Chapter 31
We reappeared in my dad's kitchen, making the nymph leap back. The carafe that he was holding dropped out of his hands, shattering on the floor and spilling juice everywhere. Aether growled at him and took a step back to not get his precious military boots tainted. Moros stared at him as if the poor nymph had just offended his mother which he had probably done at one point in his life while working for my parents. The only reason why he could get away with it was him being my dad's favorite. Although my dad heavily denied that but even blind people were able to see that.
"Are you okay?" My dad asked concerned.
The nymph just nodded and started to clean up the mess that he had made on accident. Aether kicked a glass shard in the direction of him, hitting him in the naked foot which earned him a hateful glare. He almost finished without an incident but cut himself on a glass shard in the process of picking it up. Hypnos looked away, gagging at the sight of blood while Aether scoffed at both of them. I was getting fed up with his behavior and he definitively needed to learn when to just shut up and know your place.
"Your servants sucks." Aether determined, making the nymph glare at him again.
My dad ignored him and just gently touched the nymphs wrist, sending magic through it. The skin stitched itself together and he beamed up at him with a thankful smile. Moros and Aether just grunted, irritated that he would waste precious magic on healing a mere servant. I knew they were having issues with superiority but I didn't think they'd be displaying it that publicly. They should know by now that making rude noises and being assholes in general wasn't going to stop my dad from being friendly.
"Moros, Aether could you search down here while Hypnos, Thanatos I take upstairs?" My dad suggested, earning a questioning look from the nymph.
"Mateo and Nolan are visiting." The nymph told him, throwing the glass shards in the trash.
"Never mind. Hypnos, Thanatos and I take downstairs while Moros and Aether take upstairs." He ordered,
The two idiots stomped off, hopefully doing their best to search the upper level of the house. I was pretty sure that my dad wasn't the one I was supposed to be suspecting. He didn't even eat meat because the animal might suffer, it would be weird for him to break this habit and hurt another living being. The other two on the other hand made my skin crawl at the thought of them having put their hands on Alexios.
"The kitchen is clear!" Hypnos announced as if we couldn't see that.
My dad gave him an amused smirk as we left the kitchen. In the living room were standing two other nymphs, chatting and laughing. One of them had very light, almost white, blonde disheveled curls and pinkish eyes that smiled back at us. The other one had dark brown, ragged hair that was cut short in comparison to the smaller ones curls that fell down his back. The dark haired one had an interesting set of eyes, one was the same color as his hair while the other was moss green or whatever. I had never been good at naming colors.
"Are you okay?" The smaller one asked, skipping over to the nymph. "We heard something crash and two angry gods stormed off."
"Yep." Caleb smiled. "They were just pissed because I dropped the juice."
"Oh no, not the juice." The taller one scoffed, dramatic hand gesture included.
My dad tried to supress the smirk that was forming on his face while he was watching them interact. Hypnos had his head cocked to one side, confusion displayed on his face. He probably couldn't cope with the thought of servants ignoring their higher ups. I, on the other hand didn't care. I didn't need people to bow before me and I wasn't insisting on them following the rules. For all I cared they could just do whatever they wanted. The nymphs turned their heads towards my dad, smiling at him.
"Hello, master." Both of them chirped simultaneously.
"Hi, how are you two doing? How are the kids?" My dad asked, smiling at them warmly.
"I'm going to start searching." I huffed, not wanting to waste time with their family stories.
The house wasn't big and beside the kitchen and the entry hall slash book club room there was only a bathroom and a laundry room. I let Hypnos take over the bathroom and just strolled into the laundry room, opening random cabinets and taking a look inside. There was nothing suspicious unless you counted the huge amount of scent boosters that had been stuffed into one of them. I guess one of them had a preference for their clothes smelling like peaches and roses.
Someone, probably the nymph, had folded an impressive amount of laundry that was now balancing in huge stacks around the room just waiting to fall over and filling the room with a pleasant smell. It reminded me of the laundry that had waited in my bathroom to be set aside but no one ever picked it up because I was a sad, depressed piece of shit, freaking out over Alexios' disappearance and I couldn't even manage to look after myself at a good day let alone on a bad day, filled with anxiety and fear. I just let it sit there until it lost its smell and I accidentally blew my house up. Again.
