Chapter Two

My shift at The Winged Serpent ended sooner than I thought.

Wren had left an hour later, looking his usual awkward grumpy self. He passed me a sour look when I smiled and waved at him. He just walked outside and teleported right outside the doors like he wanted me to know he was just outta here. I smirked.

What a weird kid.

Apparently weird enough to catch Mother's attention.

Two hours later and I was clocking out as Marsha came around front to take over. The South African succubus was tall and slender, yet her muscles were nice and toned like she lifted weights in her spare time. Her dark eyes passed me a suspicious stare.

If anyone worried me around here, it was Marsha. The succubus was smart and watchful, and while Beni may have been the one assigned to feed Wren, Marsha had been assigned to watch over him like a protector. Much like Kin, but whereas Kin had failed at his job and now spent his days drinking in a local pub, Marsha was wound up tight and didn't like any of my jokes or unwanted commentary.

"Kinda swamped today, huh?" I asked as I tossed the leftover garbage from lunch.

"Mmhm." That was all she gave me. I smiled.

"Hopefully your customers were kind to you. I noticed that, uh, what's his name, Badger?"

"My clients require strict privacy. I am not authorized to discuss that with you."

"Oh, good point," I said with a nod, heading around the desk as Marsha got comfortable, "Although, I do see his name is noted down as Badger Arcane. Isn't he that sketchy dude from Nebraska?" Marsha twitched. She had no idea how I knew about her ex-boyfriend popping in to visit now and again. Ex-boyfriend because the dude thought he could hit Marsha, and while she had let him at first, she'd had some kind of epiphany during one of his fits and she ended up nearly killing him.

Fuckin' too bad the motherfucker is dragging his ass around here.

"Kansas," Marsha bit off quickly, making me raise an eyebrow, because— holy shit, what was wrong with that country and picking weird ass fucking names that all sounded the same, "Mr. Arcane is none of your business, temp. I don't know how you managed to swing that knowledge, but if you're using information you obtain on the property to blackmail or threaten or—"

"Oh, hell no," I said, pushing away from the desk and shaking my head as I heard the door click open behind me when Malto entered for a chitchat with his favorite server, "I'm just regurgitating the house tea, ma'am. Sorry for being so bold. Just not a fan of abusive pricks is all." Marsha blinked, then looked up at me.

Those dark eyes met mine.

I knew she was trying to get a read on me, not with magic, but with experience and intuition.

How did I know her story? Had Diego told me? That had to be the case, because Marsha couldn't recall putting her story anywhere on file. It'd only been shared by word of mouth, and she'd only told Diego and the other servers. How could a temp like me know that?

Definitely wasn't the intense eye contact we made the day we met, when she came out of her room and bumped into me during the tour. Her eyes met mine and she immediately did not like me, not even with the mama-love-me smile. Her expression had turned sour and Diego scolded her for not being friendlier, but how could anyone blame her given everything she'd experienced?

I took no offense.

Plus, was she wrong?

Not really.

"Keep the 'tea'," Marsha said, making air quotes with her fingers before folding her arms over her chest, "To the property, and maybe stop spilling it all over everyone, huh?"

"No, you're totally right," I said with a nod, "You don't know me well enough. I get it."

"I don't like you well enough," Marsha deadpanned. I grinned. It was really hard to hate a lady who was so brutally honest like that.

"Fair enough, my deepest apologies for being a nosy-ass bitch," I replied, making Marsha raise an eyebrow and Malto approached at just that moment to stare at me in surprise, "Hey, Malto, I'm heading out, can you do me a favor? Let Diego know the teleportation spell around the shop is a little off today. Watched someone teleport right in front of the doors. Not really safe if you ask me."

"Uh, yeah," Malto said with a slow nod as I waved goodbye and headed out. I could feel their eyes on me, hear Marsha's thoughts wondering exactly what I was and what planet I came from while Malto thanked the gods I was gone so he could flirt with Marsha.

I headed to a nearby liquor store before hitting the headquarters job mother had stuck me on. The liquor store was small and perfectly located near a cute neighborhood of white little townhomes with their perfectly fenced in yards.

