Page 13

Six months later…

I t had taken a couple of weeks for the shock of what had happened to wear off, but eventually, afterlife in the Underworld had returned to normal.

Not surprisingly, the twins they had rescued from the mirror world had found the quaint village to be an uncomfortable reminder rather than a source of solace.

As such, they had chosen to cross the river pretty early on, and Keegan couldn’t say he blamed them.

Noah, however, had opted to stay, and he hadn’t fully worked out how he felt about that.

While his brother had insisted that he had his own reasons that didn’t involve Keegan, he didn’t know if he believed him.

At least, not entirely.

Naturally, he hated the idea of them never seeing each other again, but more than that, he wanted Noah to be happy.

Seeing his distress, Rune had offered to cross with him, removing the burden of having to choose between the two people he loved most in the world.

Unfortunately, that solution had come with its own set of complications.

Namely the fact that Hades himself had expressly forbidden any of the Guardians from crossing the river while they still lived.

Keegan had only met the god the one time, and that had been more than enough.

Despite his mate’s claims to the contrary, he was pretty sure he’d been about two seconds away from being smited into oblivion, which was not an experience he wished to repeat.

And breaking Hades one rule seemed like a surefire way to piss him all the way off.

Besides, he had a pretty good thing going in the village.

Miss Helen let him help out at the bakery.

Cian had reluctantly agreed to let him wait tables on occasion.

Much to Rune’s displeasure, Geoffery had been teaching him how to throw knives.

He hadn’t stabbed himself once.

Nicks on his fingers didn’t count, no matter what his overprotective mate said.

A couple of times a week, he met with Paris for a drink—or four—at the tavern.

Though, he had to admit his favorite part of those nights was when Rune showed up to give him a piggyback ride home.

Mostly, however, he spent his days helping Rune manage the day-to-day business of the village.

Instead of having the residents come directly to his mate with their grievances, Keegan had encouraged him to set up “suggestion” boxes in both the Tower and at the diner.

It had worked surprisingly well, and it kept Rune from being dragged into unreasonable arguments with people who wanted an immediate solution to their problems.

Once a week, Keegan collected the slips of parchment, inputted them into a spreadsheet on Rune’s tablet, and categorized them by type and priority.

There were the typical complaints, of course, like noisy neighbors and foul smells, but he had been seeing more and more actual suggestions for improving the village.

Sadly, not all of them were practical…

or even possible. Real streetlamps instead of hanging lanterns, for example.

Rune had no control over the infrastructure, and he couldn’t just create electricity out of nothing.

Sometimes, like now, he even helped mediate petty squabbles between the residents in the Tower while his mate oversaw the supply drop at the pier.

And he hated it. Frankly, he had no idea how Rune did it without losing his mind.

Today, the issue stemmed from Sergei, the resident curmudgeon of the eighth floor, who had decided—again—that only he could access the middle elevator.

This time, however, he had taken it a step further.

In an act of defiance, protest, or lunacy, he had relocated his entire bedroom into the cab of the lift.

If that hadn’t been bad enough, the Tower, being the passive aggressive, semi-sentient asshole it was, had responded in kind.

Instead of just booting him from the cab, however, it had trapped him behind a collapsable metal gate, refusing to let him leave.

Then it had spent the past several hours in constant movement, carrying him between the different floors at terrifying speeds.

The one saving grace to the situation was that the building actually seemed to like Keegan, so when he had arrived, Sergei had been waiting in the lobby.

Still trapped, still angry, but easily accessible.

“This damn thing is possessed!” he shouted through the metal lattice.

Well, he couldn’t argue with that.

“Then why did you piss it off?”

“I’m protecting my property.”

Keegan rubbed a hand over his face and sighed.

The male’s hair had just started to gray at the temples before his death, and he had a ruddy, rugged face that spoke of a hard life before the end.

A life in which he’d probably been forced to fight for every scrap he owned.

Keegan could understand.

He could even sympathize.

At the same time, it had been thousands of years.

Thousands of opportunities to grow and adapt.

“You don’t even leave the Tower,” Keegan reasoned.

“Why do you need an entire elevator to yourself?”

“It’s the principle.”

“What principle?”

“I had it first.”

Keegan didn’t even know what the fuck that meant.

“You were the first one to use the elevator?”

Sergei nodded.

“This one. It wasn’t here before I arrived.”

Instead of immediately dismissing him, Keegan pressed his lips together and tried to work out the logic.

Hades had erected the high-rise as a home for the souls of the Underworld—for altruistic reasons or because tents on the riverbank were ruining the aesthetics, no one knew.

The first residents had died long before humanity had any concept of electricity, let alone modern conveniences like elevators.

To them, the lifts must have seemed like nothing more than a magic box that transported them home.

And technically speaking, they weren’t wrong.

Following that thread, it stood to reason that since the elevator had appeared upon Sergei’s arrival—likely an expansion to facilitate the growing population—he had believed it was made specifically for him.

“I understand,” he said, partly to Sergei, but mostly to himself.

He racked his brain, trying to find the words to appeal to the man’s way of thinking.

“Since you don’t really use it, though, it kind of seems like a waste, don’t you think?”

“It’s not a waste.”

“Then what would you call it? There are already so few resources. Shouldn’t people use and appreciate what’s available to them?”

“Yeah…well…I suppose that’s right.”

It wasn’t a full agreement, but his defensive posture relaxed, and something flickered in his eyes, a spark of uncertainty, maybe.

“I agree that this elevator cab is yours, but as a founding member of the community, wouldn’t it be better to lead by example?”

“I’m no leader.”

But Keegan could see the idea appealed to him, so he pressed on.

“How about this? What if you allowed people to use your elevator? It’s still there when you need it, but we won’t be wasting or neglecting resources. How does that sound?”

Sergei studied him for a long time before asking, “It’s still mine?”

“Absolutely, and you’d be doing everyone a huge favor by letting them borrow it sometimes.”

The guy finally relented with a decisive nod.

“I guess that would be okay.”

“We are in your debt, sir.”

With that, the gate disappeared, the doors closed, and the elevator rolled away, presumably to return Sergei to his eighth-floor unit.

Shaking his head at the ridiculousness, Keegan turned toward the lobby exit, freezing when he realized he had an audience.

Rune leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest and a grin stretching his mouth.

“How long have you been there?”

Rune pushed upright with a shrug.

“A while.”

“And you couldn’t have helped?”

“Why would I?” he asked, coming to join him by the lifts.

“You handled it just fine on your own.”

His chest swelled with pride, and a beaming smile curved his lips.

“I did, didn’t I?”

Rune chuckled at him.

“You did good, kid.”

“What’s my reward?” he teased.

Grabbing him by the front of his sweater, Rune jerked him close, then spun them around, pressing Keegan’s back against the doors of the elevator.

It was swift, fluid, and sexy as hell.

“What do you want, kaelaer ?”

His stomach tightened with need, and desire pooled in his groin, his cock instantly swelling behind the zipper of his jeans.

The sudden onslaught of carnality short-circuited his brain, burning away reason and decorum.

So, instead of some flirty quip, he blurted out the unfiltered truth.

“A flat surface and a little privacy.”

The doors behind him parted without warning, and he stumbled into the cab, Rune following, anchoring him against the glass wall.

“What else?” Rune asked, a touch of a growl in his voice.

Keegan shivered as he arched up on his toes to bring their lips together.

There really was only one reasonable response to such a loaded question.

“Everything,” he breathed.

“I want everything.”

Then Rune captured his mouth—hungry, dominant, possessive—reminding him that he already had it.