Dionysus woke many hours later to Ariadne in his arms, and he immediately stiffened.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just his dick that was surprised, but his brain too.
He’d expected her to be gone by morning, even though she’d asked to stay a little longer last night. He’d told himself not to get too excited about that request, just like he’d decided he didn’t care about her reasons for wanting to have sex with him. She’d been through some pretty traumatic things in the last twenty-four hours. Fuck, her whole life was a tragedy.
She was just seeking comfort.
And he was fucked up enough to give it.
He repeated that to himself over and over, hoping that if he thought it enough times, it would stop his heart from racing when he looked at her and keep it from breaking when she decided he was her biggest mistake.
“Ari?” He shook her gently to rouse her.
“Hmm?”
“I think you… I mean, I’m not sure…but your sister might be worried.”
There was a pause, and while he couldn’t see her face, he imagined the reality of last night was settling in. He even leaned back a little so she wouldn’t hit him in the face when she jerked up and jumped from his bed in complete shame.
Except that she didn’t do that at all.
She rolled over to face him, looking sleepy and content. She even smiled. This had been part of his dreams for a while, and now that it was real, he hated the alarm going off in his head that told him to be cautious.
“Hi,” she said.
He took a moment to overcome the urge to narrow his eyes and ask her what was wrong, which would inevitably lead to some kind of fight. Then he would have only himself to blame for ruining the best morning of his life.
He swallowed the suspicion.
“Hi,” he said. “How did you sleep?”
“Fine,” she said. “You?”
He nodded.
She frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I said yes.”
“You didn’t say anything,” she said. “You just nodded.”
“I realize I’m not well-versed in mortal customs, but I believe that means yes.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you just admit something’s wrong?”
“Nothing is fucking wrong, Ari,” Dionysus said. “Just leave it alone, gods-dammit.”
Fuck, he should have just led with his initial question.
“So there is something wrong—”
“Why did you sleep with me?”
If she was going to insist, he might as well ask.
She blinked, surprised, and closed her mouth before answering, “Because I wanted to. Why do you think I slept with you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Dionysus.” She spoke his name like a command.
“You said you wanted to thank me.”
“Because I am grateful for what you did,” she said.
“I’m not sure I like when you say that,” he said.
Her brows lowered. “What?”
He averted his eyes. “I’m not sure I like when you kiss me or fuck me and tell me you’re grateful.”
“You don’t like it…but you fucked me anyway?”
Her tone set him on edge. It was full of rage, but that was okay, because he could match it.
“I fucked you because I wanted you,” he said. “I fucked you because I like you. Because I’d like to fall in love with you, but I don’t fucking trust you, and it has nothing to do with Theseus and everything to do with the fact that you regret me every time you have me.”
A strained silence followed his words. Now that they were out, he wasn’t sure why he had said them at all.
Beside him, Ariadne was still. She wasn’t looking at him either. She’d turned her face away and was staring straight ahead. After a few seconds, she threw off the blankets and scrambled out of bed.
“Ari—” Dionysus said, doing the same.
She was at the door when she whirled to face him.
“You think I regret you?” she asked.
“You said so!” He inched toward her. “And even if you hadn’t, I would know.”
“You would know? Can you read minds? Is that another power you failed to tell me about?”
Dionysus ground his teeth. “Every time we have sex, you distance yourself.”
“We’ve had sex twice!” she seethed.
“And when we came back from the island, you ran.”
“I didn’t run. I’m here, aren’t I?”
He swallowed, and when he didn’t say anything, Ariadne shook her head, lifting her arms in a frustrated shrug. She turned to the door.
“So you’re going to run now?”
She froze. His heart beat hard in his chest as he waited for her to decide, and finally, she turned to face him with such fire in her eyes, it ignited the one smoldering in the pit of his stomach.
“Fuck you.”
He thought she would leave then, but instead, she closed the distance between them, and then her mouth was on his and her arms around his neck. Dionysus drove her back into the door and lifted her into his arms. His arousal pressed into her naked flesh, and then he was inside her again. He paused for a moment, unmoving, his forehead resting against hers.
There was a part of him that questioned what they were doing and if it was right. Was this just some challenge Ariadne wished to win?
He felt her hand splay across his chest, and his words built up in his throat as she whispered, “I don’t know what you want from me.”
He swallowed hard and then drew back to look into her eyes as he answered, “I just want more of you.”
