Bonds of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

Here is a summary with spoilers for Bonds of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

After Alexi’s forced marriage to Augustus and Kharon, she decided to flee to Crete. She’s been hiding on the island, sheltered by Persephone and Hades, her parents, and has been happily there for months. She hasn’t wasted time—she has a plan and has also been training with Hades for the gladiator competition, though her mom doesn’t want her to join the competition.

Her trial to join the games is first. Hades leaps her to the trial, and waiting for her are all four men: Augustus, Kharon, Achilles, and Patro. Competing with her is Drax, who volunteers to do the trials because he wants to prove himself. The trial is for her to run and not be caught or shot at. She fails when she gets shot, and to try and get away from the men, she leaps and ends up right next to Kharon. Kharon gets upset with her because if she leaps when injured, she has a high possibility of killing herself. But not wanting to be caught by Kharon again, she leaps and goes to Montana. Kharon comes right after her, angry now, but also pleading with her to come back home. As he gets close to her, Alexis tries to shoot him, misses, so then she tasers him, though Kharon says he likes it. That is how Augustus finds Kharon and Alexis. Alexis panics again, not wanting to go with them, so despite their protests, she quickly leaps. It’s pure agony; she hears a woman screaming and then passes out.

Hades finds Alexis badly injured in one of the caves below Crete. He refuses to let any of the men near her while she heals. But while waiting, they learn that Medusa has escaped, and they start to worry, as she may be coming for them. Once Alexis is healed enough to walk, she is given the choice to be mentored and go with Augustus and Kharon or Patro and Achilles. She chooses Patro and Achilles, though she still has to go to Augustus and Kharon’s house to stay protected from the threat of Medusa. Alexis decides to leap to the dungeons, where she releases a prisoner, Ceres, who was involved with killing innocents as part of Zeus’s plan. Alexis decides to free her, believing that she is innocent. When Alexis gets caught breaking her out, Patro is able to use his powers to prove that Ceres has nothing to do with it. They allow Ceres to come up and live with them, specifically with Helen, though they stay suspicious.

As the gladiator trials get closer, Alexis gets trained, and she finds it difficult to hide her blind eye and deaf ear, but she takes all the grief that the men give her. Achilles and Kharon keep trying to apologize and get close to Alexis, and every day she finds it harder and harder to ignore them.

One of Alexis’s first trials is to go hunting for Titans in Rome with Achilles and Patro. Before they start their hunt, Patro mentions that he thinks he knows of a way to sever the marriage bond she has with Augustus and Kharon. In order to break it, she must basically kill them, then they drink her blood, and she needs to mean it. Alexis debates their help until she realizes that they are coming closer to their birthdays and will be forced to marry; she thinks that they want her to marry and that’s why they want her to break the bond. She refuses, but during their fight, she reveals to them that she can speak sign language. They are furious with her for not telling them sooner, so Alexis walks away—right into some winged Titans. During the fight, Patro gets hurt, and Achilles leaps the two of them to safety, leaving Alexis behind. Alexis knows that she can’t take the two Titans by herself and embraces death. She ends up losing her bad ear, rips her back apart, and is just about to give up when all of a sudden, her animal protector, Fluffy Jr., grows and attacks the Titans for her, though Alexis still blacks out. Augustus and Patro come for her and find her like that. Patro even takes his ear off and sews it on Alexis. When Alexis finds out, she is so sad he sacrificed his ear because she was already deaf in that ear—and that is how the two men find out about her hearing loss. Augustus then takes them to a safe house to recover. When Alexis wakes up, the three share a sexual moment together, but Alexis points out that they only like her because of the physical stuff, and both Augustus and Patro want to prove her otherwise.

When they all leap back to the house, a healed Patro and Achilles are there, and it turns into a massive fight, angered that they would leave Alexis. Alexis has to stop the fight and decides she is done with all four of them and starts to ignore them. Augustus and Kharon try all they can to be on her good side, including making a gift for her—an object that is like a graphing calculator that lets her do everything on it—and Alexis loves it. Also during this time, Ceres is still working on her memory but is drawing some odd signs.

