Go to him - he waits for you...
These are the last words Stephanie Perry hears before getting into a fatal car crash. Though it didn't kill her, it put her in a coma. For six months she had these wild dreams about a man who was just as broken and stubborn as she was, and with a dark side to match. He kept her sane, and he felt real to her...too real perhaps. When she finally woke up, surrounded by friends and family, she felt like she'd lost someone very important to her.
In fact, the feeling of loss left her empty and sad - something that never happened as spring rolled in every year. She didn't understand, but a chance encounter would throw her world into Hell - and maybe this time she'll get to stay there...
A girl protected by the arms of her mother becomes a woman who can walk through flames...
Hades's Persephone was one of these women - as fierce as her mother and as lovely as the spring she allowed to be blessed upon the Earth. He was happy for centuries, until man decided that he no longer wanted to follow the Gods of Olde, and rose up against them. Many beloved family were lost, on both sides, and for Hades, the loss of his Flower was almost too much for him to bare. It took his brothers years to bring him out of his self-destructive state; which brought about many disease epidemics and terrible natural disasters. A millennium later, he's finally gotten back into the swing of things: welcome the souls, judge their actions, and send them onward to where they're going - and then she appeared. She was a Wanderer (a soul that was loose because the body was between life and death), but she was RIGHT THERE, for the first time in centuries. He wanted to keep her, but he knew Demeter would be angry if he brought her daughter back. She'd warned him long ago to leave her alone, but this girl is different, this time is different - this time he can't lose her.
With a new name and new life, Nathan must learn to fit in at an Academy of the Feral Investigation Bureau, or risk being sent back to prison.
*****
Escaping prison was only the beginning for inmate C41. Now on the run and going by Nathan, he's enrolled in an American Academy for training agents and joins the Feral Investigation Bureau, charged with hunting down criminals and sending them to the same place he just escaped. But after learning how blurred the distinction is between feral and non-feral, Nathan is forced to flee with his sister and his boyfriend, only to discover their safe house hides a secret that might cost Nathan his freedom.
Content and/or Trigger Warning: sex and violence. [Note: failed suicide attempt]
[[word count: 70,000-80,000 words]]