Once the words were spoken, he couldn’t take them back, and the only reason he would want to was that it had just now occurred to him that maybe she had nothing more to give at this very moment. If that was the case, he would accept anything, take anything.
What she offered was her lips and her tongue as she kissed him again. It sparked some kind of frenzy inside him, a thing he could not take control of. His hands bit into her skin as he held her pinned against the door. Each thrust seemed to steal the breath from her lungs, yet he could not get deep enough.
He peeled her away from the wall and tumbled into bed, hips grinding and thrusting, and she took it all, her nails scraping along his back and digging into his ass, pulling him closer, pushing him harder. Just when the pressure began to build inside him, his door opened, and it felt like everything happened at once.
Phaedra stood there looking horrified, and he froze.
“Oh my gods,” she said. “I am so sorry!”
“Phaedra!” Ariadne called, pushing against Dionysus’s chest. “Fuck.”
She didn’t even look at him as she pulled away and hurried after her sister.
A half hour later, Dionysus was dressed, but he hesitated to leave his room.
It was ridiculous given that this was his house, yet he could not help feeling anxious about what he would find once he left, and it had nothing to do with Phaedra walking in on them. Today, he would have to face the reality of everything that had happened and plan for Theseus’s inevitable retaliation.
The demigod was not stupid. He did not need evidence to connect Ariadne to Phaedra’s disappearance. He did not need evidence to know that Dionysus had helped her, which meant everyone associated with him was now in danger. The only thing working in his favor was that the refuge and the tunnels that led there were secret.
Finally, Dionysus left his room.
He was hoping that Ariadne would be in the living room so he could speak to her about today’s plan, but she was not there. He did find the television on and the baby sleeping in a bassinet that the maenads had brought the day before along with a fuck ton of other items.
Dionysus inched closer to the crib, peering down at the child who was swaddled tightly, his head covered with a cap. He looked different from yesterday. Less alien.
“For someone so small, you breathe really loud,” Dionysus said in a hushed tone. He leaned closer. “At least you are cute.”
He heard a sharp intake of breath, and his head snapped to the left. Phaedra had returned to the room. Dionysus straightened.
“My Lord,” she said, bowing her head.
The title felt strange. He did not hear it often, as it was mostly reserved for Olympians.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” she said.
An awkward silence followed. Dionysus did not know what to say. His introduction to Phaedra was an abduction, and this morning, she’d caught him fucking her sister. He had a feeling it would take a while for them to become friends.
“Is Ari—” He started to speak when Phaedra did.
“Do you pay my sister for sex?” she asked.
Dionysus’s mouth fell open, shocked by her question. “What?”
“Do you pay my sister for sex?” she asked again, her gaze unwavering. He wanted to ask if everyone in her family had that same piercing stare. Gods, it was unnerving.
“No,” he said, and when she continued to stare, he added, “Is it that hard to believe she chose me?”
Finally, Phaedra dropped her gaze and approached slowly. “It’s what Theseus told me,” she said. “That Ariadne had turned to prostitution. She showed me pictures of you with her in the pleasure district.”
“That is not what we were doing in the pleasure district.”
Mostly.
Phaedra was quiet, her gaze focused on her son.
“I’m not sure what makes me feel worse,” she said. “That my husband lied to me…or that I believed him.”
“Do not feel guilty for what he made you believe,” said Dionysus.
Phaedra was quiet, but after a moment, she spoke in a voice so low, Dionysus did not think her words were meant for him.
“I just don’t understand,” she said.
He could relate, in a way. He had often tried to understand Hera’s hatred toward him, but more than that, he had witnessed other women attempt to make sense of the very thing Phaedra was now.
“You do not have to understand today,” he said.
It was likely she never would, but he also wasn’t going to say that today either.
Then he caught something from the corner of his eye, and his gaze shifted to Theseus on television.
“What the fuck?”
Dionysus snatched the remote from the coffee table and turned up the volume. Phaedra turned, and her hand clamped down over her mouth at the sight of her husband on the screen. A red banner at the bottom announced the reason for his emergency press conference: WIFE AND SON ABDUCTED FROM HOSPITAL.
“Today I had hoped to stand here beside my beautiful and loving wife, Phaedra, and announce the birth of my son, but instead of celebrating our happy news, I am here to plead with you. My wife and our son were taken from Asclepius Community Hospital by a god.”
He paused, and Dionysus clenched his teeth. He had to admit, the demigod had mastered the role of tortured husband and father. He looked absolutely devastated.
