An Extremely Overpowered God Of War

Chapter 4

 Raymond's voice came out steady and direct, without a single trace of performance in it just the plain, undecorated weight of a promise being made.

“I will go out of my way to protect every one of you, no matter what it costs me. The same way you showed up for me here today, I will show up for you when you need me. And if your troubles are large enough to start a war  then I will go to war.”

Still the three of them kept their heads pressed to the floor. 

The title of War God was one of  the highest military honor the country had given out after five years of conflict. 

There were very few people alive who could put someone carrying that title in genuine danger. 

Going up against those people wouldn't just affect the individuals involved it could shake the entire country. And Raymond had just looked at all three of them and said it wouldn't matter. That he would come anyway.

It was the greatest thing any of them had ever been told. Greater than the titles. Greater than the ceremonies. Greater than anything the country had given them with both hands and a spotlight.

“Thank you, Master!” The words came out of all three of them at once, loud and raw and completely unguarded, their voices hitting the high ceiling of the throne room and bouncing back down around them like an echo of everything they felt but couldn't fully say.

Raymond stepped down from his throne and walked toward the exit with the same unhurried ease he did everything, the gold card, the jewelry case, and the briefcase already handled and secured.

“I better get going,” he said, without looking back. 

“I don't want to keep my wife and family waiting any longer than I already have.”

***

Not long after, Raymond arrived at his wife's parents' house.

He didn't need anyone to tell him something was happening. He could see it the moment he turned onto the street the kind of energy a place gives off when it has been prepared for something big, when people have been moving in and out of it all day with purpose.

 He stood there for just a second and took it in, and then a small smile found its way onto his face without him meaning for it to.

He hadn't told anyone he was coming. Not a single person. 

And yet from the look of things, a celebration had been put together anyway  and today was their anniversary, which meant his wife had done what he always knew she would do. She had celebrated it even without him there. 

She had marked the day even in his absence, and something about that sat warm and heavy in his chest in a way he didn't have words for.

The house itself had changed. That was the first thing he noticed after the smile. 

The building he remembered was gone replaced by something that had clearly gone through a renovation so significant it barely resembled what it used to be. Bigger. Cleaner. The kind of upgrade that didn't happen quietly or cheaply.

He started walking toward it.

His eyes moved across the compound as he walked, landing on one luxury car after another lined up along the sides the kind of vehicles that didn't belong to ordinary guests. People were moving in and out of the entrance in their finest, the low hum of conversation and celebration drifting out through the open doors and into the evening air.

Raymond moved through all of it without drawing attention to himself. He was carrying a single shoulder bag plain, local, the kind a person picks up without thinking twice about it. Nothing about it suggested what was inside. 

Nothing about him, the way he was dressed or the way he carried himself, announced who he was or where he had just come from. He looked like any other person walking through that gate, and that was exactly how he wanted it.

He reached the main entrance and stepped through the door.

And then he stopped.

His eyes swept the room once just once and everything in his face changed. The ease left it. The quiet warmth that had been sitting there since he turned onto that street disappeared completely, replaced by something that went tight and cold and still all at once. His jaw locked. His eyes narrowed to something sharp and flat and dangerous.

What he was looking at was not what he had come here expecting to find.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Hearing that voice, heads turned.

One by one, then all at once, the guests closest to the entrance shifted their attention toward the door and what they saw standing there gave most of them pause. A young man. Ordinary looking in every possible way.

 Plain clothes, nothing tailored or pressed about them, and a cheap shoulder bag hanging off one side like he had just wandered in off the street. Nobody recognized his face. 

Nobody could place him. And without anyone needing to say it out loud, the general feeling that moved through the room was the same he clearly wasn't on the guest list.

The whispers started almost immediately, low and cutting, moving from one mouth to the next the way whispers do when people feel comfortable enough to be unkind.

“Who is that?”

“Did he just walk in off the street?”

“Someone needs to remove him.”

But Raymond wasn't paying attention to any of it. He wasn't looking at the guests or the decorations or the luxury spread laid out across the hall. He was standing completely still, his eyes fixed on what was in front of him, and his mind was doing the slow, terrible work of making sense of what he was seeing.

Because it wasn't an anniversary celebration.

It wasn't a surprise party with his name on it, wasn't the kind of gathering a wife puts together to mark a day she refused to let pass without meaning. What was laid out in front of him was a wedding.

His wife's wedding.

She was standing at the front of the room in a white gown that fit her like it had been made with her in mind and nothing else, and she was beautiful in the way that makes a moment feel cruel, because beauty like that wasn't supposed to exist inside something like this.

 She was facing a man. Standing close to him the way a bride stands close to the person she has chosen, and that man —

Raymond's eyes moved to his face.

The air left the room. 

The man standing in front of his wife, dressed in a military wedding uniform with his shoulders straight and his expression carrying the quiet pride of someone who believed he had every right to be exactly where he was standing 

Was Marcus.

His friend. His own friend, Marcus.