Her mouth opened with rage. Gaping at me, the human side of her face twitched.
I closed my eyes and grimaced. No strike came, though. I wasn’t destroyed for my defiance. No lightning bolt struck me in the head.
When I cracked open an eye, I found Hel watching me with cold curiosity. That was the only way to explain her narrowed eyes and one lifted brow.
“That beast will never be sated. He is like Loki’s misbegotten child, Fenrir. Given the chance, he will unwittingly gorge until there is nothing left. Gluttony is a sin in that self-obsessed divinity’s religion, is it not?”
Was she talking about God? I shook myself. That wasn’t important. Hel had asked me to kill a friend. She might be a goddess, but there was no way that I was going to do as she asked.
I would find another way. All of my friends had defied fate, one way or another. I would break the fabric and re-weave it myself if I had to. There was nothing in this world that would make me hurt Maddox.
A thought occurred to me. When I opened my mouth to voice my alternative, the cavern around me vanished. I plummeted again.
God damn it.
I hit my own body like a cannonball. I shot upright and collided with Maddox’s head. He reared back and grimaced. I clutched my head in pain. A dull throb spread across my skull. Maddox recovered before I could.
“What happened? Where were you? You passed out after throwing yourself at me. I was…I was afraid.”
The events that led up to my abduction came back to me. The woman’s ghost had been here. She’d been screaming at Maddox. I put a hand on his chest and shoved him aside to look for the ghost. She wasn’t here, though.
And my hand was on Maddox’s chest. His warmth suffused me. It chased away the cold anger that Hel had conjured within me. I let myself fall back onto Maddox’s bed, but I didn’t take my hand off his chest.
He absentmindedly covered my hand with his own. Concern still etched his face with shadows. There was no way that I would hurt him. I would find another way. Maybe Hel had every right to be afraid of him just because he was the first of his kind, and the unknown could lead to disastrous events if we didn’t tread carefully.
I would be here to guide him, though. Maddox wouldn’t become a threat to anyone.
Maddox lowered his voice until it was soft and husky, though I heard the gentle wobble in it. “Where did you go? Are you all right?”
I closed my fist in his shirt and pulled him onto me. He let me. The man carefully kept most of his weight from crushing me as he curled around me.
Hel claimed that the fabric of reality was coming undone so long as Maddox was alive. I’d seen the results with my own two eyes. Portals to the afterlife wouldn’t open for me. Corrupted spirits were left lingering in this world too long.
I didn’t want to believe that could be Maddox’s fault, though. How could he have done any of that?
“I’m fine.” It was all I could say.
How could I tell Maddox that Hel, my great-something grandmother, wanted him dead for no reason other than he existed when he shouldn’t? There was no way to say that gently. I could already tell that he was frustrated with his beast. The question of whether or not he killed anyone still hung in the air, too.
I wanted to believe that he hadn’t. There was no way the man I knew would hurt anyone, even if he was struggling with control over his beast. The wolf in him was not a cruel creature. I’d seen it in action before. Maddox had a kind beast.
I ran my hand along his back as he held me tight. We clung to one another in the dark moment of the night, where the world outside no longer mattered. It was only us here. Everything else could wait.
Even if I knew time would catch up to us, I wanted to linger here as long as I could. I would fight the rising of the sun and the job that would steal Maddox away from me. All so I could stay here with him.