by J. S. Scott
“I already know that,” she told him lightly as she ran her lips along the stubble on his jaw. “But I want you anyway.” Hunter’s acerbic personality was part of what and who he was, and how those experiences had molded him. “I guess I find disagreeable men very hot.”
“If that’s true, Princess, you should be incinerated by now,” Hunter grumbled, but he sounded slightly amused. “I’m not asking again if you’re sure you want me. I’m sealing the deal before you can really think about it anymore,” he warned.
She smiled happily up at him. “Then do it.” Thinking about the mating, a thought suddenly occurred to her. “I hate it that you’ll have to be confined.” Hunter had spent enough time being imprisoned and punished for crimes that he couldn’t help but commit. Her heart sunk at the thought of him being helpless and restrained.
“It’s nothing I haven’t been through before, and it will be a hell of a lot more pleasant with a naked goddess fucking me,” he answered gruffly, bluntly.
A startled laugh escaped her mouth before she could stop it, amused by the way Hunter could make jokes about things that other people would find horrific. His dark humor never ceased to surprise her. “I’ll try to make it agreeable for you,” she shot back at him.
“Sweetheart, it will be so damn amazing that you’re actually going to mate with me that I won’t even notice that I’m confined,” he rasped. “Now kiss me,” he added bossily.
She wrapped her arms around his neck compliantly, and then hopped to wrap her legs around his waist. He caught her ass instinctively, squeezing the ample flesh with a masculine groan.
They were eye-to-eye now, and Athena started to drown in his hungry gaze. Neither one of them spoke as their eyes caught and held, hers fiery red and his an amber glow that could light up a dark night. She leaned in slowly, grasping a handful of his hair as she pressed her mouth to his, letting her heated embrace say everything she wanted to tell him.
Desperation and need surged from her being, and she devoured his lips hungrily, savoring the intimacy that she’d only ever felt with Hunter.
I love him!
The thought startled her and she hesitated for a nanosecond before she threw everything she was feeling into her kiss, a sensual merging of mouths, lips, and tongues that was making her break out in a sweat.
I do love him. It’s always been so much more than a mating instinct for me. Hunter is…my heart.
Obviously some of what she felt was the radiant instinct, but she knew without a doubt that Hunter Winston had stolen her heart. She’d never loved anyone like this, and the power of her emotion overwhelmed her. She broke the kiss, panting as she met his fiery eyes. “I love you,” she blurted out unchecked. “I love you, Hunter. Maybe you don’t want it, and maybe it would be better if I didn’t feel it, but I love you so much,” she rasped breathlessly.
The words had no sooner left her mouth when she started to feel herself transporting. She fought the displacement of her body, but the power fighting against her was too strong.
“Athena, what the hell is happening? Where are you going? Wait!” Hunter bellowed, clawing at her fading image.
“I don’t understand,” she cried helplessly, getting only a glimpse of Hunter’s stunned face before everything went dark.
“Nooooooo!” Hunter was still clawing at air as he tried desperately to connect with Athena. The emptiness of his mind that accompanied her disappearance was painful, but he tried to ignored it as he howled, “Athena, where are you?” Even as he called for her, he knew that she was gone. He could feel the absence of her mind connected to his, and there was nothing but darkness where her light had been. “Goddammit, no! She’s not leaving me now,” he growled in a low, animalistic tone.
Panicked, he teleported himself to Zach’s home, finding himself landing in the middle of a make-out session on the couch between Zach and Kat. The late-night news was blaring from the television, but neither one of them seemed to notice. Luckily, they had their clothes on and were just involved in a sensual kiss.
“Athena’s gone,” Hunter told Zach in a rush as Kat pushed her husband away. She’d noticed Hunter’s appearance in the living room almost immediately since he’d appeared not five feet from where they were on the couch.
He watched as Zach’s look of fury at being interrupted turned into confusion. “Gone where?”
“I don’t know,” Hunter snapped back at him.
“Were you going through the mating ritual?” Kat asked, her voice concerned as she rearranged her clothing and ran a hand through her unruly hair.
Hunter knew both Kat and Talia had disappeared just as the ritual was completed because of their dormant radiant power, but Athena didn’t have dormant magic. “No,” he said huskily. “She’d just agreed to become my permanent mate. We kissed and then she told me she loved me. She vanished right after that.”
Athena had said she loved him. He still wasn’t over the shock of that revelation, hadn’t even had a chance to absorb it.
“Then she didn’t go willingly,” Kat said emphatically. “You don’t tell a man you love him and then disappear. She had to have been taken.” Hesitating a moment, she sighed before adding, “I don’t usually reveal confidences, but I think I should tell you that she shared that she wanted to stay and be your permanent mate. She wouldn’t have just left. She didn’t want to go.”
“Who the hell would have taken her?” Zach said angrily. “The Evils can’t possibly have enough power to kidnap a goddess.”
Zach reached for the phone and called Drew. He appeared a moment later with Talia. Hunter was silent as Zach filled Drew in quickly on Athena’s mysterious disappearance.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
Hunter’s previous mantra was back and louder than ever. Just the thought of any of those ugly-ass Evils touching Athena made him homicidal.
