Eve
For a mont, nothing moved.
Not a blink.
Not a breath.
Even the Flux seed stunned into silence.
Then—
A sound split the air like a scream beneath the surface of the world.
It wasn't a growl.
It wasn't human.
It was the war between them—Hades and the thing inside him—breaking loose for a heartbeat of truth.
His hand trembled. Not from weakness. From refusal.
From restraint.
Blood poured freely now, but he didn't falter.
"You…" His voice fractured. The normal one.
He took a step toward .
"You are my wife," the Flux hissed through him.
"And you…" Hades choked, still gripping his eye, "are not hers to command."
He dropped to one knee with a grunt, breath stuttering as if he'd been stabbed.
A ripple of unease threaded through the council. Kael lurched forward instinctively but froze when Hades raised his free hand.
Not in surrender.
But in consent.
"So be it," he rasped. "Let it be written in blood and stone. If we are to bind by Fenrir's Chain…"
His eye blazed behind the veil of his palm.
"…then let her be free of . Of us."
A single tear escaped his visible eye.
But it wasn't water.
It was black. Like oil. Like grief solidified.
Cain turned to .
"It's done," he said quietly. "Your wish is marked."
Just then Hades released a blood curdling growl drenched in tar. All of them had tried to prove they did not fear what was happened to Hades. Others too stunned to speak.
The silence didn't last long.
It cracked—sharply—under the weight of instinct.
Chairs scraped back. Feet shifted. Growls began to build low in throats around the chamber.
Because now… they sensed it.
Not just the man.
The thing within him.
And no Alpha could sit still with that much volatility coiled in the room like a fuse already lit.
"Back," Montegue commanded, standing now. "Everyone."
Gallinti was already halfway up, claws unsheathing without thought. Silas had one hand behind his back—reaching for sothing. Kael was frozen, eyes wide, every muscle in his body screaming not to flinch. But his bond with Hades kept him rooted… just barely.
Only Cain remained unshaken, but his eyes were narrowed. Watching.
Waiting.
A vein bulged at Hades' temple. His breath hitched. And the blood from his palm no longer dripped—it stead.
That's when they truly saw it.
This wasn't pain.
This was a cage barely holding.
One twitch in the wrong direction—one emotion too deep—and the Flux would break through.
And yet… he didn't unleash it.
Hades—Alpha of Obsidian—was kneeling.
Voluntarily.
For a woman.
For .
And that terrified them more than any roar.
Because if he could fall to that madness and still remain aware enough to bow…
What did that make him?
What did it make ?
I still dared to love him, I could turn this all around and forgive... like I had always done.
A chill ghosted down my spine—phantom cold—like the echo of his tendrils still curled in my mind. I could feel it, even now. The way he'd reached inside once, fingers not of flesh but of thought, of power, of control, scraping out my mories with all the care of a butcher skinning truth from bone.
And yet…
My feet moved before my sense could catch them.
"Eve—don't!" Kael's voice cracked through the air like a whip.
But I was already off the dais.
The table behind groaned under the force of my push-off, chairs scattering as I ran—no, reached—for him.
Hades didn't lift his head. His breathing was ragged, shoulders shuddering under the weight of what he held back.
Still, his arm didn't move when I fell to my knees in front of him and touched his wrist.
Only then did he look up.
And in that shattered, searing mont—I saw it.
Not his madness.
But his mory.
"Elysia," he breathed.
The na wasn't mine.
And yet the sound of it made the room reel.
His free hand ca to my cheek, fingers trembling against my skin as his corrupted eye flared beneath the bloodied palm.
"We can be the way we once were," he whispered.
And then—
The world tilted.
Vision overtook .
A garden. Red lilies. Blood lilies. Their petals glistening as if painted in war.
"You like them?" a voice asked—deep, rough, familiar but not oily and as taunting as the flux. "They're as crimson as your hair."
A woman laughed. I couldn't see her face—only the wild sweep of red curls and a voice like sun-ward iron. The horned figure knelt in the flowers, kissing her hand.
Flash.
A bed.
Her skin under his. His lips at her throat. Her mouth gasping his na as they both trembled and marked and moaned beneath sheets that carried the scent of jasmine and ash.
Flash.
A child.
Red curls and wide, innocent eyes, turquoise orbs. His laughter was bright and short-lived. Because behind him ca thunder. A door splintering. The horned man screaming her na—"Elysia!"—as steel cut the air and blood hit the cradle.
Then—
Darkness.
I tore my hand back with a sob.
The vision snapped like a spine, and I fell backward into Cain's arms before I even realized he'd caught .
The chamber was silent again. But this ti, it was not fear.
It was awe.
Hades still knelt. One palm to his eye. One hand outstretched toward the ghost of —toward a mory he had not ant to give.
And I…
I was trembling.
Not just from what I saw.
But from the part of that rembered it too.
"Tell you rember," The flux whispered. "Tell you understand why I am the way that I am."
I scrambled back, surprisingly, Monteque ca to my side and shielded .
His neck snapped with a deafening crunch that echoed war that was being waged on Hades' body. "They stole our lives, lay waste to our love, trampled on our children. And now... you found after a countless centuries and imasurable lifetis." He smiled, lips quivering in a bloody smile that reeked of black vows and anarchy. "Elysia, my love. We will be reunited."
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