Awakened (Eternal Guardians Book 8) (28 page)

D
emetrius couldn’t sleep.

Standing at the balcony railing of the suite he shared with Isadora in the Argolean castle, he gazed out at the moonlight sparkling over the surface of the Olympic Ocean like sunlight on newly fallen snow. He rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart, but it did no good. The ever-present ache he’d lived with since he’d heard the news his daughter had been taken by Sirens didn’t ease. In fact, as he stood there wondering where she was this very night, it intensified, spreading through his chest to rouse the darkness he’d worked so hard to bury over the years.

The darkness rolled and gathered strength, urging him to forget the bonds of brotherhood he’d forged with the Argonauts, to ignore the fate of the land his mate ruled, to release the shadows inside him and go after that which rightly belonged to him. His fingers curled around the balustrade. His pulse pumped hard and fast. But he fought the darkness back for one simple reason.

Elysia had made the choice he couldn’t. Demetrius had been livid when he’d heard what Max had done, but knowing Elysia was unharmed—and that she’d chosen to stay with the Sirens to keep their realm safe—had gotten through to him when nothing else could.

He drew in a shaky breath. Released his fingers from the cold stone. Reminded himself he needed to stay strong for his mate. That he had to keep it together at least until Elysia was allowed to cross into the human realm. It might take three years, but then he could rescue her. Then he could hide her away and protect her. Then he would make sure no one could ever touch her again.

“Demetrius?”

He turned at the sound of Isadora’s voice. Her cotton nightgown swayed around her feet in the open doorway to their bedroom, and her blonde hair fell in messy waves past her shoulders. But it was her eyes he focused on. Her glazed coffee-colored eyes that told him something was wrong.

“
Kardia
?” He stepped toward her and reached for her hand. Her skin was cold and clammy, and her fingers shook as they slid over his. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“She’s in danger.”

Demetrius’s heart rate spiked. “Max said she was safe. That she was okay. He said—”

“It’s not the Sirens that threaten her.” Isadora looked up at her mate, and horror reflected in her eyes. “It’s not the gods either. It’s someone else. Someone she trusts.”

“What did you see?”

Isadora had the gift of foresight, but her visions were muddied when they involved those she loved. Since Elysia’s abduction, the most Isadora had seen were hazy images…a training field, a bow and arrow, a candle burning in the night.

She squeezed his hand. “I saw a great sword, blazing with the fire of a thousand suns in the darkness, and I saw our daughter unable to move as the flaming blade pierced her chest.”

Every muscle in Demetrius’s body contracted, and his blood turned to ice.

“I saw our daughter fall to her knees as the sword was pulled free, and a mighty hand reach deep into the cavern of her chest to pull out her still-beating heart. And I saw agony and heartbreak brimming in her eyes as she looked up and watched the hand curl around her heart, crushing it to ashes in its palm.”

Demetrius’s own heart pumped hard and fast against his ribs, and a new sense of terror consumed him.

Tears filled Isadora’s eyes. “We have to bring her home before it’s too late.”

That darkness sizzled and rolled inside Demetrius, and as he pulled his mate into his arms, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it back much longer.

Because some things were more important than duty and honor and brotherhood. And knowing Elysia was in mortal danger changed everything.

M
aking it to Athena’s temple in the dark without disturbing any kind of monsters had been tricky. Damon could flash from Olympus to Pandora but not from location to location on the island. Twice Elysia had stopped and pushed Damon back into the shadows because she’d spotted a manticore and a chimera. Luckily, neither had noticed them, and they’d been able to pick their way through the forest untouched and finally climb the hillside to the ruins.

Elysia’s soles hurt from walking barefoot, and her skin was sweaty beneath Damon’s baggy T-shirt, but there was no one else she’d rather be with. And she was already envisioning where she’d open the portal in the human realm.

Common sense told her the smartest move was to take him to Argolea, but she didn’t want to do that. Not only because it wouldn’t be any safer there for them—the Sirens could cross into both Argolea and the human realm and possibly come after them—but also because she wasn’t ready to face her family. They’d tried to arrange a political binding for her. To a male she didn’t love. Damon had spent his life as nothing but a slave. Regardless of who he was before his time with the Sirens, his social class now was far below hers. They’d never accept him. For all her parents talk about helping the common person in need, she knew that was all well and good unless it involved their daughter’s future.

She closed her hand tighter around Damon’s in the dark as he pulled her up the hillside, remembering the way he’d looked at her on the beach. As if he couldn’t breathe without her. As if the thought of losing her had destroyed him. As if she were his everything.

She’d never been anyone’s everything, had never wanted to belong to someone else or be in a relationship. But the connection she felt to him was getting stronger, and every moment they spent together only made her want to be his.

They finally reached the temple. The moon had set during their hike, and the sun would soon be rising. A monster screamed far down the hillside, but Elysia ignored it and followed Damon inside.