"Take a moment." Chaos dad adviced, noticing I was working myself up again.
"I need him." I whimpered as I sat down, leaning against the washing machine and hugging my knees to my chest. "I didn't even get to tell him. I want him to know how much he means to me and that he makes me happy."
"He knows." My dad hummed, caressing my soul.
I was hurting and I needed time to cope. I hadn't even fully registered that I lost another person I loved dearly and that maybe he wasn't going to come back to me. I was just holding on to the thought that maybe he had just been taken and being held hostage but I would be able to save him for now. Schrödinger's Alexios except I couldn't just ignore the issue and keep it in that state of not knowing forever. I needed to know that he was okay. I needed him back.
I brushed these thoughts aside for now and just hoped that they weren't going to lead to a major break down later. I wasn't going to be able to handle that very well and I didn't want my family to see me like that. They already had enough reasons to make fun of me. I didn't need to add onto that. I brushed my hair out of my face and decided it was a good idea to look for Hypnos. I didn't want him to start eating toothpaste out of boredom.
"Did you find anything?" He asked as I entered the bathroom.
"One of them wears oversized onesies." I shrugged, still trying to regulate my breathing.
"Yeah, and they have a concerning amount of dental floss." Hypnos added, opening up a cabinet that threatened to spill all of its contents onto the floor that only consisted of varying types of dental floss.
We chuckled and went back to the main hall, finding our dad just chatting with the nymphs as if this was a thing you did. This was one of the traits that I liked so much about him. He was very friendly and outgoing in a non Hypnos kind of way. Hypnos just annoyed everyone while my dad managed to make people want to be friends with him because he didn't think of himself as having more worth than other people. He was kind of down to earth. And then there was me, thinking I was absolutely worthless and no one wanted to be my friend. I wondered how they and my dad became friends. As far as I knew, Caleb didn't have any family that could be visiting and no one ever mentioned him having friends. This was interesting.
"We didn't find anything." I reported, making the nymphs look at me.
Hypnos kept eyeing the taller one of them, head cocked to the side. The smaller one glared at him before wrapping his arms around the taller one possessively, making Hypnos smirk. They were both fairly attractive and the smaller one had something strangely feminine about him but that didn't justify staring at them as if they were circus animals. I elbowed Hypnos in the side, hoping to get him to stop. I didn't want them to feel weird about us. I knew they'd probably be weirded out since other gods and goddesses had made it a habit to not very kindly take people as their lover and while Hypnos would never do that, these two didn't know that.
"Hands off. They are married." Caleb grunted.
"I wasn't going to do anything." Hypnos whined, looking for dad to defend him. "I just looked at the eyes. They are pretty. I can't be the only one thinking this."
"If you can talk your way out of this, by all means, please do." I smirked, watching him squirm underneath everyone's stare.
Dad just rolled his eyes at him, making him blush. He tried to get me to take his side and defend him by shooting side glances at me but I wasn't going to do him that favor. He got himself into this situation and he needed to get himself out of it. Preferably by not being a little shit about it and not being like Aether in this situation and accidentally killing or severely injuring them. He groaned frustrated and ran his head through his hair, messing it up even further with strands poking out of his head at every angle.
"I'm sorry." Hypnos decided to declare. "You have pretty eyes. That's all."
"Thank you." The taller one smiled while the smaller one still glared at Hypnos.
I was surprised how mature Hypnos acted and didn't try to brush it off as if it were nothing. I gave him a well deserving pat on the back, making him beam at me. I was about to say something as Moros and Aether stomped down the stairs audibly, warning everyone about the shit show that was about to come. The nymphs visibly put up their guards as both of them entered the room. Who could blame them for that? I was putting up my guard as well at the mere hint of them being present.
"Upstairs is cleared. Nothing unusual except the way you treat your servant, dad." Aether announced before side glancing at Caleb. "He has way too much shit."
"Yeah, how about you throw ninetynine percent of that out the window." Moros added, scrunchip up his nose.
"How about fuck off silver eye!" Caleb hissed.
"Caleb!" My dad scolded him alarmed.
I could see an angry tick form in Aether's jaw and I was already seeing Caleb beat to a bloody pulp on the floor but my dad quickly stepped in, grabbing the three nymphs and teleporting off with them. They were lucky that they had my dad protecting them. If they were treating any other god like that, they would have instantly killed them or skinned them just for entertainment purposes. He returned after a few seconds, looking grumpy.