One night, Alexis is out in the house and Patro and Achilles grab her, steal some of her blood, and say that she just needs to say the word and they will help kill the other two. Meanwhile, Augustus and Kharon are in Montana, looking into Alexis’s past life. They realize how rough she lived and that her foster father is still alive in prison; they decide to pay him a visit.

When they get back, Augustus and Kharon talk to Alexis. During their talk, Nyx, Alexis’s snake who she has had since childhood, decides to reveal herself. They are both shocked that she has an echidna with her, and technically, they are supposed to kill echidnas on sight. Alexis tells them she’ll kill them if they touch Nyx. So the men move on to something else they want to address. They bring out a bound Achilles and Patro. They found out about the breaking of the marriage bond, so Augustus and Kharon give Alexis the chance to do so. They almost kill themselves, take her blood—she just needs to mean it—but she won’t.

The Gladiator Competition finally arrives, and Alexis’s challenge will take place twelve days later. She drew a challenge that was outrageous: three rounds and twelve trials. Every day, someone will enter the trial, and if they fail, they are branded by Zeus. Because there is still a threat of Medusa, after the trial Zeus interrogates the contestant to know the whereabouts of Medusa. The trials go on day by day, and Alexis also decides that she and her husbands can share the same bed.

It’s near the end of the competition, and Kharon gets to do his trial. During it, he gets badly injured, and that is how Augustus finds out that Alexis can feel all of their pain—she has just been hiding it. None of them get a reprieve from the pain because Zeus tortures Kharon for information on Medusa. Finally, they are all able to heal. But because Augustus is devastated that she can feel their pain, when he goes in for his trial, he unleashes his full power, wiping out all of his opponents. He ends his trials quickly, all so Alexis doesn’t feel any of his pain.

The next day is Alexis’s trial, and she is unnerved because when she wakes, neither Augustus nor Kharon are there, but she is forced to start anyway. It’s a brutal trial, but luckily, Fluffy Jr. shows himself—he now has wings—and she is able to fight on his back, half pegasus and half dog. She also comes into her full power, the power she has been trying to unlock from Hades, and is able to complete most of her trials. Until her final one, when they bring out both husbands and say that her trial is to kill them. Augustus “kills” Kharon for her and then helps stab himself for her, thus completing her trial. She doesn’t have time to recover, as she is taken to Zeus to be interrogated.

During her interrogation, Patro is brought in to use his powers; he confirms that Alexis is not part of Medusa’s escape, then he is asked to leave. Meanwhile, Zeus goes on while Alexis goads him. Zeus confirms that he kidnapped her as a child and was supposed to kill her. What Zeus doesn’t know is that Alexis used her gift from her husbands to record it all. So when she is released from her interrogation, she goes to a party to celebrate and uses speakers so everyone can hear Zeus confirm it. Hades starts to use his power to go after Zeus, enough that Zeus has to run away.

Augustus and Kharon are so proud of her and want to celebrate, but she insists on going back home, so she leaps them all home. There, she finds Achilles and Patro going for Ceres. Patro felt Alexis lie about helping Medusa—it turns out she has been, and Medusa is actually Ceres.

In a flashback, when Alexis leapt from Montana after her original trial, she leapt into the prison by accident, where she heard screaming. She stumbles into Medusa, who is wrongfully being tortured. So she takes her, and that is when Hades finds the pair of them. Later, on her first night in Augustus’s house, she talks to the real Ceres and asks her if she feels regret for what she did, and she doesn’t. Alexis kills her and then brings Helen in on her plan to hide Medusa as Ceres.

After the council hears about what Medusa went through, and Patro confirms it, they decide that she needs to go to Olympia School, but she needs protection; Achilles and Patro will be in charge of her safety. Medusa also convinces Alexis to go to school with her.

Back in the safety of her home, she realizes she likes living with her husbands, especially since they have been proving it’s not just physical. Alexis tells them she is ready to be with them physically, and they oblige. After a night together, they want to know more about her childhood, and Alexis, who feels comfortable around them, tells them everything, including that she is blind in one eye. They are angry for her, so as a gift, they take her to her foster father. Alexis decides to show no mercy and kills him, finally closing the chapter on that part of her life.

Patro and Achilles, meanwhile, are not excited for their new task to babysit Medusa, but they find it fun to annoy her as much as they can.