Bound to Gods_A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy by Eva Chase

Author:Eva Chase [Chase, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989096154
Publisher: Ink Spark Press
Published: 2018-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

15

Aria

I should have known I’d end up somewhere bad after Muninn’s warning, after the anger on her face. But somehow I wasn’t prepared to find myself skidding to a stop in the living room of my old house, with the sour smell seeping from the stained carpet and the sofa cushions sagging in the dim light that made it past the blinds. Every muscle in my body tensed instinctively, even though I was alone in the room.

Alone for that brief moment. I spun around, and Mom appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, her expression taut as a wrung towel.

She jabbed a finger at me. “Don’t give me that look. As if you deserve half the time and energy I already give to you. Why don’t you stay in your room where I don’t have to see that pinched face of yours? You don’t like dinner? Get a job and buy it yourself.”

It was a patchwork of rants from across my childhood. Lord only knew which dinner I’d complained about—a lot of the time she’d just tossed a few pieces of bread and some margarine on the table and told Francis and me to go at it. By the time I was thirteen, a year after his death, I had started picking up odd jobs to keep me out of the house and put a little more food in my belly. She’d been making that suggestion since I was something like five, if she bothered to answer a complaint at all instead of just rolling her eyes and turning her back on me.

“Why don’t you get a job?” I snapped back now before I had a chance to think better of engaging. My nerves jittered. Who else was going to appear? That hair-cut—lank, shoulder-length, and bleached a yellower blonde—that was circa the Trevor years. An icier shudder ran through me.

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you little bitch!” Mom screeched. I was already diving for the door at the other end of the room. I dashed through the mudroom that was more of a trash bin, out to the backyard where the rusted swing set left by the house’s former owners was creaking.

If I got far enough away, would Muninn just throw me back here? Might as well find out. I’d rather be running than waiting around for the real horror show to start. What I really needed was to find at least one of the other gods. The raven woman had all but confirmed it with her reactions. When we were together, challenging the memories, her prison got so much shakier.

I scrambled over the dented chain-link fence and dashed down the neighbor’s driveway. The growl of a familiar engine, the one that had taught me to burrow myself deep under my covers if I heard it arriving late at night—as if that would protect me any—carried down the street.

My heart stuttered. I threw myself in the opposite direction.

I was stronger than that now. If he came at me, if Muninn forced the issue, I’d slit his fucking throat.

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