Of course, one of the houses appeared to be completely destroyed and was still blocked off by tattered caution tape. Despite the destruction having happened weeks ago, I could still smell the smoke in the air as if it had happened just yesterday. I could smell the unadulterated fear, feel the smoke and flames blasting against my face. I could hear voices screaming through the smoke and I closed my eyes against a particular gust of wind that swept down the street.

"Ryk!" The scream was born of pure terror, Rowan's deep voice cracking with emotion.

I could feel the desperation as he fought tooth and nail to get Ryk out of the house alive in one piece. The horror he felt at losing Ryk far outweighed any and all fear he felt for everything else in that moment. Hell, for a moment, I even saw Yiuwa wink out of his mind as he charged for Ryk, scooping him up in his arms and taking off with him.

Once they were safe, Rowan's mental health was fucking shot.

I quickly yanked out of the vision, because there was no way I was touching that issue with a ten foot cattle prod.

Fuck that shit.

I entered the liquor store and went to the energy drink cooler by the counter, tossing a couple and a pack of gold label cigarettes by the register. The cashier, an incredibly tall lanky dark-skinned mer-creature, was pressing buttons slowly as if he were just getting the hang of using something so modern.

It wasn't the fact that the register was no longer one of those clangy loud things you saw in black and white movies. It was a simple touch pad with codes for all of the merchandise.

The cashier looked young enough to know how to work technology, so he was probably coming out of a slavery situation.

It made sense; there had been an abrupt boom in busted slavery cases over the past few years. Despite the law, idiots still tried and idiots still failed to make the business work in the realms that had taken on the anti-slavery laws put in place by Hades and Lucifer. The laws had been revolutionary, but of course, not all of the United Pantheons agreed with it.

So at the moment, it was still up in the air as a universal law and considered only a pantheon law, meaning the pantheons could decide for their own realms.

Which brought with it incredible stigma, backlash, protesting. Modern otherworldly creatures wanted freedom. They wanted to move forward, but it was hard when the older creatures insisted it was simply the way of things. Arguments rolled from imps simply cannot be trusted to care for themselves on their own so they need a master to imps are fucking sentient creatures who think and feel the same as us, you fucking jackwads, so maybe just fucking ask them what they want.

Doubted anyone was gonna raise their hand, jumping up and down, excited over being a slave again.

Well. I mean, the universe was filled with idiots always proving me wrong, though.

"1800 cred, pleases," the cashier said softly, clearly embarrassed at having taken so long with the touchpad register. I smiled patiently as I touched my card to the back of the touchpad where the card reader was.

The cashier made the horrible mistake of glancing up to look at me, and his clear blue eyes met mine with a flash.

Draco McFadden, 632-years-old, male imp-fae hybrid from Northern England. He'd escaped the slave trade in Duat, only to be sent to Annwn where slavery laws were still up in the air and hotly debated by the leaders. He'd been put in auction for six months before being purchased and shipped to Hades, but the ring had been busted the moment they stepped foot on the soil. Draco found himself stripped of everything he had ever known, a life of servitude, and thrust into the real world that struggled to accommodate him and his special difficulties.

As a former imp slave, especially, he had no knowledge of modern technology. He got his first phone and had locked himself out of it that morning as he anxiously waited for test results from a doctor's visit that would confirm he was, in fact, pregnant, thanks to his fae genetics.

My eyes dropped to his stomach as he scanned the card and carefully input the codes to confirm the purchase. Obviously the only sign he was pregnant was the test he'd taken at the doctor's and nothing more. He was still very slim, definitely needed to eat more, especially if he was pregnant, but imps were known to have digestive issues pretty regularly so he was probably ignoring his body's instincts to eat.

"Thank you," I said when he handed me my bag and he gave me a little shy nod, and I smiled, "And congratulations. Maybe try eating a little more; protein bars work in a pinch." He blinked and jerked his head up in surprise to stare at me as I walked out of the liquor store.

