Page 21 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

I could hear Nate’s hissed swear words as he drove through traffic. “Two minutes, Wren. Don’t move. It’ll be okay.”

Don’t move, he said. Where the hell would I even go? I rubbed my stomach soothingly, hoping the babies couldn’t feel my fear. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” I wasn’t sure if I was reassuring them—even though they were no bigger than a baby squirrel right now—or myself. Probably both.

“One minute,” Nate growled, and the banging outside the door stopped. I could smell smoke now, though it was faint. That crazy bitch had actually set Nate’s apartment on fire.

I wanted to be my own damn hero. I wanted to be the old Wren who would’ve gone out there fearlessly and fought off the crazy bitch. But it wasn’t just me in harm’s way now.

I could hear Nate’s roar of rage, and a quick scuffle, then silence. I heard the hiss of a fire extinguisher, then the door was pulled open.

“Wren!” Nate dug me out of my cocoon, pulling me easily to my feet and patting me down. “She fled as soon as I showed up. Are you okay?”

I was numb. My eyes were burning, but no tears came out, so maybe it was the smoke. “I think I need to go to Crete.”

Pulling back, he stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “What?”

“Amourgeles. I need to go to Crete.” I sighed and sunk into his chest, soaking in his strength like a vampire. “I’ll explain.”

And that’s how I found myself lying on Nate’s bed, my head on his chest, explaining about a crazy lady in the drive-thru and my upcoming trip to fucking Greece.

My life was a mess.

Chapter 10

NÉIT

By Dagda’s fucking hairy testicles, what had Wren gotten herself into? Fucking Crete? I didn’t know much about Greece, but I did know that all the creatures that had been trying to kill her were from the Greek Pantheon.

There’d been a long-standing rule—a division of territory, even. When humans settled in an area, the gods that were worshiped there all divided up the area. Sometimes, it was fine, and we lived in harmony. Sometimes, it was a bloodbath that spilled over to the human world.

But Boston, up until now, had been pretty uncontentious. There were enough Boston-Irish mammies rolling around who sat in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Sundays, but still celebrated Imbolc and Samhain to warrant a Celtic presence. Mammies like Zelda Byrne, who’d learned the practices and traditions from her mother, who’d learned from her own mother before that.

And that was how the disgraced and supposedly dead Irish God ended up in the new country, living in the house of a God-fearing Catholic, while holding a very pregnant, unwed woman in his arms.

Personally, I stayed the fuck out of the politics. I might be Néit, ancient God of War, but there was a big difference between war and petty political struggles. I left that to the new Celts and the Tuatha. I was happy working with the horses, watching the pretty, broken Wren from afar.

At first, when she had come to live in the house, I’d followed her with my eyes, mostly out of curiosity. She’d just been this sad, pathetic little creature who, for a long time, looked like she just wanted to sink into the earth and never emerge. That Wren didn’t interest me so much. I came from a time when only the strong survived, and if she couldn’t pull herself out, then I had no interest.

Even now, the world was no place for the weak. But still, I felt protective of her, maybe in the way I’d felt protective of Zelda Byrne. She was part of my domain.

But eventually, after grief had stopped marring Wren’s face, and she’d picked herself up, something about her caught me and took hold. The fire returned to her eyes, though there were still shadows of grief that I didn’t think would ever leave. She’d dusted herself off and gone on with her life, spreading her wings after the deaths of her parents, andthatwoman? She was something special.

When she came home with that gobshite Thomas, I’d had to stop myself from chopping his head off every time he talked to her dismissively. She deserved better, but I couldn’t tell her that. I barely spoke to her. I grunted hello on the stairs occasionally. I was an eternal God, and I had no business becoming obsessed with a mortal whose life would be over in what was essentially seconds in the course of my existence.

Still, I watched. Like a fucking creeper, as the people of this age would say. I got invested in Wren’s life, even as Zelda gave me the side-eye. Celebrated when she broke up with thathoor.Worried when she worked so hard.

But when I’d found her crying on the steps about the babies, my ability to keep my world separate from hers shattered in the wind. I’d had to acknowledge that I was invested in her happiness as more than a bystander. She was strong and so beautiful.

Zelda had noticed my preoccupation, and actually had the audacity to slap me, the God of fucking War, upside the head with her rolled-up TV guide. “She is not for you, Néit,” she’d said sternly. “With you lies only heartache, and Lord knows, that child has had more than enough heartache in her life.” I’d known she was serious when she called me by my real name.

I’d rolled my eyes in her direction. “I’m just helping her out, Zelda. Just like I’d help you. And she’s not a child. She’s about to be someone’s mother.”

She’d just huffed and dismissed me. Even the memory made me smile.

I was going to miss Zelda, who’d been my companion for more years than I could count. I would feel her loss for a long time.

I stroked Wren’s back softly, soothing her. I didn’t understand why she was being targeted, and I wasn’t inclined to ask. I was more inclined to get my ax and thin the number of Mythics in Boston until they got the point that Wren Mahone was off-limits.

I listened to her explain about the woman in her drive-thru, how her eyes had gone white and her voice monotone, and it sounded like an Oracle of some kind. A lot of the Pantheons had Oracles, though, so it was hard to judge if this one was working on behalf of whoever was trying to hurt her, or if she was a separate entity entirely.

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