Halo absorbed the details and nodded. So far, he’d heard nothing alarming.
“The first battle begins tomorrow,” Chaos continued, “and also today and a week from now. But only after the freeze. Between one and the other, seven days will pass. The cycle ends only with the final death. No need to worry for the other Astra. They are off-limits.”
Another freeze? The first battle occurred today and tomorrow? Could the god be any more confusing? At least Halo wouldn’t have to divide his focus between duty and protection. “I will be ready.”
“Will you?” A grin, there and gone. Then Chaos threw more information at him. “Harpina is the battlefield. A trumpet signals a new clash. A single blast, and a kill must be made. Two blasts, and there’s a puzzle to solve or a feat to complete. Before you begin, shout the name of your champion. At the end of a labor, you’ll hear another trumpet. Tonight, you will meet Erebus at the harpy coliseum. A greeting of rivals. There shall be no bloodshed among the two of you.”
“I won’t kill him...yet,” Halo promised.
“Exactly what he said about you.” The god studied him for a long while, curious and silent. It was something Chaos had done the day they’d met. The day he uttered the words that forever changed Halo’s life. You will be my crowning glory. My Halo. I’ll teach you a better way to hate. “Fight well. In the end, you won’t succeed otherwise.”
“I never fight any other—” Chaos vanished “—way.”
Halo’s mind whirled as he tried to make sense of everything he’d heard. Twelve feats, fought by Erebus or his champion. Twelve opportunities for the god to torture Halo in some way. Beginning tomorrow, but also the day after. And yet the day wouldn’t end until Halo won or lost the twelfth battle.
What was Chaos telling and not telling him? Halo thought he understood the instruction about Harpina at least. He wasn’t to leave the battlefield—the realm—for any reason. A warrior persisted until the end of the war. No retreat and no surrender.
A noise caught his attention. A high-pitched voice. Female. Panicked. Coming from the throne room. Someone else was aware of the events?
He flashed inside the palatial chamber...where he found the dark-haired beauty with the luscious body rushing from harpy to harpy, chanting, “Don’t freak out, don’t freak out, don’t freak out.” She shook someone, then slapped another. “Wake up! I mean it. The joke is old.”
At the sight of her, his blood boiled and pressure eased, as if already programmed to do so. He curled his hands into fists. Did the sweet-smelling female play a part in his task? Was she a tool Erebus hoped to use against him? She must be. Even the General was suspended in time upon her throne, half-standing, appearing to have stopped in the middle of a sharp rebuke.
With the Blade of Destiny, the god could have easily predicted Halo’s unprecedented reaction to a certain female. For all he knew, his enemy had used this mysterious Bloodmor to manufacture the response. Either way, this harpy was dangerous to him. So what was he going to do with her?
4
Ophelia sensed a presence. A familiar warmth layered with the scent she’d dubbed pure lust: that not-even-fair infusion of smoked cherries and sandalwood. It was his scent. The Astra’s. With the slightest whiff, different parts of her tingled to startling life. She buzzed with anticipation and curdled with dread.
Trembling, she spun to face him. Oh yes. It was Halo, the douchebag who’d made her milliseconds too late for her meeting, earning her the beginnings of a severe and completely undeserved scolding.
He stood near the doors, roughly twenty feet away, his hands opening and closing into fists. Had he stalkered-up and followed her in without her knowledge?
Super flattering and uber annoying. But, um, the picture he presented...did something to her. He was all hard strength and savage determination, with a body built for war—her most favorite kind.
Her heart thudded as if she’d just finished another five-hour sprint on the treadmill.
Focus! Right. Surely the “nice” Astra would help her figure this out.
Speed walking closer, she blurted, “Do you know what’s going on?” Where was Vivi? Was she okay? Had the entire realm gotten stuck in time like this?
He narrowed his eyes. The slightest lowering of his lids that was somehow terrifying. “You don’t ask questions, harpy. You answer them.”
Whoa! Not so nice, after all. She bristled. “First of all, dude, chill out. Final answer. Lock it in and send me home with my prize money.”
“I will have what I want.” He clasped her wrist, and she gasped, a total body fever spiking in an instant.
The heat! Had there ever been anything more delicious? Humiliatingly docile, Ophelia allowed the big, bad wolf to flash her to a bedroom. His bedroom, no doubt about it. The potency of his scent heightened exponentially. In other words, pure lust saturated her being. She teetered at the edge of a needing.