Heat rushed to her cheeks when she remembered what they’d done on the altar, and more than anything, she wanted a repeat of that moment right here, but she knew there would be plenty of time to explore his body somewhere safer.

“I thought you said the monsters on this island couldn’t enter sacred ground,” Elysia said as he drew her to the base of the broken steps, trying to take her mind off the images replaying in her brain—the moaning and rocking and mindless pleasure.

“They’re not supposed to be able to.”

“Then how were the harpies able to enter?”

“I have a theory on that. I think Athena sent them. I think she sensed what we did here and the power you took from her. I’m pretty sure she sent the harpies because she was pissed.”

Skata
. Then Elysia had gone back to the Siren compound and shown off her newfound skills. Perhaps leaving Olympus for good wasn’t a bad idea after all.

Damon turned to face her and clasped her hands. Above, stars sparkled through the open roof. “So how does this work?”

“I just have to focus.” She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and pictured a damp forest.

Nothing happened.

“I thought you said you could do this on holy ground.”

“Shh.” Elysia pictured the trees, the moss, the rocks and lake.

Still nothing happened.

“Need a little help? I could focus too. Where are we going again?”

She frowned and tried to concentrate. “You’d probably accidentally flash us back to Olympus.”

“True.” He squeezed her hands. “How ’bout I just focus on you while you focus on wherever it is we’re going. I could spend all day focusing on your gorgeous face.”

She opened her eyes to find him grinning at her. A childish, happy grin she hadn’t seen on his face before. One filled with…hope.

A roar sounded outside the temple, and Elysia’s gaze darted toward the door.

Damon’s smile faded. “Uh,
emmoní.
If you’re gonna flash us out of here, now would be a good time.”

“I can’t do it.” Panic and fear filled her chest as understanding dawned. She looked up at Damon. “That’s why the harpies were able to enter. Because Athena stripped this temple of its sacredness.”

The roar grew louder. Followed by a thunder of footsteps.

“
Skata
,” Damon’s hands tightened around hers. “We’ll never be able to outfight that.
Focus
. One more time. Do it for me.”

“It won’t work.”

“Try!”

Elysia had no hope this would work, but she closed her eyes and pictured the forest again.

And felt the temple spin around them and the world fall apart at her feet.

Solid ground formed beneath her legs, and the smell of pine and moss and damp earth filled her senses before she even opened her eyes.

“Whoa.” Damon let go of her with one hand and glanced around the old-growth timber and dewy forest. “Where the heck are we?”

Elysia could barely believe what she was seeing. “Near the half-breed colony. Or what’s left of it. In Montana. In the human realm. I was born here.”

He grinned down at her. “Told ya you could do it.”

“That’s just it, though. I didn’t do it.” Her brow wrinkled. “I think you did.”

“Me? All I did was imagine you focusing on opening a portal.”

Which didn’t make any kind of sense, because she couldn’t open a portal on anything but holy ground, and she was absolutely sure now that Athena’s temple on Pandora was no longer holy. “Damon, do you have any gifts?”

“Gifts?”

“Abilities?”

He looked at her like she’d grown a second head.

She sighed. “Powers?”

“Like the gods?” He huffed. “No. I’d know by now if I did.”

“I think you must. I couldn’t have opened that portal alone.”

“Trust me,
emmoní
. If I could open a portal like that on my own, I’d have done it years ago to get the hell out of Olympus.”

Her gaze skipped over the dark stubble on his jaw, down his thick shoulders and strong pecs as she tried to figure out just how he could have opened that portal, then dropped to his carved stomach and his hand still holding hers in the moonli—

“Oh my gods.”

“What?” Damon looked down and froze. In the dark of the forest, the whites of his eyes appeared all around his chocolate irises. “What the hell is that?”

Elysia’s stomach pitched as she stared at the ancient Greek text appearing on Damon’s forearms and running down to entwine his fingers. “Those are the markings of the ancient Greek heroes. The strongest demigods who ever lived.”

Wide-eyed, she looked back up at Damon’s shocked features, and in a rush realized why he’d always felt so familiar. Because she’d
seen his face in a photo on the wall in the castle where she’d grown up. In a photo that had been taken long before Zeus’s Sirens had struck him with an arrow dipped in Medusa’s poison that had turned him to stone.

“What does that mean?” he asked in a low voice.

Holy
skata
, this couldn’t be real.

But it was. She was seeing it with her own eyes.

“It means you were an Argonaut.” Her heart beat like wildfire against her ribs. “It means you
are
an Argonaut. And it means your name isn’t Damon. It’s Cerek.” She held his gaze. “Your name is Cerek, and oh my gods, you’re alive.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A
whisper of foreboding rushed down Damon’s spine. “Of course I’m alive. I’m standing right here.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Elysia said. “You were dead. Zeus’s Sirens killed you. All the Argonauts watched it happen twenty-five years ago.”