Page 38 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

She shook her head like we were crazy, but then stopped. “Actually, I helped an old lady pick up some fallen fruit, and she gave me an apple. It wasn’t funky, I don’t think. Maybe abnormally delicious? That would have been just before the lights started.” She frowned. “That’s insane, though. It was anapple.I’ve eaten hundreds in my lifetime.”

The Celtic God behind her sniffed angrily. “Fucking Greeks. Fucking golden rain and poisoned fruit. The hell is wrong with you people?”

Anger lit up my veins. “We are Minoan. We aren’t part of the Greek Pantheon.” I looked at Wren. “We can’t know for sure if that was what it was. I can tell you if your children are Demigods, however. I am the God of Renewal, and therefore fertility. It’s in my wheelhouse, as you would say.”

“How?” she asked hesitantly.

“I would just have to be inside you.” I’d have to fuck her. An inconvenient way to discover divinity, but the old powers really enjoyed fucking.

“Inside me how?” she breathed. “Like poke a finger in my ear, inside me? Or, like, your dick inside me kind of inside me?”

Tryp coughed, hiding his mouth behind his hand.

“The latter,” I answered calmly.

The big God pulled his ax. “No fucking way. Over your dead body,” he threatened.

Wren’s lips were parted, and I could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Her pupils had dilated, her tongue dipping out to wet her bottom lip. She was imagining it right now, and given the way her pupils were blown out, she liked what she was daydreaming about. She wanted me; that was easy to see.

Still, she grabbed Néit’s wrist, the one hefting the ax, and lowered it back down to his side. “Thank you, but I’ll pass. I can wait until they’re born to see if there’s anything I need to know about them.”

I shrugged, like the idea of being inside a woman after all this time wasn’t appealing. No, that was wrong. Not insideawoman. Insidethiswoman.

There were women in the village who came and went, but I hadn’t desired any of them in a long time, outside the basic needs they fulfilled. Until now. Until her.

I didn’t like it. It felt like a trap, especially now that I suspected that she was perhaps another shackle from Olympus. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “The offer stands.”

Milo was sitting across from her, the large mass of him seeming to consume half the room. “Tell us what happened after the apple incident. Anything else stand out?”

She went back to finding out she was having triplets, which made the hairs on my arms rise. Three was a magic number inthe Mythic world. I didn’t think the fact she was carrying triplets was coincidental.

Her eyes welled up as she told us about some kind of shadow monster attacking her, and the death of her landlady. A tear rolled down her cheek, making me clench my jaw. Her pain was like sandpaper against my skin. The creatures sounded like Verserpents, and that made the whole thing even more suspicious.

Still, I had to ask. “What makes you think it’s the Greek Mythics?”

Néit snorted. “Other than the Oracle and the Lamia?” Compelling evidence, I guess, but both of those beings tended to be unruly, making decisions without any regard to a higher authority.

Wren shrugged. “I guess I don’t. I just know she said I should come here, and then this feeling in my chest pulled me to Amourgeles. To this place.”

I met Teron’s eyes over her head, and his face was filled with the same confusion as mine. Still, our downfall had begun with ignoring the warning of a Delphi Oracle. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

I stood and walked out of the room, heading to the library to see if there was anything in those dusty old tomes that might give any insight into this human’s situation. Perhaps we could figure out what those visual hallucinations were exactly, though I already had my suspicions. I dared not tell the girl yet, or even breathe of it to my friends. My brothers.

Because if I was right, then the Ouroboros had turned once more, and it spelled uncertainty for us all.

Because if I was right, that small, waifish woman sitting in my living room was seeing life threads, and that spelled turmoil for the whole world.

Chapter 19

WREN

Demke just stood and left. He didn’t say a word to me, or to his friends. He just left. I looked over at Teron, who watched him leave, but didn’t seem surprised.

“We’ll look into what it all means, Wren.” His golden eyes bounced between Nate and I. Or should I say, Néit. I’d known he was some kind of immortal, but I really, really hadn’t known he was the God of War. The same guy who took me to my OB-GYN appointments. Who’d driven Mrs. Byrne around like Miss Daisy. That guy was an ancient God of War.

Shaking my head, I tuned back into what Teron was saying. “I think you should both stay here, at the compound.”

I resisted the urge to snort. I wasn’t so caught up in the Mythics and supernatural plots that I was going to voluntarily lock myself inside a fortress with a bunch of guys who had animal heads. But before I could politely decline, Nate was lifting me to my feet. “No.”

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