I stood outside for a moment to light up and smoke, watching the gray smoke curl up towards the sky and dissipate. I felt my phone vibrate and ignored it. I knew it was mother without even looking. Probably calling to make sure I checked in at the Styx headquarters.

I put my cigarette out on the underside of my boots before I teleported from the liquor store in Styx to our headquarters.

Of course, headquarters wasn't conveniently located with signs and arrows and billboards telling you how to find it, hence why Hades and kin had no idea where it was. I reappeared just outside a small unassuming office building with a generic name and office names.

I entered the main vestibule, undergoing the security checks as I took out my phone to see if it was indeed mother contacting me, only to see Kali's name in red as a missed call. I sighed, tucking my phone away and looking up as the glass vestibule opened to admit me into what appeared to be some bland boring doctor's office.

A straight walk through took me to an office with a badge protected security lock that I swiped without issue. The doors opened to a small office and storage closet. I went to the desk, hit a button under the top, and the desk creaked for a moment before sliding back to allow me entry down into a grungy dingy looking elevator room and an elevator that looked like it'd seen better days, what with the graffiti.

I stepped into the elevator and rode it down.

Down past Hades's emergency tunnel system, down past the tunnels that they used to sneak into his palace way back in the day, and down past the tunnels created by moles. It was ten stories later that the doors slid open to a small clean white room with a keypad by the door and nothing more.

I punched in the code and the doors opened to reveal a narrow white sterile hallway. Everything in the compounds was designed for a reason. The blinding white, the lack of decor, the eerie emptiness. All of it designed to throw people for a loop, to make them panic, to give them the hope of escape with its endless loops and curves, only for all of them to lead back to one place on the other side of the compound.

Ryk had hated it here.

He hated the cleanliness, the sterility, the lack of hope for escape. His mental health had deteriorated faster the moment we got him here, though it helped that he was already under Aric's spell. The incubus had gone out of his way to poison the kid, use him, abuse him, manipulate him, any way he could to get what he wanted, which was not what the mother wanted necessarily.

Hence why no one came to Aric's rescue.

If he hadn't been stupid and so obsessed with Ryk and his own personal desires of some fucked up family, he probably would've survived Ryk's attack long enough to destroy Ryk himself, or even just capture him for the rest of us to deal with.

But no, Aric wasn't going to do anything that could get Ryk killed. He knew exactly how much force to apply when it came to Ryk, just enough to scare him and torture him, but not enough to kill him. Not for mother's sake, or Ryk's, but his own. Ryk was the perfect being that could bear him the copious children he wanted. Ryk was also the perfect caretaker for their children; a doctor in his own right, kind and loving, empathetic and caring, intelligent and patient.

It was a goddamn miracle Ryk came out on the other side of this the way he did.

I suppose one wouldn't think that way given everything he'd suffered, but he was alive and he was speaking. Or so I assumed. I had yet to find his specific location, but it wouldn't take long once I'd looped myself in with them. It was only a matter of time before someone, one of those Cousins, slipped up and gave me not just Ryk's location, not just Wren's location, but Four's.

Oh, right, kid had changed his name to Niko these days.

I tried not to laugh as I walked through the halls to find Kali's office.

Four— Ah, Niko had always been an issue for us since the day he was created. I'd watched him mostly out of curiosity, because he was far more loud and aggressive than Three. Three was certainly aggressive in his own way, but he was easily cowed by others. Once he latched onto someone, it was hard to shake him off.

But Niko was the exact opposite. Niko loved and cared for no one. He only wanted to fight, wanted to prove that he was stronger and more capable than the others, even if he knew he was outmatched. I think his tenacity made him a beacon of hope for mother.

For a while.

Unfortunately, Niko was incredibly fucking smart, which made working with him difficult. He didn't trust anyone, even mother. Oh sure, he talked her up all the time and covered his trail with occasional praises or enforcing of mother's laws. But he was quickly learning that he wasn't special around here, that mother had a plan that was greater than all of us combined, and all we needed to do was obey.

Niko always had a problem obeying.

In fact, if you told him to do something, he would do the exact opposite simply out of spite.

I couldn't tell if he was funny or fucking annoying.

