Betrayal in Elysium [malexmale]

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

"Jeez," I muttered to Cain the next day as he scribbled down notes about the recent sweep of a nearby village, "You didn't have to drag people out of their houses."

Cain looked up, obviously exhausted, stressed, and pissed. Maybe telling him he was wrong was a bad idea on my part, but I was getting tired and stressed out too. This whole thing with trying to find Hannibal was causing the underworld to go into a frenzy. People were fighting to leave, feeling that their rights were violated, but Cerberus only scared them away from the entrance.

The best part is? This is the fucking underworld, not a country in the mortal world.

No one had rights.

Not without god blood. Hell, even my brothers and I carried god blood and we were still shoved to the back burner. We'd been trying to contact Hades about this whole mess, but he refused to see any of us and had locked himself away. We even asked Noe to contact Apollo, but Apollo had shut down and wouldn't associate with us.

Because we were trying to save the world by finding Hannibal, and Prometheus and Rara, we were starting to look lik the bad guys and no one wanted to be around us. Even more annoying was that people didn't understand that we were trying to save them and kept making silly claims about being violated and abused by their government.

Government?

Did anyone realize we didn't have a government? Hades made the decisions. If he wasn't here, Persephone did. Hell, even if he was here, Persephone had tons of influence on him. The next people down were demigods and even we didn't have too much power.

I sighed, frustrated as I sat back in one of the chairs across from Cain's desk, pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.

"Sorry," I said at last, looking up to see him frowning at me, "I'm just not feeling that great about all of this. I feel like maybe we caused more trouble than there was to begin with." Cain paused at that, then slowly got up and made his way over to me. He leaned on the back of my chair, cupping my face in his hands and tilting my head back so I was looking up at him. He studied my face, then leaned down to nuzzle his nose against mine.

"It'll end soon," He assured with a playful smile that warmed my heart to see again, "And when it does, we can get started on building our life together again." I blinked, cocking my head at him.

"What'd you mean?" I asked. Now Cain looked curious.

"You can come live with me permanently. I can have my room expanded and we can get you new clothes. While I like the way your ass looks in leather, I wanna get you nice new clothes to wear that'll make your ass look even better." He added, sounding delighted. I forced a smile at him and he accepted that, kissing me again before he went back to work.

That made me uneasy, though. He'd said almost the same thing back then, back after the first time I had forgiven him, when he first came to the underworld. He'd lavished me with clothes and dressed me in clothes that he liked. He didn't listen to me when he told me they were uncomfortable. I swallowed, wanting to tell Cain that I rather go shopping with Jahlia. Jahlia knew what kind of clothes I wanted.

And thinking about her made my heart ache. I hadn't seen her in a while, not since I started hanging out with Cain again. I had been trying to find a chance to visit, to see how she was doing and how her baby was and her boyfriend, but right when I debated going into Inferi, Cain would tug me back and give me something else to do. I hoped she wasn't mad at me. I really needed to put my foot down about this.

He was doing it again.

Cain liked to be in control. He was used to having it. Christ, he lorded over both Elysium and the Fields of Asphodel, and even back in the mortal realm, Cain had taken control of almost everyone, except Adam, but Adam liked to ignore most of us 98% of the time. So Cain was always there to tell me what to do, and I used to let him do it because I was young and I was stupid. To me, Cain was my whole world. He was my god.