"Are you really going to let him treat us like that?" Aether snarled as my dad didn't say anything.
"You were kind of asking for it." Hypnos chimed in, hiding behind me as he earned an angry glare.
As if I was going to be able to defend him from Aether. He was just going to destroy both of us in the process. Chaos dad snarled inside of me, pissed off that my brother was now focusing on me and glaring at me. He didn't seem to like the way he was eyeing me and Hypnos and I could feel him getting restless underneath me. Before anything could happen Dad stepped up and confronted Aether who looked surprised at my dad turning against him.
"I have asked you several times to treat him with respect. If you can't do that I'm not going to hold him accountable for getting upset over you provoking him." My dad huffed, now visibly annoyed.
"You are serously now putting me on the same level as him? I'm a god! He is a low blooded nymph!" Aether seethed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
"He still has feelings and you will respect that. If you don't want to go out of your way to be nice to him just don't interact with him at all." My dad growled and his tone left no room for discussion. "Same goes for you, Moros. I don't want to hear another word."
Moros and Aether didn't dare answer back to our dad but their disapproval was clearly displayed on their face. Hypnos quietly giggled into my ear before putting an arm around me. He was enjoying this way too much and those two would surely pick up on that and pay him back later when dad wasn't around anymore. I was pretty sure he wouldn't want to stick around to find out what these two had in store for him.
"Anyone else have something to say?" My dad asked, clearly not expecting any answer.
I was very unsure if I was supposed to be impressed by my dad stepping up to the plate and protecting the nymph or if I should be upset because that would have been what I had needed him to do. He wasn't able to change for me and protect me from my family yet he was able to do that for Caleb. I was trying to rationalize and tell myself that these situations weren't comparable and that there were two completely different sets of circumstances surrounding them but I couldn't help myself to feeling angry and hurt.
"Okay." He said, sighed and rubbed his temples. "Since my house has been cleared we are going to yours next, Moros."
We just nodded because saying something now felt misplaced and would just make the situation even more awkward. We teleported off, one after the other and reappeared in Moros' kitchen that thankfully didn't have a whimpering, bleeding dragon in it. It almost looked nice except I could only think of what happened here. Hypnos was instantly intrigued with a shiny copper pan and looked like he debated stealing it with the way he kept tracing its edge.
"Moros and Aether, you are coming with me. Hypnos, Thanatos, you are taking upstairs." My dad ordered, walking off and having them tail him like little ducklings.
"So, do you want to split up again or are we searching the rooms together? There are a lot of rooms but they are also kind of big." Hypnos drawled, giving the pan one last look as we walked out the door.
I knew Hypnos was just saying that because he didn't want to search them on their own and wanted to talk to me. I was unsure whether he had an actual issue he wanted to share or if it he just needed to shit talk but I was not going to miss out on this. Who didn't want their brother who might have a few lose screws and lived in a cave with psychodelic plants, talk shit about your least favorite brothers? No one.
"Do you think Dad and Caleb are inolved with each other? Like officially?" Hypnos wanted to know as we bust into the first room we laid our eyes own.
"I don't know. I think Dad definitively has feelings for him." I shrugged as I let some magic flow through the room to pick up on potential remains of lycan DNA. "Why don't you ask him?"
Hypnos made a weird face and continued opening up wardrobes. I sighed frustrated as I came up with nothing. I thought I was being smart by using the additional hydrogen bridge bond between the base pairs specific to lycan DNA to pick up on any blood that might belong to one but this room was just a normal room just like the others. It looked like a room you'd give to your servants if you don't want to invest into several rooms and furniture for them and just palm them off with one room with several beds. No privacy or anything like that. Sounded exactly like something Moros would do.
"I can't ask him that! What about mom?" Hypnos exclaimed, distraught by that thought.
"Mom has been unfaithful since the beginning of time." I scoffed, wondering how my dad coped with that,
"Rude but true." He laughed, throwing himself onto one of the beds. "He deserves someone nice. Someone who is like ice cream during a nice summer day at the beach."
"Someone who happens to have navy hair?" I smirked, wiggling my eye brows.
