“I have the power to change her, yes. But in her condition, she’ll die before she’s turned.”

“Then you’re useless to me. Leave.”

“Tsk-tsk. So rude. You might want to be nice to me, my son. I’m the only thing standing between you and scores of angry husbands you’ve cuckolded over the centuries.”

“As if a legion of them would be any match for me.”

“True. I trained you well. But the girl...they’d hurt her without a qualm.”

William unleashed a storm of curses. “Anyone touches her, and I’ll spend the rest of eternity ensuring they and everyone they love suffer unending torments.”

“Your dedication to her is baffling. She’s so...ordinary.”

Ordinary, huh? Well. She’d been called worse.

“Eyes on me,” William barked.

“What’s so special about her?” Hades asked.

Yes, Liam. What’s so special about me? She’d always wondered.

“I’m not discussing her with you.”

“I’m discussing her with you, then. You can’t be with her. You can’t be with anyone. You know as well as I that your happiness walks hand-in-hand with your doom.”

Gillian had heard a little about William’s doom. Aka, his curse. The woman he loved was destined to destroy him.

Did Gillian believe in curses? Yes and no. She’d lived with demon-possessed immortals for three years now. She’d seen things. Supernatural things. Wild things. Impossible things. But curses...good luck versus bad luck? No. Bad things happened because bad decisions were made. End of story.

If William expected the worst, he would only ever see the worst. He would act accordingly, and turn the supposed curse into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Seek and you shall find.

“I’m searching for a way to break—” William began.

“You’ve been searching,” Hades interjected. “For centuries.”

“My book—”

“Is nonsense. A trick to make you hope for what can never be so that your demise will be that much sweeter. If the book could be decoded, it would have been decoded by now.”

Another tense pause. Then William spat, “Did you come here to piss me off?”

“Pissing you off is a bonus. I came to warn you.”

“Well, you’ve done both.”

“No, son, I haven’t.” Hades’s voice hardened. “The warning is this: if I think you’re falling for the girl, I’ll kill her myself.”

“You’ll try.”

A rustle of clothing. The crash of toppling furniture. The pop of breaking bones. Grunts of pain and satisfaction. Panting. A whoosh as the shadows fell over the balcony railing—a thud.

Of course, she didn’t have the strength to scream.

“Answer me this,” Hades said, and she could hear him just as clearly, despite the greater distance between them. How was that possible? “Are you thinking about bonding with her?”

Her heart, the treacherous organ, dropped into her stomach.

“No,” William replied after a centuries-long pause. “I will never bond with anyone. Especially a human.”

Ouch. But really, his refusal mirrored her own. She would never bond with a man—would never marry. She was too screwed up.

As a little girl, she’d had a very good life...until her biological dad died in a motorcycle accident and her mom remarried a few short months later. Her stepdad had two teenage sons—and all three males had turned her life into a living nightmare.

Take off your clothes, Gilly. The boys need to learn how to touch a woman.

The terrible things they’d done to her...

Even now, years later, nausea struck whenever she remembered. Those boys...they’d broken her, spirit, soul and body, and by the age of fifteen, she’d had only two options: kill herself and finally end her suffering, or run away. Though she’d leaned heavily toward option one, she’d still gone with option two, hoping, praying, her life could actually end on a high note.

After hitchhiking to LA, she’d gotten a job at a trashy diner. A few months later, Danika—who’d run from Reyes, whom she’d later married—had showed up. They’d bonded. And after Danika and Reyes worked out their problems, the pretty blonde invited Gillian to Budapest.

If she hadn’t been dealing with a creepy super, spending every night watching her door with a baseball bat in hand, expecting the guy to sneak inside, she would have said no. All those muscled warriors...all that testosterone and evil...well, scared crapless didn’t even scratch the surface of her reaction. But the guys had maintained their distance, giving her space and time to cope.

Except for William, who’d walked into the entertainment room one day, plopped beside her on the couch and said, “Tell me you’re skilled with a game station. Anya sucks.”

They’d played video games every day for months, and she’d felt like a kid for the first time since her father had died.

The side of the bed suddenly dipped, and her mind returned to the present. William sat beside her once again, and as a bit of the fog cleared from her vision, she got an up-close-and-personal view of his cut and bruised face.

“I told you to sleep,” he said gently. He was always gentle with her.

She loved it, but she also kinda hated it. And she had no idea why!

She opened her mouth to respond—When have I ever obeyed you?—and noticed the dryness of her tongue. “Water. Please.”

A strong hand slid under her head and lifted. A straw pressed against the center of her lips. She sucked, the cool liquid soothing her raw throat.

As William eased her onto the pillow, she asked, “Am I going to die?” She knew nothing about supernatural illnesses, but figured they were worse than natural ones.

“No!” he shouted. He breathed in, out. “No,” he repeated softly. “I’ll find a cure.”

What if there isn’t a cure?

Okay. Time for a distraction. “How did Hades adopt you?”

William smoothed the damp hair from her brow. “He says he found me. An infant left to die.”

A twinge of sorrow. A boy rejected by his parents? Been there! Her mother hadn’t believed her—hadn’t wanted to believe her—when she told on her stepdad. Had picked the male over Gillian. “Found you where?”