I love you.
Her breathless confession echoed in his mind, torturing him as he sat on Zach’s couch and buried his head in his hands. She loved him, and he’d never had a chance to tell her that he loved her, too. When he’d told her that he lived and breathed for her, he hadn’t been exaggerating. Athena was the best and possibly the only good thing he’d had in his life other than his human family, his Sentinel brothers, and Kristoff.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
He struggled to breathe, his heart galloping to pump oxygen to his body. Hunter suddenly realized that what he was feeling wasn’t just mental. He was actually laboring to get a gulp of air.
“Hey, Hunter…you okay?” Zach stopped discussing Athena’s possible whereabouts with Drew, Talia, and Kat to look at Hunter.
“No,” Hunter rasped. “Need. Athena.”
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
“We’re going to find her, Hunter. I promise,” Drew vowed, all the usual joking between the brothers gone.
Hunter stood, determined to find his woman, but he was overwhelmed by darkness. Something was wrong, his body refusing to obey his mental commands. “Fuck. I don’t need this right now. I have to find Athena,” he said fiercely. He didn’t know what was happening, but he needed to get his ass moving. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know exactly where to look. He’d figure it out. The only thing that mattered to him was finding his woman.
“You don’t look so good,” Drew said heavily as both of Hunter’s brothers came to his side to support his body weight.
“I need to find her. Help me,” Hunter requested desperately, not the least bit concerned about his own weakness. All he cared about was Athena, and he rarely asked his brothers for anything. For his goddess, he’d fucking beg if he needed to. “What if someone hurt her?” The very thought nailed him in the gut, a sharp, burning pain that wouldn’t go away.
His brothers were speaking to him
urgently, but it became nothing but white noise to Hunter, his head buzzing as unconsciousness reached out and grabbed him by the balls.
“Find her,” he pleaded with his brothers, his last thoughts about Athena before everything went pitch black.
“I can’t believe that my own father is holding me prisoner,” Athena grumbled as she stared blankly at the bars of her cage. Her powers had been stripped from her by Zeus, and she was currently in worse accommodations than she’d ever dreamed possible: a prison in the Elysian Fields. The cells were small, and she appeared to be the only occupant at the moment. “Since when are there prisons in paradise?” It wasn’t her ideal, and she doubted anyone else in the utopia thought so either.
“Since you decided to mate with a filthy human.” Her father’s voice boomed on the other side of the bars. Zeus’s expression was dark and furious.
Athena eyed her father and frowned. He hadn’t changed much during his stay in the next world, his face still bearded and his expression furious. She should probably be terrified of him, but she wasn’t. He wasn’t and never had been a real father to her. He was a bully who had watched his own daughter go to almost an eternal prison as he stood by and did absolutely…nothing.
She propped her hands on her hips and glared back at Zeus. “It was my choice to make, not yours. Why am I here anyway? I had already made my choice, and it wasn’t the Elysian Fields.”
“A bad decision, daughter, as usual.” Zeus glared at her. “I found out just recently that the Fates had to give you a choice. I thought you’d decide wisely.”
“I did,” Athena told him adamantly. “I chose to stay with Hunter.”
“A lowly human? You’d rather be with him than here where you belong with the gods?” Zeus bellowed.
Athena didn’t even flinch when Zeus raised his powerful voice. “Yes. Definitely. You have to send me back to Earth.” She wanted to be with Hunter; she’d been given the option, and she was choosing Hunter.
“I don’t have to do anything. I’m still king of the gods,” he hollered louder and just a little bit too anxiously.
Athena couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was wrong, but her father seemed a little too enthusiastic in his proclamation. Was the Elysian Fields really functioning just the same as Olympus, with every one of her kin under the thumb of Zeus? “I want to go back to Earth,” she demanded, overriding her father’s demands for the first time…ever.
“Silence! Stop talking about going back to that lowlife human male. He’s nothing more than an animal,” Zeus scoffed.
Athena wanted to remind him that all humans were animals, the people the gods were supposed to care about, but she ignored his belittling arrogance. “What would you have me do, then?” she asked curiously, wondering why he wanted her here after all this time.
“I want you to stop embarrassing me, and allow me to keep your power,” he answered abruptly. “I’ll have your promise that you’ll stay and that I can absorb your magic.”
“Absolutely not.” Athena crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. Her father was up to something. She didn’t know what his motives were in bringing her here, but she was certain they weren’t because he’d missed her.
Athena flew across the cell, her father’s fist coming down on her face with so much force that she hit the wall in the back of the small room, sliding down the surface with an anguished moan. He was still standing exactly where he’d been before, the assault a product of his powers. Bracing herself against the wall while she sat on the dirt floor, Athena prepared herself for the next blow. Because she was powerless, she could do nothing to fight back. The next impact was harder, nearly snapping her neck. The continual beating made her nearly unconscious, but she refused to change her mind. She threw her hands up defensively, but it did nothing to stop the telepathy-induced punishment Zeus was dishing out without physically laying a finger on her.
“You will yield,” Zeus said confidently, an evil smile on his face.