Hypnos snickered, throwing a pillow at me. I let it hit me in the head and fall to the floor, making him squeal excited, laughing his ass off. I rolled my eyes before plopping on the bed next to him, making him wrap his arms around me. I was very tired, trying to ignore my emotions while panic tried to overtake me was draining all the energy inside my body. At least since my dad was sharing a vessel and his magic with me I wasn't hungry every five seconds.
"The nymph is cute, though." He smiled. "And now that they are officially broken up, they could... you know."
"I don't know. Please elaborate." I huffed, teasing him.
"Be very nice to each other!" Hypnos chirped, pretending to be completely innocent.
"That's what you call that?" I laughed, poking his sides.
He started laughing and squirming underneath my teasing fingers, trying to get away from them. I continued to tickle him until he breathlessly begged me to stop and I mercifully granted him that for now. I tried to hide my smile thinking about our childhood. Good to know that some things never really changed such as him being very ticklish.
"Do you have someone who is very nice to you?" I asked, propping myself up on one elbow.
"No. I mean not very nice. Okay might be more fitting." He rambled, trying to come up with something to say.
I raised an eyebrow at his explanation and waited for him to go into more detail but he wasn't willing to further explain. He just stared of in the opposite direction so he didn't have to look me in the eyes. I was getting worried. I didn't want him to suffer because he thought someone loved him who was just in it to use him. I hugged his head against my chest, making him sigh and rub his cheek against me. He was like a hyper puppy, running around carefree and trusting until someone not so nice crossed his way.
"Hypnos, if they are not treating you like you are on equal terms in this relationship then sit them down and talk about it." I tried not to sound like I was lecturing him. "If they don't want to change you might have to cut it off."
"Would you walk away from Alexios?" He asked quietly, still staring at the wall.
"I would if he tried to be nasty." I replied, knowing that he would never try anything like that.
"I will think about it." He tried to palm me off.
I knew this behavior far too well. Trying not to see the bad in people because you so desperately want someone to be by your side and love you that you are willing to put up with shitty people. I just didn't want to see him go through the same kind of shit I had to go through to learn my lesson. If I could, I wanted to be able to protect him from that heart break. He deserved better. He deserved someone that was very nice to him as he put.
"Don't lie to me." I huffed, petting his head.
"I'm not!" He protested, making me roll my eyes.
"I can see it in your eyes, dummy." I disagreed, nudging him in the head.
"We have the same eyes, you can't see shit." He snickered, snuggling closer against me.
"No, we don't." I smirked. "And yes, I can. You look hurt and I don't want you to be hurt."
Hypnos decided it was time to not say anything to that. His silence just confirmed that he wasn't very happy in that relationship and that he didn't know what to do. He started playing with the edges of the blanket before squirming out of bed and getting up. I groaned at the thought of having to leave the bed, having just gotten comfortable and followed his example as he skipped out of the door. He was back to his cheery nature and I was almost back to my grumpy one, still worried though.
"If you want to talk about it, I'll always be there. Same goes for kicking people's butt." I assured him, making him smile back at me.
"Have I told you that you are my most beloved brother?" He cooed, sticking his tongue out at me.
"Please don't." I snorted, taking on the next room.
We managed to get through most of them in a reasonable amount of time without fooling around further before Hypnos looked like he wanted to say something again. He didn't open his mouth to spit it out as I looked under a bed just for shits and giggled because we would have picked up on living beings because we were gods obviously and I would have picked up on lycan DNA because I used my brain unlike the others. Dad and my brothers needed to search for a body. I got back up and found him staring at me, chewing on his lower lip.
"What is it?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I want you to know that I'm happy for you." Hypnos said at last. "Alexios seems nice and you seem like you are doing better. I was worried about you. You seemed to not be doing very well, you know, after it happened. It seemed like things weren't really getting better for you and I was losing hope."
"Worried." I echoed, processing his words.
"Well, uhm I kind of tried to keep an eye on you. Which was kind of hard since you are really good at disappearing for a few a years. I was watching you, I just wanted to make sure you are doing okay." He stuttered, making me frown. "Are you mad at me?"
