Half Bad: A Reverse Harem Goddess Romance (Godhunter Book 31)

by Amy Sumida

  “I see,” Austin drawled, then chortled.

  “What are you imbeciles doing?” Horus asked disdainfully as he entered the room with Hekate.

  Hekate had cleaned her face and had on one of Sam's dresses. Horus had his jacket off and his button-down shirt unbuttoned to nearly the waist. In short, they looked nothing like themselves. They also had a post-coital glow.

  “Horus!” I tried to stand up but promptly fell back onto my butt. “Hekate! What happened to yous—you twoses—you two? Katie, you look like a mommy.”

  “Take that back!” Katie said but without much heat. “Besides, I'm going to be a mommy.”

  “Congratulations, Miss Hekate,” Austin said as he lifted his non-Hellbrew-beer. “And to you, Horus.”

  “Thank you,” Horus grinned. “Did you hear that we're having a girl?”

  “No, I didn't. That's wonderful! Grab yourself a beer, man. Let's shoot out the lights!”

  Horus scowled at Austin, then returned his stare to the rest of us. “We leave you for an hour and return to find you plastered like Pan with one of his floozies.”

  “Hey! I don't have floozies, I have nymphs, and we're celebrating! You're supposed to be celebrating with us.” Pan snatched a bottle from the table and pulled the cork out with his teeth.

  Pan spat the cork at Horus and it bounced off Horus' forehead. Everyone went silent, even the lions. Horus blinked slowly, pressed his lips into a thin line, and narrowed his eyes at Pan. Pan paused with the bottle halfway to his mouth, his eyes widening. Horus snatched the bottle from Pan, put his pointer finger on Pan's forehead, and pushed Pan out of the way as he stepped up to the table with his wife.

  “We've had a great victory today.” Horus paused to smile at Hekate. “A couple of them. But we should remember that lives were lost along the way. Two of them were very young lives.”

  The silence turned somber.

  “To those who we weren't able to save.” Horus lifted the bottle.

  “And to those who we almost lost,” Hekate added as she laid a hand on her belly.

  The rest of us raised our glasses, then drank.

  Horus turned to look at Pan. “Now, don't you feel like an ass?”

  “Not at all,” Pan announced as he pulled out his cellphone. “So, maybe I should try harder.”

  Pan tapped his phone and a recording played. It was Horus' voice saying, “I bless the day you came into my life, Godhunter.”

  Horus narrowed his eyes at Pan. Pan snatched the bottle from Horus and ran away.

  “Pan!”

  “I bless the day you came into my life, Godhunter.” Pan laughed giddily as he played it again. “Come on, Horus, it had to be recorded for posterity.”

  “You're going to rue the day you recorded me, Pan!” Horus ran after his bestie.

  “Can I have a copy of that?” I called after them.

  “I'll text it to you!” Pan called back.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The party got really wild after that. It lasted all day and most of the night. The great thing about being a goddess is that even when you manage to get drunk, you never have to worry about a hangover. I woke the next morning feeling better than I had the night before. And so damn happy. Viper was safe and Adro had been stopped. Yes, it was sad that Adroa died, but the star had saved Hekate's child and nothing could dull that happiness.

  I got dressed and headed upstairs to grab my children before they started knocking on the tower door and woke up the pile of sleeping men in my bed. The kids were already awake and playing Candy Land in Lesya's room. They abandoned the game when I walked in and rushed me.

  I laughed as I scooped them up. “Are my wild things hungry?”

  “Yes!” They declared.

  “Okay, but let's be quiet until we get to the elevator. Your daddies and uncles are sleeping.”

  I set them down and we crept downstairs, then snuck past the bed of beautiful men, giggling to ourselves because that's what you do when you sneak past gorgeous, naked, sleeping men. Finally, we made it out to the hallway and into the elevator. As we headed downstairs, we made a plan for breakfast because food is serious business. I stroked their hair and silently gave thanks that my children were safe and happy. They could have been among those lost lives Horus had mentioned, but they'd survived.

  Samantha had told me that the pain from Adro's spell had knocked all of them off their feet. Fallon had tried to get to the children but even he couldn't manage to crawl more than a few inches. The kids had screamed and then cried when it was over but less than an hour later, they were back to playing as if nothing had happened. The resilience of children amazes me.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?” I asked them as we stepped around snoring lions who'd passed out in the hallway and made our way to the kitchen.

  “I was sore,” Vero said. “I think I had a bellyache.”

  “We all did,” Lesya said. “Even Zariel and Aunty Sam. It was weird.”

  Bellyache. Weird. That's how my kids described the tearing pain that had crippled ancient gods.

  “But you feel better now?” I asked.

  “Yep!” Vero practically shouted. “My belly wants food!”

  “Shh,” Lesya chided him. “Uncle Austin is right there.”

  She pointed at Austin, who was lying on the rug before the dining hall's fireplace, his hat perched over his face.

