And, for a while, so was he.

Chapter Five

  Styx

  One week until the wedding . . .

  The brothers were in the yard behind me. I could hear the Stones playing and my brothers laughing and fucking joking around. Phebe was back. AK was back to his usual self. Life was back to normal for a while.

  I was sitting on the bench in front of Hades and Persephone’s mural. My Fender was in my hands, a smoke was in my mouth, and bourbon sat to my side.

  As always, Waits came from my guitar strings as I inhaled deep breaths of tobacco. My fingers played my favorite song, the one that always reminded me of Mae. “Again,” she’d said that first night she’d awoken in the compound. I’d opened my eyes, as I’d played alone in the bar, to see her before me, my fucking dream come true, speaking in that weird accent she still had. “. . . please, play it again. I very much enjoyed hearing your voice,” she’d begged, nose twitching, her ice-blue eyes wide from nerves.

  A smirk came to my lips thinking of those days. So fucking much had happened since then. Even more was happening now. The cartels and the Diablos were back on our radar. Garcia had raised his ugly head after all these fucking years. But all that shit was pushed aside for now, until after next weekend.

  I hadn’t told her. Mae still didn’t know what was bothering me. She’d given me the space I needed. And being the perfect bitch she was, she hadn’t pushed. She’d fucking loved me, fucked me, been there for me, but said fuck-all since the night she’d tried to talk to me and my throat had closed so tight I’d had no fucking words.

  I tipped my head back and looked at the stars above. I couldn’t fucking say my vows. I knew that now. Ky had tried. For the past several weeks, he’d tried shitty idea after shitty idea until, two nights ago, I’d turned around and told him to finally call it quits. He hadn’t wanted to, of course. But there was fucking no point. I was a motherfucking mute and that was that. I’d been this way my entire life. Nothing would change it.

  “Suck my cock, asshole!” Vike called out, his voice cutting through the Stones’s “Paint it Black.” I shook my head and looked back at the mural.

  Three Waits songs later, the clubhouse door opened and Mae stepped outside. She’d been gone all day with her sisters. Wedding planning and shit. I had no fucking clue. I left them to it.

  Lilah, Grace, Phebe, Sapphira, Maddie, and Bella followed her outside. They were all laughing and joking . . . and they were all fucking free. Mae’s arm was linked through Bella’s. As if sensing me watching her in the dark, Mae turned my way and stilled.

  When her sisters saw me, Mae told them something and headed toward me. The other cult bitches left, I assumed, to go find their men in the yard. Bella watched Mae come my way. She smiled at me, a huge fucking smile, then left for the yard too. I had no idea what that was about.

  “Styx?” Mae said as she approached. She wore jeans and a tank with a leather jacket over the top. Her hair was pulled back in a braid, and she looked fucking stunning. Hades’s face was stretched over her stomach. She ran her hand through my hair. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

  I put my guitar down and took Mae’s hand. I pulled her down on my knee and wrapped my arms around her. She laughed as I kissed her neck, then grew silent as she stared at the mural. Nudging my chest with her shoulder, she said, “I remember that night you showed me this mural. The night you told me about Persephone falling in love with the dark lord. How no one could understand how the goddess of spring loved him, wanted to be by his side.” She smiled and turned her face to me. I was instantly fucking trapped in her wolf stare. “But I could.” Mae laid her head back on my shoulder. “I could see how Persephone fell in love with him. Hades was strong and dark, scary and brutal to most.” Mae’s hand threaded through mine. “But to her, he was kind and strong and protective. He showed her a world she could never imagine. He showed her his heart and she, in turn, gave him hers.”

  Mae’s eyes were glittering when she looked back at me, and I took her lips. When I pulled back, I lifted my hand. “She’s still you to me,” I signed and pointed to the mural, to Persephone with her jet-black hair and her ice-blue eyes.

  “And Hades is still you to me,” she said and shifted on my lap. She faced me. Her eyes searched mine then, taking my hands, she whispered, “I know what it is.” I tensed and watched her eyes fill with sympathy. Her thumbs ran over my hands, the only tools I had to communicate. Mae brought them to her mouth and kissed the tattooed skin. She pressed them against her cheeks. “I know the war you have been battling in silence.” She let out a laugh that held fuck-all humor. “I worried for a time that you no longer wanted to marry me.” I was sitting up, ready to pull back my hands and tell her she was fucking wrong, when she tightened her grip. “But then I watched you. I watched you struggle to speak. Speak even to me, to Ky.” A fucking fat tear spilled from Mae’s eye and dropped to my arm.

  “And then I knew that it was about the wedding.” Mae dropped my hands and straddled my thighs, her face right before mine. In seconds, her hands were on my cheeks. The python was back, squeezing my throat. And my heart was beating too fucking fast. “There is no need for pride between us, River. There is no sin nor any perceived weakness that will make me love you less. In fact, helping you with your burdens welcomes you into my heart even more.”

  I looked away, but her hands on my face brought me back to her. “When you learned of my past . . .” Her breathing hitched. “When you learned of the scars between my legs, you did not shame me. You did not blame me for what I now understand was not my fault. But instead, you held me. You held me and loved me and made me feel safe.”

  Mae leaned forward, kissed my fucking Adam’s apple, and reared back. “In a week we shall marry in front of our friends and family. And I want you to be the man you are now.” Mae took my hands again, and she fucking smiled, destroying me where I sat. “I want you to promise yourself to me, but I will not see your pride and dignity jeopardized simply for the unnecessary sacrifice of words.” Mae dropped my hands and I put them on her waist. “I will see you sign your promises to me, and I will accept them just as readily as if you had shouted them from the gates of heaven itself.” Her head tipped to the side. “You are my River, my Styx, and next week you will be my husband. However that is declared is no issue to me.”