Hades' Cursed Luna

Eve

I couldn't move.

Couldn't scream.

His weight pinned me, knees caging my hips, hands like iron bands on my wrists above my head.

And those eyes.

They weren't Hades' eyes.

They were pits—black sclera swallowing bloody irises, searing with something ancient, something cruel. Not just looking at me—but through me. Skin. Bone. Thought. Memory. Like they were cataloging the pieces of me, laying them bare and peeling them apart.

A whimper scraped up my throat, but it never made it past my lips. His hand slid to my cheek, thumb grazing softly—too softly—across the curve of my face.

"You can't hide from me, Red," he whispered. The voice was his. But it wasn't.

Not fully.

Not anymore.

Not with the way it curled at the edges like burning parchment.

"Even in dreams, I find you. Especially there."

His grip tightened. My bones cried beneath it. My wrists went numb.

And still his gaze held mine, forcing me to look.

> Strip her. Pull her soul thread by thread. She belongs to us.

I could hear his thoughts.

We were linked.

Rhea snarled in my mind, furious, clawing forward.

Let me—let me shift! Let me take control!

But each time she surged, something yanked me back.

Like a leash.

No—like a tether. One coiled around my mind, my body, my blood.

I thrashed beneath him, panic flooding me now, burning up my throat, breaking into tears that never fell.

"Hades," I choked, "please—please, it's me—"

But he didn't blink.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't see me.

> "You dream of happy endings," he murmured, voice dark silk sliding around a dagger. "Of vows, of sons, of forgiveness. But that dream is a lie."

His face inched closer. Forehead brushing mine. A breath.

I tried to turn away—his fingers caught my chin, forced it back.

The mate mark on my neck ignited. Fire, real fire, searing down into bone. My back arched involuntarily as a scream ripped out of me.

"I will not be cast aside," he growled now, voice cracking. "I will not be forgotten. You promised yourself to me, Eve. You bled for it. You burned for it." Hades snarled into my face.

His mouth brushed my ear.

"And now, so will I."

His teeth scraped skin.

Not biting.

Branding.

And through it all, that voice layered beneath his—The Flux.

Mocking. Watching. Feeding.

> "She's yours, boy. Just take her. It's what she's owed you. What they've all owed you."

I bucked beneath him, twisting, crying, trying to reach for anything—

But the world had gone slick and black around the edges.

I was sinking.

Deeper.

And he was coming with me.

His eyes—

Gods, his eyes—

They burned brighter now, two bloody eclipses swallowing every thought I tried to keep for myself. The pressure behind them was relentless, his stare a vice tightening around my skull, my thoughts, my will.

I tried to close my eyes.

Tried to look away.

But I couldn't.

I couldn't even blink.

A growl tore from his throat as his pupils dilated, bleeding into the crimson around them. The whole world narrowed to that stare—those eyes—and then—

He was inside me.

Not touching.

Invading.

A cruel, precise unraveling of everything I was. My mind thrashed, but I couldn't escape. I could feel him—inside my thoughts—his words no longer spoken, but engraved behind my ribs.

> You will submit to me.

You will come back to me.

You will stand by me.

My will is your fate.

I sobbed, but it sounded distant—like I was underwater. No. Not water.

Tar.

I was drowning in it. Thick, black, cloying. It clung to my throat, filled my lungs. Rhea was gone—her voice, her fire, her claws—ripped away from me like smoke in a storm.

It was happening again.

Just like Leon.

Just like that awful night in the woods when I tore through him and his father, covered in blood, screaming on the inside but unable to stop.

A passenger in my own body.

A weapon. Again.

Unable to take control of what was mine. My will being stolen from me.

"No," I whimpered. "No, not again—"

But Hades leaned down, and his lips met mine.

Soft. Gentle. Too tender, too Wrong.

The kiss tasted like fire and treachery, smoke and betrayal. Sweet like poisoned honey. It coated my mouth, filled my chest with something that hurt. It was suffocating—cloying—intoxicating. And the more I breathed it in, the more the world tilted.

The more I forgot.

My mind cracked.

And then—

It began.

Memories—torn free.

The night he told me I was nothing but a vessel. The moment he admitted I was a tool, a means to harvest the blood of my people. The plan to exterminate them. All of it—

Twisting.

Changing.

Softening.

> "I did what I had to."

"I was protecting you."

"You were always mine."

I tried to scream. Tried to claw my way out. But those memories—they weren't mine anymore. They were being rewritten, bled through with apology and desperation, his voice overlapping mine.

I was unraveling.

And he—

He was stitching me back together in his image. To forget what he had done, what he had planned to do. So I would be his claim again but this time I would have no choice because I would have forgotten.

Tears slid from the corners of my eyes, slipping down my cheeks like silent bloodletting.

Because I was losing.

This was worse than betrayal.

This was erasure.

Not just of choice—but of self.

My body was still beneath him, my wrists bruising under his hold, but it wasn't the pain that broke me.

It was the truth.

He was stealing me.

Not with chains. Not with a needle. But with a kiss laced in false memory. With his eyes in my mind, threading his will into the places where I once lived—where I once chose.

Where I fought.

Just like my parents had.

Just like James had.

Just like Ellen.

Just like Felicia.

They'd all tried to mold me into what they needed. A daughter. A sister. A puppet. A monster. A sacrifice.

But this—this was different.

Because this was the man I had loved.

The man who had made me believe I could be free, only to prove that he had always wanted me chained—just with his name instead of theirs.

> "This is love," his voice whispered into my mind, smooth as silk over rot. "I'm just taking back what's mine."

No.

No, this wasn't love.

This was possession. Disguised in longing. Drenched in control.

I sobbed beneath him, my tears carving down my cheeks in salt and grief and fury. The kind of fury I couldn't voice because he had buried it beneath obedience. Beneath twisted loyalty. Beneath every memory he'd rewritten to make me forget how to hate him.

I could feel pieces of myself slipping away like sand through an open palm.

My name.

My rage.

My fear.

Even Rhea was gone—her silence a scream I couldn't answer. My wolf had been severed from me, cut out so the man I once chose could rebuild me in a mold that worshipped him.

"You said I was yours," I whispered, numb. "But I was never even me, was I?"

The kiss had taken more than breath.

It had taken truth.

And he hadn't asked.

He hadn't waited.

He decided.

Just like everyone else had.

"You said I was different," I breathed, voice cracking. "But you just wanted me quiet. Docile. Yours."

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

His hands, once trembling with reverence, now gripped like shackles.

And in the hollow shell of that dream—where joy had bloomed, where Elliot had almost spoken—I now lay splintered.

Alone.

Hades had not broken me with cruelty.

He had broken me with love that demanded obedience over choice.

And as his lips brushed mine again, sealing the last command into my skin—

I knew.

This was not a bond.

It was a cage.

And the worst part?

I had built it with him. One vow. One kiss. One lie at a time.

Pain twisted into rage just before it could be dispelled. Rhea's voice came through, small but just enough for me to hear. "Burn the love and destroy him, Elysia. You have done it once before."