Page 51 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

My heart gave an irregular thump, and my gut churned. I hated the idea. How could I hate the idea already, when I barely knew them?

I was shaking my head before I even came to a conscious decision. “There are more important issues at hand.” Well, that sounded like a douche thing to say. “Unless the others want to find a way to sever the bond. I, uh, am not opposed to keeping the threads, if they don’t feel trapped.”

I didn’t know you could verbally dig yourself into a hole this deep, but here I was, halfway to Australia with my words.

Teron pulled back. “You have Milo forever now. I wouldn’t even bother asking. He hasn’t been this happy in”—he shrugged, like he couldn’t remember the last time Milo was happy—“maybe ever.”

How could that even be possible? He was thousands of years old, if their stories were to be believed.

“And Tryp and Erus?”

Teron’s lips curled in amusement. “You’ll have to ask them, but I think you’ll find that they’ll be more in line with Milo’s thinking then Demke’s.” He straightened back to his full height. “Everything looks good. The ultrasound machine should arrive later today. I managed to find someone to put it on a supply boat this morning, and one of the townspeople will collect it this afternoon. I’ll feel more confident once I can see what the fetuses are doing. I’m limited with the equipment I have right now.”

I couldn’t believe I was even considering having my babies on an island in the middle of the fucking ocean, to be delivered by a guy whose head shifted into an eagle’s if he didn’t concentrate hard enough.

In all honesty, sometimes I wasn’t convinced this wasn’t some grand coma delusion. It would be far more logical than my life now. But there was something reassuring about Teron, about how he made me feel. If I’d come across the ocean on a gut feeling, clearly I was going to have to commit to trusting it for everything, and my gut said that Teron wanted what was best forme and the babies. I didn’t understand it; however, that didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful.

“Thank you.”

He gave me an indecipherable look, and I could see the golden threads of his life force straining toward me. I leaned further back, dodging them like they were snakes and not lassos of commitment.

At this point, I’d probably prefer snakes.

Not that I didn’t want Teron. Hell, my vagina had gone rogue and wanted them all. Right now. Together. Separately. Propped upside down like a reverse wheelbarrow. She wasn’t fussy; she justwanted.

No, it was my pesky brain that ensured Teron’s threads didn’t wrap around my arms or throat, because I wasn’t ready. Did I think it was just a matter of time? Absolutely. Someday, I might drop my guard and add the handsome doctor to my merry band of unintentional—and probably unwilling—bondmates.

Until then, I’d give him a chance to survive this bullshit.

Chapter 26

TERON

The library had always been the place I was most at peace. Surrounded by those soft leather spines and the scent of yellowing paper, well, there was hardly a place on earth more soothing than a library. I’d once seen the Library of Alexandria—I’d sat in it as a temple of learning in amazement, feeling like I’d come home.

I’d mourned its loss for centuries. In fact, even thinking about the knowledge lost over the squabbles of men made me inordinately pissed off. They’d really put themselves back a few centuries in learning, and for me, that was unforgivable. But I’d given up caring about the foibles of men a long time ago. Politics hadn’t been my problem in centuries, and I wasn’t in a hurry to change that, despite our current predicament.

The answers I was searching for were probably in the ashes of that building. That was the real frustrating part about the world following the burning of Alexandria.

We’d done our best to store invaluable tomes from around the Mediterranean here in Crete, especially after the monolithics came into power. We were a pagan religion, after all, and everyone knew that to rise to power, you had to obliterate theidentity of the people you were conquering. We protected what we could, and I tried to remember what I couldn’t. Sometimes I wrote it down in the old language, just in case anything happened to us, but humanity would need someone to decipher that too.

For the first time in an age, the library here didn’t give me peace. It wasn’t giving me the answers I needed to reassure Wren, and I found that more frustrating than I wanted to admit. I wanted to tell her that it would all be okay, give her a step-by-step account of events to expect.

But no such checklist existed.

I thought about the small, waifish thing that seemed to be shrinking under the size of her stomach every day. She’d been here for four days now, and we all hedged around each other like wild animals sussing out new predators in the territory. Except Milo. He’d thrown himself into caring for Wren like it was his only purpose in life.

Once, caring for a Goddesshadbeen his only purpose. All our purposes. I shook my head at those old thoughts resurfacing. Wren wasn’t a Goddess. She was just a woman who’d gotten caught up in something she shouldn’t have. Her only fault was being too nice.

The ultrasound machine had been caught up at the sea port, due to an industrial strike, so it had been delayed arriving, but should be here any moment now. I’d spent all my time reading obstetric texts and journals about the dangers and monitoring of multiple births. By the time they were ready to be delivered, I would ensure that I knew everything there was to know about any eventuality.

She would still need to go down to the hospital in Heraklion, and I hated that idea already. But I would be with her, and if anything happened, I wouldn’t hesitate to flex my powers and take over.

I nodded at the plan I was forming, closing the book in front of me and standing to flex my shoulders. I wanted to fly, stretch my wings, maybe do a lap around the islands to assure the Gryphon inside me that our territory was well defended.

He’d been restless since they’d arrived, and I didn’t fool myself by pretending I didn’t know what that sensation in my chest meant. I just wasn’t ready to admit what it could be. Not now, when the future was more clouded than it ever had been before.

Unlike my brothers, whoweretheir animals—their human forms merely glamors of themselves—I was dual-natured. I shared my soul with the Gryphon, and we shared the body we both possessed. He was wise and surprisingly good-natured, so he was happy to let the man walk around primarily. Even he knew the time of flying the skies freely as a Gryphon had long passed. He didn’t like it, but as I said, he was wise.

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