“Many of you know the battle I have led in opposition to the Olympians. I believe this is a cruel attempt at revenge and likely the most extreme example of why we can no longer kneel to the archaic rule of the gods. Today I am here to plead for the return of my wife and child but also for the lives of every mortal on this earth. We do not deserve this treatment. Let us remind the gods of our power and cease our worship…today.”
He paused and took a shuddering breath, looking directly into the camera.
“And to the god who stole my family, I am coming for you.”
It took Dionysus a moment to get his thoughts in order. They were racing to a million things at once. While he’d expected Theseus to retaliate, he had not quite expected the demigod to essentially declare war against the gods, and that fact had worried him to a degree he could not even put into words.
What did Theseus have planned that had given him such confidence?
The door to Ariadne’s room opened, and she stepped out, freshly showered and dressed. When she saw them, she halted, hesitating.
“What’s going on?”
He started to speak when there was a knock at his door, and Ariadne stood just feet away from it. She met Dionysus’s gaze.
He spoke quietly and quickly.
“Downstairs, there is a cellar with wine stored in rounded alcoves. Once you enter, count until you reach the seventh. Touch the plaque on the wall. It will reveal the entrance to a tunnel. Get inside, close the fucking door, and don’t look back. It will take you all the way to Bakkheia. Got it?”
She nodded, and then the doorbell rang, and his heart froze in his chest as the baby began to cry.
Fuck.
“Go,” he ordered.
Phaedra picked up the child and started toward the stairs, but Ariadne hesitated. Dionysus summoned his thyrsus.
“I said go!”
He didn’t like the way she was looking at him, like it was the last time they might see each other, but she went, disappearing down the hallway just as he felt the ground tremble, and he realized too late that his attention should not have been on the door but the windows.
They exploded with a power that knocked Dionysus to the ground. He was immediately aware of how badly he hurt, and he knew his body was riddled with glass and pieces of debris.
He groaned as he got to his feet, wincing as he put pressure on his left arm, which was impaled with a large splinter of wood.
Double fuck.
Dionysus tried to pull the fragment free, but before he could, he felt a new pain—a sharp stab to his back. He screamed and then whirled to face his attacker, lifting his weapon, only to discover no one was there.
They must have teleported, he thought, except that if that were the case, he would have sensed it. The pain from the wound on his back pulsed throughout his entire body. He was not used to feeling this kind of aftershock. He typically healed without thought, except right now, he didn’t seem to be healing even with thought.
Dionysus breathed heavily through the pain, his teeth clenched, glaring at the burning and smoky remains of his living room. He tightened the hold on his thyrsus, and then he felt it—a subtle change in the air—and he raised his thyrsus to block the attack, surprised when he felt the impact of a blade against it.
His eyes widened as he realized his opponent was invisible.
A second blow came, and he felt the blade sink into his stomach and then a little farther before his attacker shoved him down. Years of healing had prevented him from ever feeling this kind of pain.
He felt so hot and could barely breathe as he watched a man appear before him, having removed Hades’s Helm of Darkness. He was a demigod, young with curly hair. If Dionysus had to guess, he would say a son of Zeus.
Dionysus could not speak, and the man smirked.
“I thought you should know the face of the man who took your life.”
Dionysus took two great breaths, hoping he might clear his mind enough to summon his magic, but then the demigod stiffened as something struck the side of his head. He crumpled to reveal Ariadne. She was holding a bronze statue, which she slammed down on the man’s head again before leaving it and coming to his side.
“You have to get up,” she said, her eyes gleaming with just as much determination as the command in her voice.
He nodded and gritted his teeth hard as he sat up and got shakily to his feet. Ariadne anchored one of her arms around his waist. They staggered down the hall and stairs, into the basement, where he collapsed despite Ariadne’s attempts to keep him on his feet.
She fell with him but quickly got up and began pulling on his arm. “You have to get up! Dionysus! Get up!”
“Ari,” he said, his voice barely audible.
Her eyes began to water.
“I can get help! Just tell me what to do!”
But they were interrupted by pounding on the steps, and when Dionysus turned his head, he saw that the demigod had risen, his face covered in blood but healed. Instead of running, Ariadne turned fully toward him, intent on fighting, but despite her capabilities, there was no way she could win.
That thought brought with it a sense of hysteria, a stirring in the pit of his stomach that rang of madness. He latched on to that, fueled it as his magic roared to life, and with it, he reached for Ariadne and Phaedra and the baby and teleported. In the process, everything went dark.