  “Uncle Austin is awake,” Austin's voice sounded hollow since he hadn't removed his hat to speak. He did so then and opened his eyes to blink blearily up at us. “What time is it?”

  “Out time or your time?” I countered.

  He frowned. “I think I missed work.”

  “You had the day off,” I reminded him. “You told me last night.”

  “Oh, thank God,” he muttered as he climbed to his feet. “And don't you dare ask me which god.” He pointed in my face before I could ask that very question. “It's been a game of Mess With the Human all night. I'm tired of all your god poop.”

  “God poop!” Vero exclaimed.

  My kids giggled.

  “Thanks for that,” I said sarcastically to Austin.

  “Hey, I was trying to be kid-friendly.” He shrugged. “Now, who wants pancakes?”

  “I do!” My children and I declared together.

  After I showed him around the kitchen, Austin started frying up some pancakes while I worked on coffee and juice. My kids prowled around Austin's feet, waiting for the pancakes to get put on a plate so they could snatch them up.

  “Hey!” I chided. “Only one each, then you have to wait for them like civilized people.”

  “He's cooking?” Trevor asked as he came into the kitchen.

  “Daddy!” Vero exclaimed.

  “Son!” Trevor exclaimed in a matching tone as he picked our boy up.

  “I'm not the best cook, but I can manage pancakes,” Austin said.

  “That works out perfectly since our family happens to love pancakes,” Trevor shot back. “Although, I think today I want some bacon too.”

  Trevor growled and snapped playfully at Vero's belly. Vero giggled, then growled back.

  “I'll handle the bacon if you handle the babies,” I offered.

  “Deal.” Trevor snatched up Lesya with his other arm and carried the two giggling children out of the kitchen.

  I went to the fridge and pulled out the bacon, then got out a baking sheet.

  “What are you doing?” Austin asked me.

  “I'm baking bacon.”

  “You're s'posed to fry bacon.”

  “Frying bacon is for fools,” I declared theatrically. “Put them on a baking sheet and bake them in the oven. They'll come out perfect every time.”

  Austin narrowed his eyes skeptically.

  “You're the one who said you don't cook a lot.”

  “All right.” He held up the spatula defensively. “Don't get all het up about it.”

  “Het?” I asked. “Never mind, I haven't had eno
ugh caffeine yet.” I started lining up the bacon on the sheet.

  “So, I talked to Thor last night.”

  “Oh yeah? About what?”

  “You.”

  I lifted my gaze to his.

  “Get that man drunk and he'll beat his own gums to death.”

  I blinked.

  “He talks,” Austin translated. “A lot. He told me all about stalkin' you and fallin' for you and screwin' things up with you.”

  “It happened as it was meant to.”

  “Yeah, he said somethin' similar.” Austin glanced over at me.

  I shooed him out of the way so I could put the bacon in the oven. “It was weird at first—the whole dating his father thing. But gods don't think like that. To them, the awkwardness was the fact that they were related, not how they were related.”

  “Is it true about you and Odin being married in a past life?”

  “Yep.” I leaned against the counter nearby. “When I died, Odin asked Azrael to take me to the Viking Well of Souls instead of Christian Heaven.”

  “Azrael? Your husband?”

  “One and the same.” I grinned. “My men and I, we were destined to be together. Connected from the start—before that even. The only one who kinda snuck in there was Re, but that's a long story about a future that won't happen.”

  Austin gave me a long blink.

  “As I said, another time.”

  The coffee maker beeped and I went to pour us some coffee.

  “You've got an amazing life, Vervain.”

  I looked over my shoulder at him. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes it gets scary, but we pull through.”

  “I noticed that Viper's wearing a wedding band.”

  “You notice a lot.” I chuckled. “But it's not a wedding band. We didn't have a ceremony or anything, just made a promise to each other.”

  “In the country, that counts,” he said softly.

  “It counts here too, but it's still not a wedding.”

  “I think I want in.” He put a pancake on the plate and met my stare.

  I gaped at him. “Austin, I like you but—”

  He started laughing uproariously.

  I grimaced.

  “In the Squad, not your man pack,” he said it while continuing to laugh. “I want to do this more. I want to help you.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed. “I don't know.”

  “Look, I know you've got a lot of people more powerful than me.” He flicked off the stove and set the pan in the sink. “But I have my uses. I know a lot of important people, for one. And I'm a cop; I can keep an eye on things. And for me, that simply means asking to be notified. I mean, I'm not CIA or anythin' but I do have friends in all kinds of places, and they'll send me information if I ask.”

  “You don't have to sell yourself,” I protested. “We wouldn't have even known about Adro if not for you. I'm sure you'd be a huge help but it's dangerous, Austin. I was impaled the other night and I'm not exaggerating. I fell into a pit of spikes and was speared through at shoulder and hip. Re had to burn the spikes to get me off the damn things, then burn me to help me heal myself. I don't think that's something you could have survived, even with Teharon there.”

