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Ethan Hades falls into the god category . . . though the myths surrounding Hades are far different than the truth of who he really is. God of the Underworld is just one of his many responsibilities. After spending centuries alone, a scapegoat for anything and everything that goes wrong in the world, he’s given up on life. He gave up on love way before that.

Until one day a woman he can’t ignore walks into his life. They have nothing in common—that she’s mortal being is only one of the many differences between them. Holland Corbin is everything Ethan has been waiting an eternity to find. One problem—she’s hell-bent on keeping him as far away from her as possible and looks at him like he’s the devil himself. Which, okay, she has good instincts.

He might have to move heaven and hell to get her to accept and admit her feelings for him. He might have to forfeit his own infinite existence to be with her. He might have to stand in contempt of the only set of laws he’s ever followed. But he will. He’d give everything to be with her, and he just might be forced to pay that exact price.

He’s damned either way. Might as well go out fighting for the woman he loves.

Somewhere between the myth and reality was where you’d find the truth. But you wouldn’t see it if you weren’t looking, and most people weren’t.

   Most people were content to believe what they wanted to believe, as opposed to the alternative—accepting what was actually real.

   Take me for instance. There was the myth of who I was, and there was the truth. My first name was Ethan—a perfectly everyday name—but it’s not the name I was given at birth. No, that name I used as a last name now, as a reminder of who I was. Not that I could forget. My reputation seemed to precede me in every life I lived, not because people knew who I really was or would believe me if I told them, but because they knew something was different about me. Something was to be avoided.

   They were right.

   “Ethan Hades.”

   So yeah. Bet you didn’t need twenty guesses to figure out who I was—who I really was. Yes, gods were real. No, we weren’t anything like the myths you’d grown up reading in school. Names, places, and rough ideas were about the only details the Greeks had gotten right. The rest was a bunch of fabricated rubbish. I

    rose from the tiny canvas stool that lined the outside of the medical tent, my legs not the least bit tired from holding a chair squat for the past twenty minutes while I’d waited for the new camp doc, who was not earning any points from me since he was running late. I had stuff to do. Stuff that didn’t include waiting on a scrap of fabric that would have been lucky to hold a mortal man of my size. That was another fun fact for the god/goddess trivia book—we weighed significantly more than a mortal the same stature. It had something to do with our bodies being solid muscle, and nothing like the kind of muscle humans possessed. Our muscles were heavier, stronger, and impenetrable—fitting since we were immortal beings.

    I didn’t say anything as the nurse lifted the tent curtain for me. Neither did she. She’d been trying to get into my bed since she’d first started her rotation a few months ago. I’d told her I hadn’t signed up with World Corps, and travelled to third world countries on various outreach missions, to get laid. I’d been nice about it. The first dozen times. The last dozen, I’d been curter with my replies, which might have explained the reason she was looking at me like she wanted to drive a scalpel through my eye.

   Good luck with that. Immortal being. Meaning cannot die. By scalpel to the cornea or any other method.

   Believe me, I’d put it to the test.

   The landscape directly below Frenchman’s Cliff would never be the same. It looked like some meteor had fallen there, carving a crater where the ground had been level before my attempt to challenge my immortal state of being.

Kat Austen is the secret pen name of a New York Times and USATODAY bestselling author. Kat writes short and steamy reads that leave hearts (and other parts) satisfied.

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