I slid off the examination table and stepped directly into Andie’s path.
Her eyes snapped to me, wild and unseeing. The heat around her intensified, making sweat bead on my bare chest.
“Andie, enough,” I said. I let my Alpha voice rise, flooding every single word with a command. “You want me? Here I am.”
She froze, her expression caught between a sneer and raw desire. Then her lips curled, and she hissed at me. “I’ll never want you.”
The words should have hurt. Maybe they did, somewhere beneath the layers of guilt and desperation I’d been carrying since the yacht. But I’d heard her claim me as hers just moments ago. I’d felt the possessive fury that flared when she saw another woman’s hands on me.
“You’re a liar.” I moved forward, closing the distance between us. “But that’s all right. I can drag the truth out of both of us.”
I grabbed her wrist—felt the jolt of connection, the way her pulse jumped beneath my fingers—and pulled her toward the door.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
She struggled, but I was stronger, and my Alpha command was still thrumming through the air. Her body wanted to obey even as her curse-twisted mind screamed in protest.
I dragged her out of the healing quarters, away from the terrified women. I couldn’t protect her from the suffocating wrongness of Hera’s Curse, but maybe I could reach whatever part of her was still real beneath the poison.
14
With Terrible Clarity
Andie
It was no secret to me that Alexander slept with other women. I’d always known it. From the very first moment, from our first time together on the yacht, I’d known I was only a joke to him.
Still, the fact that he’d come here, to Samos, and paraded himself in front of me with a woman I’d called my best friend was a whole new level of low. As he dragged me through the corridors of Heraion, I glared at his back, wondering what he was trying to prove.
He didn’t slow down until we reached my room. He pushed the door open with his free hand while keeping his iron grip on my wrist with the other. The hinges protested with a quiet groanas we crossed the threshold. He released me only once we were both inside, closing the door behind us.
The room smelled like me now. My scent was embedded in the sheets, in the pillows, in every fabric surface. The bed itself was a disaster, blankets twisted and bunched, pillows arranged in a careful cluster.
A nest. I’d started building a fucking nest.
Heat flooded my face as Alexander scanned the room before inevitably zeroing in on the bed. On the evidence of my Omega instincts betraying me.
“Get out,” I snarled at him, shaking with humiliation and rage. “I don’t want you here.”
He turned to face me fully, and I was confronted again with his bare chest. It was too easy for me to imagine Danae, Cassandra, and even my own mother touching him.
“Where do you want me then?” he asked, arching his brow as if completely unaffected. “With them?”
I saw red.
It was a pure, incandescent fury that whited out every rational thought. A sound ripped from my throat, and I launched myself at him.
My hands found his shoulders first, nails digging in as I shoved him backward. He just let me push him until his legs hit the edge of my bed.
When he collapsed on the mattress, I grabbed his face. I found his jaw rough with stubble, days of growth that scraped against my palm. He was unshaved. Unkempt. It was evidence that he’d been as wrecked by this as I had. Somehow, that made the fury burn hotter. He had no right to suffer when this was all his fault.
I dug my nails in, dragging them across his jaw and throat. His skin gave way beneath the pressure, thin lines of red welling up in the wake of my touch.
Blood.
The scent hit me then—copper and lightning and something uniquelyhim.It flooded my senses, drowning out everything else, making my body respond in ways that had nothing to do with anger.
I climbed onto the bed, onto him, straddling his lap. He just sat there looking up at me, his eyes holding no judgment. Only patience and acceptance for whatever violence I decided to inflict on him.