I had no choice.
“Bring it on,” I said.Bitches, let’s play.
“We’ll let you walk away with one mate. Only one,” Hades said with a cruel smile. “The other three will spend the rest of their lives in the Eternal Prison in your stead.”
My mates all tensed around me, waiting for me to choose one of them above the others.
“No,” I said, barely containing my rage. “I won’t choose.”
Hades sighed. “How about we make a compromise, just this one time? You take three with you, but leave one behind. I’ll even make this easy for you. If you leave Héctor behind and let him go, I’ll take my son with me, and all of you walk away from Tartarus.”
I swallowed and glanced up at Héctor. He looked right back at me, misery in his sapphire eyes. Then, a second later, he nodded, wanting me to take the deal.
That was the best we could get from the gods. Hades was giving me an easy way out. All I needed to do was to abandon Héctor to his father, and the rest of my mates and I would walk away free. Héctor wouldn’t be imprisoned either. Hades might even make him immortal again. As the God of Death, he held that power.
Anyone would think that I’d be a fucking idiot to walk away from this offer.
But I was Marigold, and I was damn stubborn.
I had hopes that all my mates and I together could give back Héctor his immortality. We didn’t need anyone else. And I would never give up on him. I remembered those heartbreaking, bleak hours when I’d thought I’d lost my Héctor. Just thinking about eternal separation from him gutted me.
“Héctor is my soul,” I said. “I won’t lose him.”
“Then pick a mate who means less to you, and we’ll take it,” Hades said testily.
I bit my lip as silence prolonged, tension whipping the air. Everyone held their breath, waiting for me to choose. It was like the worst reality show humans had once been crazy about before the era of the Great Merge.
And now the gods and the Titans were enthralled with a show humans no longer remembered.
This had nothing to do with giving me an opportunity to prove my innocence. The gods just wanted the entertainment of my pain, and to break the bond I shared with my mates.
Maybe I should give them my version of the show, even though Dad had warned me not to take any deal the gods offered.
“Feel free to leave my son behind and take the others,” Ares offered, joining the play eagerly. “My ungrateful brat is a notorious playboy, a black sheep in the family. If you don’t want him to bring more women into the bed you share with all your other males, you would be wise to dump him now.”
The God of War wanted to bruise his son like that.
A low rumbling vibrated from Axel’s chest. He couldn’t speak, but he definitely didn’t want to be left behind. He’d always wanted me to choose him.
“Axel was my first crush,” I said. “I won’t leave him for the world.”
I stole a quick glance at him, and his golden eyes shone with gratitude and adoration for me. There was also wrath beneath his love for me. He wanted to kill the gods for putting me through this. Deeper than his anger, misery lurked in his heart at his father’s cruelty.
My mates’ dark emotions rocked my walls through our mating bond. They were devastated and furious that they couldn’t protect me from their fathers, and they’d been the most powerful males working the Earth. Rage kept building in all of them. Anytime, it could ram open the floodgate and shatter Zeus’s binding on them.
“So that leaves my bastard son and my brother’s,” Poseidon said. “Interesting. Zak was an unfeeling zombie for eons. Somehow he came alive in your bed. Or maybe he’s still the same, a bore. I think my king brother won’t mind bringing him to Olympus to discipline and reeducate him. As for my bastard son I hadn’t known existed, I could probably use him. At least he can carry things for me. So who’s it gonna be? Will you leave Zeus’s half-breed or mine? Pick now, demon spawn. Time’s running out.”
Cold rage rippled off Zak in spades, and Paxton pulled back his full lips, baring his teeth like a feral panther.
“Perhaps we should let our bastard sons have a say in the trial, too,” Zeus suggested.
The gods’ intention was clear as crystal now. They were working on tearing apart the sacred bond between my mates and me.
Zeus waved a hand to return the voices to my mates. “Be a hero. Any of you who step out and denounce the demon spawn will be absolved of all your sins and transgressions.”
Axel bellowed, “Fuck you! Get the fuck out of here and leave my mate alone!”
Héctor, Paxton, and Zak snarled like caged animals.