He looked like he regretted saying anything, looking around to find a way to get himself out of the situation he had created. Telling your brother you watched him being abused by your family without doing anything wasn't the smartest move to pull. I was pretty sure he thought this was a nice thing to say, along the lines of hey I didn't abandon you but it just came across like hey, I didn't do anything to help you and just watched everything happen. I could feel the anger inside of me, trying to boil over, right after I thought I was going to be able to trust him.
"Yes." I replied curtly.
He let his head hang and didn't try to say anything else which I appreciated. Right now I didn't want to deal with this and say something inconsiderate and uncalled for. Surely, the whole situation must have taken a toll on him as well but I couldn't think of anything except for my own pain right now. It drowned out every speck of compassion and instead filled me with anger that threatened to overtake me. I let out a stressed grunt and tried to get away from Hypnos as far as I could in case I imploded or something. He wouldn't find that enjoyable.
We continued to search the rest of downstairs in silence while he awkwardly kept running after me and trying to not annoy me. I was about to yell at him as we entered the last room and found Nael playing with Zoe. I gestured for Hypnos to be quiet and just leaned against the door frame, watching them. The dragon kept dangling his tail in front of her face, scales glinting in the light while she kept trying to grab at it, giggling. She kept going until she laid her eyes on me, getting up and running towards me.
"Hello to you too." I smiled, picking her up.
She giggled, trying to grab my hair while Nael got up and started to walk towards us. He was limping a bit and I was mentally charging Moros with neglect for having not watched after him. Dragons had the mindset of children and most of them never reached mental adulthood. Most likely because they happened to die really fast due to their master not paying enough attention to them and them constantly going after shiny things and falling off everything. You constantly needed to look after them to keep them from getting into trouble and hurting themselves. Unless he was the one who hurt him.
"Did you have fun?" I asked Zoe, making her nod eagerly.
"She doesn't want to eat sometimes. I don't know why. If that happens I'm mixing into her juice some of that high calory powder I found at the store. I hope that's okay." Nael told me, petting her head.
"That's fine." I said, inspecting her body which seemed normal, not showing any signs of malnutrition. "What's with your leg."
"Nothing." He replied, trying to hide it.
I could feel Chaos dad shift underneath me, getting unsettled. I tried to surpress a smile that started to form on my face, initiated by his care for the dragon. Nael obviously didn't want to talk about it and I could understand that. I mean, I was just the creepy guy that popped in once in a while to harvest his soul and to make him watch the child that I found. I'd be unwilling to share crucial information about myself with me too.
"He is lying. Do something." Chaos dad demanded.
"And what? He doesn't want to talk about it. Let it go." I suggested but he just growled at me.
"No!" He insisted.
The dragon just gave me a weird look and went to take Zoe from my arms to play with her. Hypnos started to inch closer and just as he was about to say something, Dad walked into the room, tailed by Moros and Aether who still looked grumpy. I smirked at the thought of my dad continuing to lecture them for the entire time they spent searching upstairs. I hoped he really drilled it into them and they learned their lesson. Just kidding, they were probably too stupid to learn anything.
"I assumed you didn't find anything either?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Yeah, because I have better shit to do than to waste time holding your fuck toy hostage." Moros snarled at me.
"Moros, language!" My dad reprimanded him while Nael covered Zoe's ears. "There is a child present."
"I have better things to do than to hear you speak but here we are." I grunted, earning some hateful glares.
Moros looked like he wanted to add something but Aether held him back, shaking his head. Nael uncovered Zoes eyes again, making her giggle and grab his hands. She looked a lot happier than the first time I had seen her and it made me happy to know she was slowly getting over the death of her parents. I needed to do some research to figure out who they were to be able to tell her about them later. I could make a photobook or something.
"Next one or do any of you want to take a break?" My dad asked, looking at all of us.
We just shook our heads, looking to see if someone was going to chicken out at the thought of meeting our mother and peddling the line to her that we were going to search her house. That was going to be fun and if we were still able to walk after that and didn't have to scratch our vessels from the wall, I was going to be very surprised. They didn't look like they were looking forward to it either and she actually liked her other children.
"Let's get this over with." My dad sighed, teleporting off.
"Brace yourself. I will be there to defend you." Chaos dad assured me.
I granted him one last look at the dragon and then followed the others to my mom's house. I reappeared along side them and sucked in a sharp breath as I laid my eyes on the surroundings. Standing there was my mother and right next to her was Alexios.