Page 123 of Zeus

Zayne wouldn't be covered in wounds, his life threatened by whatever poison they injected him with.

There would have been the likelihood that the cop would be going home to her family.

If only things had been handled differently.

If only I hadn't acted on a moment of weakness, given life to my need to let Zayne know how fucking sorry I was for thinking he was remotely similar to the men in The League.

One touch, one lapse in judgment, put us here, and I’ll carry the weight of it to my grave.

My fists clench as I watch the paramedic issue Zayne another fucking dose of Narcan.

Helplessness mingles with the guilt, twisting together inside of me in a way that makes sitting here and letting the medical professionals do their job nearly impossible.

I couldn't do it better. I'm not so egotistical as to think that the minimal medical training I got in the Marine Corps supersedes what this guy has.

Zayne snaps to alertness for a second time, the confusion going from high to not is clearly a lot for him to handle.

His face scrunches, pain evident in the grimace.

He has wounds everywhere. His nose looks to be broken. One eye is completely swollen shut, and the other is inching toward that state with each passing minute.

Purple bruising covers nearly every inch of visible skin. They fucking worked him over hard.

"Zeus," he mutters, making me lean in closer, attempting to get into his limited line of sight.

"I'm here," I assure him, taking one of his hands.

He winces again, but squeezes my hand tighter when I start to pull away.

Tears swell and fall, rolling down his cheeks. As much as I want to swipe them away, I know what happened the last time I did that.

We wouldn't be here if it weren't for my inability to not act on his pain.

"Scott was there," he whispers, his voice ragged and weak.

I look him over, head to toe, sweeping my eyes down his body.

I know what he's trying to tell me, and as I look at his belt, perfectly in place, a sense of relief hits me again.

"It didn't get that far," I assure him, refusing to let my mind wander back to Scott in the cabin when we discovered those two men in bed together.

"What the fuck happened?" he asks.

I pull in a deep breath, my mind working its way backward.

It took us too long to find him. Securing a compound so large, even with the number of men and women we had on our side, took the better part of an hour. The worst part is imagining what happened to him during the time it took us to breach the gate and find him.

The best part is that they had no clue we were part of a bigger organization. They just think they caught two incestuous gay dudes messing around. We weren't met with much force other than the man at the gate and the three guys patrolling.

I was with the Cerberus guys, leading them to Bobby's fucking lair.

Nyx was a fucking psycho. The way he acted today makes me wonder if he even got an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps. He gunned down motherfuckers like he was the one looking for his lover, not me.

I have no doubt that man is on his way out.

I mean, I appreciate his dedication to getting our man out, but I don't know that Cerberus will stand up for him and his actions today.

There's a very real chance that he could face criminal prosecution for what he did.