Page 3 of Powerless
His eyes snapped open, staring at me with their odd-colored gaze. For the first time, he looked confused. As if he didn’t understand the question.
"I'm Alejandro de Leon," I offered. "But you can call me Jandro."
His expression relaxed again as he leaned heavily against the door.
"You can call me Shadow."
One
MARIPOSA
PRESENT DAY
Iflopped over in bed, my hand slapping down on someone's hard, muscular body. As my eyes cracked open, my waking brain registered that this body was covered in short, dense fur.
Sure enough, Hades grinned at me with his goofy Doberman smile before licking my face. "Ugh, dog breath," I groaned, rolling away for fresh air and to finish joining the waking world.
The palm trees cast long shadows over the desert landscape, which meant I slept for several hours. Reaper left to interrogate the outpost guard before I went down for a nap and still hadn't come back.
I sat up, rubbing my face in an attempt to let the events of the last twenty-four hours sink in and solidify in my mind.
There was an explosion, and not a minute later, the outpost guards descended on the Steel Demons MC, despite that we'd come peacefully as guests.
My heart skipped a beat at the notion that I included myself in thatwe, but was I part of them, really? I came as their medic, and I could still feel the ache of having Reaper between my legs earlier this morning.
My life flipped upside down in an instant, but several aspects remained the same. I still provided medical services, my latest patient being the massive Doberman in the bed next to me. I still traveled the Southwest, only I rode on the back of a roaring motorcycle instead of by foot or bus.
And just like before, I was surrounded by deadly men who killed with no hesitation. Only this time, I wasn’t one of their targets. To make matters even more fun, I slept with the Steel Demons president. Making sense of my feelings for him or any of these men seemed as productive as unraveling a spider's web.
On the bright side, the Steel Demons were easy on the eyes and had no intention of killing me, since I was apparently useful.
I shook my head with a sigh and slid my feet down to the floor. These kinds of things shouldn't be thought about on an empty stomach and I wasstarving.
Hades lifted his head off the pillow, watching me as I got dressed.
"You stay here, boy," I told him. "I'll bring you something from the kitchen."
He was having none of that. As I headed for the door, he rolled over and jumped off the bed.
"No!"
I yelled too late, not that he would obey a command from me anyway. But I just put sixteen stitches in his flank to close up a shrapnel wound from the explosion.
"Hades, you can't go jumping," I scolded as he approached. "Your wound needs to heal."
I went to look at it and my heart nearly stopped.
"What the fuck?" I ran my hand over the shaved section of fur just above the incision. "How did you heal so fast?"
He wasn't fully healed, but the progress looked much further than just a few hours. Both sides of the incision had already sealed together, and shiny scar tissue was beginning to form.
I sat on the floor, stunned out of my damn mind. It should have been weeks before it looked like that. On top of his freakish ability to run alongside Reaper's bike without stopping, it became all too clear that nothing was ordinary about this dog.
"How long have I been asleep?" I asked his toothy grin. "Really now. Did I get put under some sleeping beauty spell and only your kiss could wake me up?"
He leaned forward and licked my face, assaulting me with slobber and dog breath again.
"Ugh, I knew it," I laughed, rolling backwards. "Your breath smells like the underworld itself, but you're the only prince around here."
