Our fathers didn’t know what they were doing when they handed us Athena Saint to be our pet.
But I’m fucking glad they did.
10
ATHENA
When I wake up, my mouth feels dry. It feels all too much like when I woke up in this bed after the kidnapping, and my heart starts to race the minute my eyes snap open, my hands clutching at the sheets. My first thought is to figure out what I’m wearing—a tank top and panties, from what I can tell, and I blink as I try to focus, to make sure that I’m really in my own room and not in some other place like that awful remote cabin where the kidnappers took me.
But it feels like my bed. It smells like my room. And as I blink slowly, everything coming into focus, I feel a rush of relief as I realize that it is, in fact, my room at the manor house.
It’s strange how oddly relieving it’s become to wake up in this room that was once the bane of my entire existence.
But then, as I glance around, I see something thatdoesn’tmake me feel relieved at all.
Jaxon, slumped in the wing chair, sleeping.
“What thefuckare you doing in here?” I’d been afraid my voice would crack when I spoke, but it rings clearly through the room, sharp like the snap of a whip. “Watching me sleep?”
Jaxon jerks awake with a grunt, sitting up. “Fuck, Athena! You’re awake, thank fucking god.”
“Yeah, I’m awake,” I growl, glaring at him. “And I want to know what you’re doing in my fucking room.”
“I was keeping an eye on you, making sure you were okay.”
“While you slept?”
“I dozed off for a minute. I’m sorry, I just—”
“Where’s Dean? Or Cayde?” I never would have thought I’d prefer them over Jaxon, but here we are. How the mighty have fallen and all of that.
“Asleep, I think. They had a hell of a time clearing out the party last night. Everyone couldn’t stop talking about--” Jaxon shrugs. “Well, you know.”
“You getting into a fucking fight and then me passing out in front of everyone? Yeah, I figured.” I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly exhausted all over again. “I don’t care about any of it. Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I need to go find them? And you still haven’t answered my first question.”
“I’m in here because I wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean that. Just like you really meant it when you said you came into my room that night because you heard me having a nightmare.” Jaxon says the last pointedly, and I frown at him.
“And the rest?”
“There was something in that drink. Who handed it to you?”
“I thought Dean did.” I rub a hand over my face, trying to remember the moment I’d taken the drink, but it all feels fuzzy. That in and of itself makes me feel like panicking—it’s all too close to how fuzzy my memories of that other night are, the one after the party. “But I guess not, if there was something in it. He wouldn’t have done that.” The certainty in my voice surprises me, but I know Dean that well now. And besides, he’d have had no reason to.
“It definitely wasn’t Dean. So you don’t know who it was?”
I shake my head. “No. Of course not. If I’d thought it was someone other than Dean, I wouldn’t have taken it. Not after—” I feel my throat close up just at the thought, and I can’t speak.
“I know.” Jaxon leans forward, watching me with eyes that look almost sad. “Nothing bad happened this time, Athena. Not really. You started to pass out and I caught you. And then we got you upstairs, and Cayde and Dean made sure that you got all of it out of your system. They made you throw up,” he clarifies, just in case I hadn’t completely understood what he meant.
A bit of the memory comes back then, the hard tile under my knees and the sensation of fingers in my mouth, my entire body cramping as I’d vomited up the drink. It’s a hazy memory still, but I can remember the sounds of the familiar voices too, and I wince as I realize what that means.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, and then louder. “So which one of you made me throw up?”
“Dean did the honors. I didn’t think you’d want me to do it. And Cayde was holding you.”
“Oh god.” I bury my face in my hands, not sure which is worse suddenly—the fact that I’d been drugged again at a party and the physical and emotional aftereffects of that, or that one of the guys I’m sleeping with had had to make me throw up while the other two held me and watched.
Some things are too humiliating to stand, and I’d thought that I’d come close to that already, with some of the things that the guys had done to me. But this might officially have crossed that line.