“Don’t fucking touch her,” the shifter hisses, his eyes glinting with a strange, primordial energy.
Cerberus growls. “Boy…”
“I’m not a fucking boy.”
And then Everett shifts.
Oh my god.
He’s just as big and terrifying as his father—a three-headed beast, though Everett’s fur is a dark shade of blue streaked with white and gray.
I stand frozen, my feet glued to the ground and my breath caught in my throat. It feels like the world is closing in on me, the air thick with anger and fear.
Everett is going to fight his father.
For me.
Fuck.
“Everett!” I scream, taking an automatic step forward—quite stupidly, I might add.
I know it’ll be a horrible idea to get between the two of them, though Cerberus has yet to shift.
Rafe and Zaid each grab one of my arms and tug me back, while Krystian keeps his arrow locked on Cerberus’s side, though he doesn’t pull back the string. I don’t know if it’s because he’s afraid of what his arrows will do in the Underworld or if he’s terrified of accidentally killing Hades’s right-hand man.
“I won’t let you take her.” Everett’s voice is a low growl, barely recognizable as his.
He’s practically vibrating with fury. I know this rage—it’s familiar to me—but now it’s twisted and demented, honed from years of suppressed anger. This isn’t just about me. This is about him—him and his father.
Cerberus doesn’t hesitate. He shifts too, his hulking form rising up like a living shadow, his fur thick and dark, and his eyes glowing with an ancient malice. Everett’s and his father’s eyes are the same…but they’re not. One is filled with a protective kind of rage; the other with something far darker.
The ground trembles beneath their combined weight as they circle each other, snarling and snapping.
“You’re a fool, Everett,” Cerberus growls, his layered voice seeming to vibrate in my chest. “You always have been, but I assumed your training over the years would’ve changed you.”
Everett growls fiercely and stalks closer, his huge paws kicking up black rock and sooty dirt. “Fuck you.”
“She’s a reaper, son. She belongs to death, not to you.”
The words hit me like a slap, sending a wave of cold dread through me.
She belongs to death, not to you.
Belongs to death.
Oh…hell no. I belong to no one and nothing. Not ever again. Cerberus can take his assumptions and shove them right up his ass where they belong.
Everett lunges at Cerberus, snapping all three of his jaws, but Cerberus sidesteps easily. That doesn’t stop Everett, though, who pounces on his back with another guttural roar. They roll onto the ground, and I can’t tell who’s winning. The sound of their teeth grinding against each other is sickening, the kind of noise that makes my skin crawl.
My heart hammers in my chest, terror twisting my gut as I watch them fight.
Please, Everett. Please.
You don’t want to do this.
You don’t want to hurt your father.
“We need to get Thea the fuck out of here,” Krystian says, his eyes flicking in all directions rapidly.
