Helena closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the grieving mother had vanished. The matriarch of House Hera stood in her place.
“The Heraion is now under full lockdown,” she said coldly. “All Alphas will leave Samos immediately. No exceptions.”
Immediately, panic flooded every inch of my body. “Helena, this will not help her. You know it won’t.”
“Perhaps not. But we have no other way. Not right now.”
Priestesses were already rushing into the room, surrounding Andie’s unconscious body. “Prepare the Adyton,” Helena ordered. “She’ll be moved as soon as Healer Reed clears her for transport. No one enters without my express permission. No one.”
The Adyton. The holiest part of the Heraion. The most restricted. A place no Alpha had entered in living memory.
I stopped walking.
Through the doorway, I could see them lifting Andie onto a stretcher. Helena held her daughter’s hand. Cassandra walked alongside, monitoring her vital signs. The priestesses formed a protective ring around them.
They carried her away from me.
“Alexander,” my father said, “there’s nothing more you can do.”
I watched until they turned a corner and disappeared. Until the last flash of Andie’s pale arm vanished from sight. Until I couldn’t even hear their footsteps anymore.
Once again, I had failed her. And I was terrified I’d never see her again.
17
The Shadows Return
Alexander
The New York skyline should have felt like home.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the jet’s window and watched the city grow larger beneath us. Twelve hours since Samos. Twelve hours of my father’s silence, of stewing in my own guilt and inadequacy.
I hadn’t changed clothes. Andie’s heat-scent still clung to my shirt. I couldn’t bring myself to wash her off my skin. Zeus only knew when I’d get to smell her again.
“We’re beginning our descent,” the pilot announced through the intercom. “Touchdown at Teterboro in fifteen minutes, Lord Stormwright. The chopper is standing by.”
Argos stirred in the seat across from me. He’d slept for most of the flight, or pretended to. Now his eyes found mine with the calculating weight I’d grown up dreading.
“You’ll need to pull yourself together before we land.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re covered in dried blood, and you smell like an Omega in heat.” He didn’t soften the words. “The staff will talk. The Council has ears everywhere.”
I looked down at my arms. The gouges from Andie’s nails had scabbed over, dark lines crossing my forearms like a map of her desperation. “Let them talk.”
“Alexander.” My father’s voice sharpened. “Self-pity is a luxury we cannot afford. Whatever happened on Samos, you are still the head of House Zeus. Act like it.”
The jet banked toward the New Jersey runway. Somewhere across the river, in a building of glass and steel that bore our family name, my life waited to resume its normal shape. Meetings. Politics. The endless chess game of Olympian power.
None of it mattered. Not anymore.
But I straightened in my seat anyway. I rolled down my sleeves to cover the wounds. I composed my face into something that might pass for control.
My father nodded once, satisfied.
Twenty minutes later, the jet's tires hit the tarmac. We barely broke stride, walking straight from the cabin steps through the biting wind to the waiting House helicopter. Soon we were airborne again, the rhythmic thrum of the blades vibrating through the cabin as Manhattan tilted beneath us.