I got to Kali's office and opened without knocking, because at this point, did I have to knock around here? Luckily, Kali wasn't up to anything suspicious or weird. She was sitting at her desk, glaring at her computer screen with sharp intelligent blue eyes that glowed when the light hit them just right. Her long wavy black hair was coiled up into a messy bun, her dark skin spotted with tattoos that looked like whole galaxies printed on her arms.

Kali was never the type for makeup or dressing up, though.

She was already kind of cute with her dimpled smile, her cute button nose, her ridiculously long muscular legs, and did I mention the female had thighs that could bust open coconuts?

"Wow," Kali drawled when I opened the door and walked in, making her sit back in her office chair to fold one leg over the other, "And here I thought mama was gonna send someone else to check in on us." I offered her a smile as I took out an energy drink and tossed it to her. She caught it with a grateful nod and shotgunned the thing like it was normal.

Kali saw one thing online and she had to figure out how to do it every time.

"I was in the area," I answered, making her pause and pull the can away from her mouth to eyeball me, "It was just work." Kali wrinkled her nose as she set the can down and folded her arms over her chest.

"Mother still has you on babysitting duty?" She asked. I smiled at that as I cracked open my own drink, but drinking it like a normal person from the spout.

"Yeah, unfortunately," I said, making her scowl deepen and I almost laughed, because the look on her face very much reminded me of her genetic carriers, whom I'd only seen a couple times over the years. I didn't quite learn much about their personalities, because fuck that; it was mostly their movements, their patterns, their interactions, I had to focus on.

Things beyond that just seemed trivial.

"How's that coming along," Kali asked with a scoff, wiggling her mouse when her computer screensaver came on to reveal snapshots of her and her wife, April. A petite skinny little white vampire with a mop of dark curls and Granny smith apple green eyes, but whereas Kali knew how to smile, April seemed eternally emotionally constipated.

"Good," I answered dismissively, making Kali blink and look at me suspiciously as I offered her a smile, "How's April? Is she taking care of you properly?" Kali rolled her eyes.

"She's my wife, not my fuckin' mommy."

"Yeah, but wives around here get kinda mean," I pointed out, making Kali scoff.

"Babe, unless you have a vagina, a womb, and your basic rights fucked with since the beginning of time, I don't wanna hear none of this mean lady shit," she said, making me smirk, "April is very kind to me."

"Has she been tending to your beast?" I asked. Kali didn't answer right away, which was a good indication that April was not tending to it.

Kali was the first and only female to ever carry a Beast. It was mainly a male based curse and considered far too monstrous for a female to contain, supposedly, but Kali was proof that gender and sex meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. I'd seen her flip grown males twice her size over her shoulder with little effort, and go into a running jump into April's arms afterwards.

Kali's Beast, much like the rest of ours, was bloodthirsty and hungry 24/7. While my Beast didn't always consume our kills, Kali's did every single time. In the process, Kali tended to suffer from severe digestive issues after she turned back to herself. She'd lay in bed moaning for two days about stomachaches, vomiting, all kinds of fun toilet stuff she wasn't shy about.

The thing was that when Kali was laid up, April was supposed to be taking care of her. However, April's dedication was more for the Mother and her cause. Marrying Kali had been her duty and she took it very seriously, except for the part where she was supposed to be nurturing Kali afterwards. She was supposed to remind her what it was like to be sentient, to love her and care for her, like most handlers were supposed to do. Otherwise, Kali would succumb to the Beast and probably be cast aside as a secondary host to the Beast.

Of course, Mother didn't make any specific rules around handlers and their Beasts. As long as they could tame it and treat it well, that was all that mattered. April was good at doing just the bare minimum and getting away with it.

Mother was willing to overlook it.

I was not.

"I'm fine," Kali said after a pregnant silence and I raised an eyebrow at her, which resulted in a glare, "I am. I'm perfectly sane. Or as sane as I can be living underground for ninety percent of my life." I smirked, leaning over on her desk and she ended up doing the same, probably without realizing too.

"Kali, just functioning isn't fine," I told her, making her wrinkle her nose in displeasure at being scolded, "April should be heaping loads of love and affection on you too to keep you sane."