  “You... he burned you to heal you?”

  “Dra-gon.” I waved a hand at myself.

  “Oh. Wow. Well, I guess I'd be as handy as hip pockets on a hog.”

  I snorted. “I just said you'd be helpful. The question is, do you want to risk your life by getting into the middle of the God War?”

  Austin picked up the plate of pancakes. “You wanna grab the fixin's?”

  “Sure.” I got the syrup and butter and we headed out to the table; the oven would beep when the bacon was done.

  My family was eagerly waiting for breakfast, all of my sleeping beauties awake and hungry. They grinned at me, and I stopped to stare. I'd once been faced with the same question I had asked Austin: did I want to risk my life by fighting gods? I didn't think I had much of a choice at first. Later, I suppose I could have walked away, but I didn't. By then I knew that I couldn't. Not because I had no choice but because with the fight came this life. This terrifying, dangerous, cruel life that was also beautiful, tender, and more wondrous than anything I could have imagined.

  I looked at Austin and smiled. Whatever it was that he saw in my eyes or my face, it convinced him immediately.

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “I want in.”

  A Special Look

  Keep reading for a sneak peek into the next book in the Godhunter Series:

  A Fey New World

  Chapter One

  I slipped out of bed with the sunrise. Viper reached for me in his sleep, made a grumbling sound, then sighed. I smiled at him. We'd recently discovered that his star magic could speak to my Trinity Star. He had saved me from losing myself to one of the Nine Great Magics and then had helped me to save the entire God race. Alaric—the Consciousness of the Void—hadn't been kidding when he said that Viper had his own destiny and it was a great one.

  I'd nearly lost everyone I loved that day, including myself. I spent the last few months reconnecting with everyone, especially my faerie husband, Arach. I'd gone to see him just before the battle with the god Adro, the one in which the Gods were nearly destroyed. Viper had been missing at the time and I was nervous; I never should have visited the Faerie Realm, in the first place. When I finally decided that I needed to get back to the God Realm, Arach was busy in a meeting and I didn't want to disturb him. Mainly because the Faerie Realm had been flourishing—as Faerie, the Consciousness of the Faerie Realm put it—and all the Fey were feeling the urge to flourish along with their realm. In other words, the entire realm was horny.

  I couldn't waste any time with Arach—and the fact that I considered making love to Arach a waste of time shows you just how worried I was about Viper—so I left without saying goodbye. I figured he wouldn't miss me; I'd be back in a minute. And I was, but there was a space of time when that wasn't certain. I had stood, holding Viper's hand, watching a severed god reunite his halves, as I said goodbye to my husbands using our Blood to Heart bond. But I didn't have that bond with Arach so I couldn't tell him goodbye. And I had missed the chance to do it in person. That regret stayed with me even though we triumphed in the end.

  I'd gone to see Arach as soon as it was possible and groveled. I confessed and begged forgiveness; I was that horrified by what had nearly happened. He'd forgiven me, of course, but now, he was as adamant as my other husbands that I let him know when I used my Ring of Remembrance to travel through time and space. The ring was a faerie relic left to me by my father. It was made to allow the long-lived Fey to go back in time and relive their past. When you return to a time you've already lived through, you have no power to change things, you can only relive them. But I'd found a loophole. Time worked differently in the Faerie Realm. This meant that I could spend time in the God Realm and then go back in time to the Faerie Realm and spend that same time there, without being limited to what I'd already experienced. For my husbands and children, who mostly stayed in either realm, it seemed as if I never left but, in truth, I left for long periods.

  In case you didn't catch it, I have multiple husbands. It's not a religious thing, although it's related to gods; it's a magic thing. Lioness magic, to be specific. I need multiple lovers to keep my lioness happy. Without them, I go nuts and sexually assault the nearest man. But I digress.

  Arach had forgiven me, and I promised to never jump through time without telling him. All was good in the world once more.

  I went to the kitchenette, against the left wall of the bedroom suite, and put some coffee on. I used to be a heavy coffee drinker but I'd switched to tea along the way. Still, there were days when I preferred coffee. Specifically, a latte. I had a machine that made lattes all in one pot. Your poured in the milk and it frothed it as it brewed the coffee directly into the froth. When you pour it into a mug, it automatically separates, the foam rising to the top. Most of my men, however, are no
t fans so I had to make a separate pot of regular coffee for them.

  As the two pots did their thing, I headed into my dressing room. I generally sleep naked so I didn't have to slip out of my robe before getting into my underwear. Over the lacy bra and panties, I pulled on a silk camisole, some jeans, and a cardigan. It was getting to the end of Autumn and mornings could be crisp in Pride Territory. I padded out to the kitchen, which was right in front of my dressing room door, and found my latte waiting in the hands of a werewolf.