allure more frightening than her rage. She took a slow, deliberate step toward me.
“Then again,” she purred, her voice dropping an octave. “Maybe that’s what you want. You didn’t come here to talk, did you?” She tilted her head, her eyes dark and glassy. “If I let you fuck me… will I be free? Is that the price of admission to my own mind?”
I took a sharp step back, my heel catching on a tree root. “Andie, no. Not like this.”
She matched my retreat with an advance, stalking me like a panther cornering wounded prey. “Why not? Afraid my mother is watching?” She gestured vaguely toward the distant temple columns. “Let her. She chose this for herself. She chose to be a spectator to her own misery, just like she chose to let me rot here.”
I looked at her and felt a wave of self-loathing so potent it nearly brought me to my knees. I was disgusting. I was the architect of this madness. But as I watched her trembling hands and the frantic, dilated pupils, a colder, sharper realization cut through the guilt.
My hesitation wasn’t noble. It was vanity. I was trying to keep my hands clean while she was drowning in the storm I had created. She wasn’t in heat, but the curse was hacking her biology just the same. It was screaming for a resolution that only I could provide.
She didn’t need a debate, and she certainly didn’t need a gentleman. She needed an anchor. She needed the very thing that was poisoning her to become the antidote. A temporaryclaiming mark wouldn’t fix everything, but it would ground the lightning thrashing inside her skull.
I stopped moving backward. I let the static rise to the surface, allowing the Alpha nature I usually kept on a leash to take the reins.