"She is," Kali said and when I gave her a deadpan stare, she glared, "Are you reading me again or are you just being a concerned friend?" I smiled.

"Can't I do both?"

"Fuck you, get out of my head."

"I'm not listening to your head, I'm listening to your heart."

"God, you have a stupid rebuttal for everything," Kali scoffed, shaking her head, "Look, April is fine, I'm fine, together we are fine. What about you, Mister Super Secret Agent? Any news you can tell me about The Winged Serpent?" I pouted, because that sounded like a boring topic for boring people, which neither of us were, but Kali seemed ready to put the April thing to rest, so I humored her and changed the subject.

"Nothing new. Same old, same old," I said, glancing down at my phone as I took it out to scroll through my messages that all looked like spam, but were just that boring, "Had a little issue with teleportation today, but nothing bad." Kali frowned.

"Teleportation?" She asked. I nodded.

"Wren was able to teleport within the barrier."

"He's got higher clearance than the other clients."

"Yeah, makes sense," I said with a shrug, "Wren's Hades's baby. Gotta protect the baby."

"He's not that young."

"Twenty-one is an infant."

"So is twenty-nine," Kali deadpanned, making me smirk, "Quit with the old man act. I want the annoying older brother Jasper back." I chuckled at that, fingering the top of the energy drink can.

"Nah, he's still asleep," I replied, making Kali sigh, "Anyway, security at The Winged Serpent is pretty high. The security guards are both non-erotia and huge. I could take them both no problem, but it would just stir up a whole mess of trouble. Mother told me to just watch anyway."

"Oh?" Kali asked. I blinked, then looked up to give her a suspicious stare as she looked back at me with a growing smile.

"What, oh, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Mother is probably planning to have you and Wren hook up. Just watch him? That sounds like just keep an eye on him until it's time to fuck," Kali mused, drumming her black painted fingernails on her chin. I grimaced, averting my eyes.

I hated that mother was sucking me into her romance-y bullshit. I was signed up for war, not to play games and most certainly not to get married and have a child.

It would just be Wren living alone in the compound with a baby he definitely didn't want while I was off doing work shit. Eventually he would snap and probably kill himself, or the baby, and that would just be a whole other mess that would set Mother off to the extreme.

But to send me all the way to Styx just to watch Wren?

There was more to it than just having a baby for the army.

Something else was at play here.

"It sounds like a good thing," Kali said as she finished off her energy drink and sat back in her seat, her hands folded behind her head, "You need someone to tend to your Beast."

"Fuck you, we're fine."

"When's the last time you even used Darling?" Kali mused, referring to the name for my Beast and I pretended that didn't make me flinch as I looked down to fiddle with my boot lace.

In the distant corners of my mind, I faintly heard a familiar voice calling that name over and over again. For a moment, the calls were euphoric, pleasured, desperate, but in a matter of seconds, they turned into some kind of warped screaming and I reached up to rub at my ears to block out the sound.

"We're thinking about it," I muttered, making Kali raise an eyebrow for a moment like she was skeptical before both eyebrows rose in realization.

"Are you shitting me." Not a question, not a demand, just some kind of angry call to the gods to smite me.

"Mother didn't really specify I couldn't sleep with him now," I drawled and Kali made a noise that was a cross between a dying goat and a hippo in labor.

"Dude, come on, don't put your dick in the job yet."

"Wasn't that the whole point of the thing with Aric and Ryk?"

"Yeah, but not your dick in this job," Kali snorted, rising to her feet and making a gesture that she wanted us to go to lunch, so I sighed and heaved myself to my feet to follow her. Kali was tall, but she still had to tilt her eyes up to look at me as I gave her a cheeky grin at her comment. She elbowed me in the ribs, then gestured for me to leave the room ahead of her and I followed.

"Did you make sure you two weren't related at least," Kali asked as she locked her office behind her.

"He's adopted," I said with a snort as I followed her down the hallway, "American incubus, not a single ounce of Greek blood in him. In fact, his medical chart shows he's got some Celtic ancestry, but that's about it. White bread with fat free butter." Kali whacked me in the arm for the comment, but she laughed anyway.