“Never. I’d rather die than to give you the power you want,” she mumbled almost incoherently, her face a mass of bruises and lacerations. She could feel the injuries swelling, but her urgency to return to Hunter was greater than her pain. The Sentinels needed her right now, and her soul was calling out for Hunter to make her his radiant.
She had no idea why Zeus wanted more power that wasn’t his own. He’d already stripped her power as surely as he’d divested her of her earthly clothing. He’d changed her wardrobe to a traditional one-shouldered gown with a gold belt, saying the human clothing offended him. At the moment, that pristine white gown was now starting to saturate with red from her blood dripping onto the material.
“You won’t die.” Zeus resorted to reason, trying to convince her. “You’ll stay here in the Elysian Fields, minus your powers. It will be a good life. Besides, your human is dying. You have nothing to go back to now,” Zeus told her coldly, sounding chillingly satisfied.
“Dying,” she gasped. “How?” Panic began to rise, and Athena looked up at her father from her pathetic position on the ground with sheer terror. Hunter couldn’t be dying. They hadn’t even attacked the Evils yet.
“His usefulness has ended. He’s dangerous, a stabilizer who was only born to kill,” Zeus answered coldly. “His only chance to survive was for you to decide to mate with him, which will not happen. In another hour or two, you’ll have no reason to return to Earth. I’ll be back when he’s dead. If you haven’t changed your mind yet, I’ll make sure that you do,” Zeus said ominously before he disappeared.
Athena gaped at him while his words soaked into her mind, producing sheer terror. “No, no, no,” she whispered desperately through a split lip and painful jaw. “Hunter’s fate was tied with me.” Her epiphany nearly made her come unraveled.
Nausea rose, but Athena fought it. She had to figure out a way to get back to the earthly realm. Now!
Stumbling to her feet, she yanked on the heavy metal bars of her small cell, cursing when they didn’t give. She still had superior strength to a human, but not a single bit of her power.
I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here! Hunter could be sick—he could be dying.
Zeus could have been lying, but she couldn’t take that chance. In some ways, what her father said made sense. Hunter was a product of the gods’ magic, and he could be ended by a decision that the only goddess left on Earth would have to make. God help her, she hadn’t known that Hunter wouldn’t survive without her or she would have jumped him, begged him to mate with her from the very beginning to save his life.
She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be in an uncaring paradise that was so very similar to her life before she’d created the Sentinels.
“Athena.” A female voice beckoned her from the corner of her cell.
She startled, turning slowly to look at the woman who had spoken so gently. The mystery woman had almost black, curly hair, the locks falling to rest almost at her waist. Her dress was similar to Athena’s, but she wore a wreath of sparkling, silver roses on her head. “What do you want?” Athena asked carefully, wary of anybody in this place.
The woman smiled. “I want to help you. I’m Metis. I’m your mother, Athena.”
Athena’s heart began to race, wondering if what the woman was saying was true. Her mother had been swallowed whole by Zeus, and never seen again. She’d been pregnant with Athena, who had sprung from her father’s forehead long after Zeus had done away with Metis. Athena had heard things about her mother throughout her years in Olympus, descriptions of her dark-haired beauty. The woman in front of her matched the descriptions exactly.
“Mother?” Athena asked hesitantly, not sure what to believe.
“Believe me, daughter. I am your mother and I’m here to help you.” Metis stepped forward, her beautiful face marked with regret as she looked at her child. “I’m sorry that you took a beating before I could
get here. I had to have a meeting with the Fates.”
Athena’s body quivered as Metis stepped up and carefully put her arms around her. She hugged her mother back, still in shock from being in the presence of her female parent who had ceased to exist before Athena was born. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
How long had she wished for her mother, wanted to go to her for advice and comfort that she’d never seen from Zeus? She let herself bask in the warmth of being held by her mom for a moment, savoring her flowery scent and the warmth flowing from Metis’s being to hers.
“I wanted to be with you, Athena. I’m so sorry,” Metis told her in a lyrical voice.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she told her mother as she finally drew back from the tender embrace. “But why are you here now? Aren’t you afraid of Father?”
Metis made a disgusted face. “Bah. Your father is an asshole. He still thinks he’s king of the gods, even here in the Elysian Fields. He’s managed to swindle power from some of the lesser gods, but he’s no more powerful than anyone else. He’s delusional,” Metis stated flatly.
“Then how did he take my power?”
“He can’t absorb it unless you agree,” Metis explained, sitting and drawing her daughter down gently on a wooden bench beside her.
“I refused,” Athena said angrily.
“He didn’t steal your power. It was removed when you were transported to the Elysian Fields. It can only be retrieved by you unless you give him permission to absorb it.” Metis put a gentle hand on her daughter’s head and stroked the strands of hair back from Athena’s face.
“How did he bring me here?” Athena asked Metis, confused. “He must have some power.”
Metis shook her head. “You were fated to come here to speak with the Fates before you made your final decision about your future. It’s old oracle magic at work that brought you here. Your father simply intercepted you with his parlor tricks,” she answered, sounding thoroughly repulsed by Zeus and his antics.
