“Do you?”
I freeze. Even five years later, I know that voice. My gaze goes up, up, up, and there he is. The specter in more nightmares than I care to count. My boogeyman. Peter. He doesn’t look like he’s aged a day since I saw him last, his light brown hair still cut short on the sides and left longer on top. His blue eyes twinkle at me, filled with the kind of mean amusement that always comes before my pain. “Hey, baby.”
No words come. I open my mouth, but a strange wheezing sound emerges. Apparently he takes that as a sign, because he shifts his grip to my wrists and starts pulling me down the block. “Been a while.”
“Let go!”
“You know better. I’m just taking what I’m owed. And you owe me a lot, Tatiana.” Step by step, despite my best efforts, we start down the street in the opposite direction of where I’d wanted to go.
I can’t go with him. I know what happens if we get somewhere private. What I owe him. He didn’t kill me before, but he sure as fuck is going to now. Or worse. I can’t think about worse right now. I can’t think about anything. I dig in my heels, but he’s always been stronger than me. Even though my body is nowhere near the weak thing it was at sixteen, at eighteen, at twenty, he still doesn’t even seem to notice that I’m fighting him.
“Hey!”
A voice behind us, so familiar it makes me sag in relief. My breath sobs out. I twist and catch sight of Hercules wading through people behind us. His gaze lands on me and then on Peter, finally settling on where Peter’s hands grind the bones of my wrist together. Hercules’s eyes narrow. He’s a total cinnamon roll, but right now he looks like he might tear Peter apart with his bare hands. “Let her go.”
Peter looks down at me and chuckles. “You won’t always have friends with you, baby. See you soon.” He releases my wrists and melts into the crowd right as Hercules skids to a stop next to me.
Hercules goes down on one knee, completely ignoring how dirty the street must be, and examines my wrists. “Are you okay?”
Okay? I am so far from okay, I don’t know where to begin. I blink down at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Hades has his reasons for making this call, but it’s wrong to just toss you out without a parachute.” He gives me a sweet smile. “I was going to help you find a place and get you settled in.”
If he were anyone else, I’d accuse him of ulterior motives, but Hercules is one of those pure souls that defy explanation. He’s a legitimately good guy, and I still don’t quite understand how he and Hades and Meg ended up in a relationship that works. I guess it’s enough that it does.
My body finally understands the threat has passed, and I start shaking and can’t seem to stop. That was close. Too close. Not a single one of these strangers on the street even looked up from their phones long enough to realize they were witnessing an abduction. If Hercules wasn’t too pure for this world, Peter could have taken me wherever he wanted to.
He won’t stop. I knew it for truth even as I denied it to Hook, but there’s no room for that kind of denial now. He will not stop. He will keep coming for me. I wasn’t strong enough to stand against him on my own before.
I’m not strong enough now.
Hercules stands and pulls me into a hug. Part of me wants to fight him, but he’s big and strong and smells really good. For a moment, I can almost fool myself into thinking I’m safe.
I’m not, though. I’ll never be again.
Which means I have only one course of action left to me.
Chapter 4
Hook
“She’s here.”
I stare at Nigel for a full three seconds before speaking. “You’re going to have to elaborate, cousin. There are a lot of ‘she’s’ in my territory.”
Nigel crosses his arms over his chest. He’s built bulkier than I am, courtesy of his giant of a father, but we share our mothers’ coloring. I’ve been in this world long enough to know that family doesn’t mean shit unless you want it to, but I trust Nigel with my life. There are reasons he’s my second-in-command, and cryptic statements aren’t one of them. He relents before I do and snorts. “Short, curvy blonde. Mean as a fucking snake. You know exactly what she I’m talking about, so stop dicking around.”
Tatiana. Or, rather, Tink. That’s the name she’s been going under since she got out.
I look at the old clock above the door. “That took less time than I expected.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll pay up.” He digs his wallet out and passes me a hundred-dollar bill. “You going to keep gloating or you going to go get your woman?”