"Okay, but that's still not an excuse to sleep with him. Besides, tending to your Beast doesn't just mean sticking your dick in the first tight ass that walks by, man," she lectured, making me roll my eyes, because how was she to lecture me on tending to my Beast when she was satisfied with the barest of minimums for hers? Little kisses here and there, keeping their sex life under lock and key like it was some kind of shameful sin...

Of course, she was correct about tending to a Beast.

Even mother wasn't entirely sure how it worked.

Beasts were certainly simple creatures, indulging in its most basic of instincts and feelings and emotions. Mostly a toddler with magical powers and the appetite of a jacked teenage boy. Of course it made sense to simply feed it with things it liked; sex, food, love, attention. It went a long way in healing a Beast. The happier a Beast was, the quicker they healed and went back to doing whatever their handler commanded.

My Beast wasn't exactly a big fan of the one night stands we'd been reduced to.

Darling had been spoiled rotten in the past. When our worlds had collapsed, Darling had crawled into hiding and now only came out when he was angry. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard him purr, the last time I'd let him make a meal of our enemies. And thanks to him, I couldn't remember the last time I'd enjoyed a wink of sleep.

Basically, the only tending I'd done of Darling was frequent hook ups.

And that's all this was going to be.

Mother said to watch Wren, but she never said I couldn't play with him a little.

"You know, if you want to cuddle, all ya gotta do is say so," Kali said as we entered the cafeteria that was teeming with soldiers, most of them newer and still learning the ropes as they puttered around. I elbowed Kali for her comment and she grinned and elbowed me back as we made our way to the buffet.

"Somehow I feel April would find that detestable," I replied and Kali snorted.

"You're my big brother, not my boyfriend."

"She doesn't seem to recognize the difference, which is kinda weird don't you think—"

"April doesn't hate you because you're handsy with me, babe, she hates you because your mouth is a fucking nuclear weapon."

"Really," I said, raising both eyebrows in mock surprise as I tossed a couple sandwiches on my tray, "Do you mean it? Do you think if I just say hello she'll finally snap?" Kali grinned, elbowing me again as she added a couple bowls of pasta to her tray, then a pile of twinkies, several of which she handed me.

"Dude, if you keep pushing her, she will snap and Mother can certainly say something, but I don't think she'll be able to stop April once she's started." I tried not to laugh at that. April was certainly a strong opponent, but no match for Mother or myself. She'd be crushed under my boot in a second, but I didn't say that aloud.

It didn't matter whether I said it or not, because Kali wasn't going to leave April.

She's my wife, Kali's heart had convinced her, she can do whatever she wants to me as long as she still takes care of me. It is her duty to protect me and it is my duty to serve. It was frustrating, frustrating that that was the mindset of a marriage nowadays. Frustrating that Kali had never been able to experience true happiness in her marriage. She could talk all the shit she wanted, but at the end of the day, we both remembered the way she looked at the ring on my finger so long ago.

"What's that?" Kali had asked me, staring at the ring while holding my hand, spreading my fingers out so she could examine the handiwork at all angles.

"He gave me a ring," I told her, unable to contain the excitement on my face, in my body, as my muscles twitched and my smile probably looked big and stupid, "It's something they do in his culture when they get married." Kali had looked up at me in awe.

"Really?"

"Yes, and he made it himself," I added, turning my hand over so I could show her the little imperfections that I traced regularly for comfort, "The symbol he made there means eternity."

"He'll love you forever," Kali murmured, stroking the ring on my finger, and I had been so blinded by my own joy at the time that I didn't even notice the change in her expression. Looking back on it, I saw it now. I saw the twitch in her brows, the confusion that this new culture brought her, and the envy that I walked around with something that claimed my handler, claimed our love, so loudly and so proudly.

"He'll love me for the rest of eternity," I whispered, tracing the Celtic design with my finger thoughtfully.

I couldn't resist laughing at the memory.

Too bad eternity only lasted a few years.