Page 59 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

He gave me a disappointed expression and sighed as he turned to the books in front of me. “I’ve never heard of male Fates. Do you think they are something else?”

“Or nothing at all,” I protested, but I didn’t believe that. Not really. It was all too coincidental. There was something Mythic about them, of that I was certain. I just didn’t know if they were the Fates, as suggested, or something more.

There were so many unknown factors. I hated it. I’d become complacent in our exile, and this much uncertainty was driving me crazy.

Teron grabbed another book from the stack I had in front of me. “We both know that she isn’t nothing.” With that, he pulled on some gloves and gently opened the book in front of him, leaving me to chew over the problem once more. We sat in silence as we searched book after book for answers.

The Oracle had sent her here, and we wouldn’t make the mistake of ignoring an Oracle again. I needed to work out how to protect my friends, and yes, that meant protecting the girl.

“You know, you could always reach out to?—”

I shook my head immediately. “No.” I shut down the very idea before Teron even whispered it onto the wind. There was only one God who was as pissed at the Fates, and the Greek Mythics, but I would cut out my tongue before I asked him for help.

Teron snorted. “Stubborn.” But that was it. He didn’t argue or contradict.

We went back to work, and I got progressively more annoyed by the lack of information we possessed. One thing was becoming increasingly obvious, though: there were no male Fates. Not since the first recorded turn of the wheel. That didn’tmean that there never could be. Occasionally, the power was even vested in a single deity. But that deity was always a woman.

I sighed and closed the book. It was hard to predict the pattern, and it wasn’t for a nearly obsolete God like me to know. “It’s going to come down to a fight, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t a question, not really. As soon as she’d walked into the building, the signs were there. She had altered our destiny as soon as she’d swooned at Tryphone’s feet.

Closing his book too, Teron met my eyes. “Yes, my friend. It will come to a fight. Perhaps the most important fight of our eternal lives. Are you okay with that?”

Surprisingly, I was. We’d had an eternity of nothingness. A purpose was already doing us good. However, I wasn’t a warrior God. Teron was a warrior. Milonos. They were built to defend and defeat. I was created for what came after.

I nodded. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that things will change. My head knows that this is our chance. This is a cause worth fighting for.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And what does your heart say about the pretty human?”

My heart? I was purposefully ignoring it. And my body? That traitor strained toward her every hour of the day, like it knew that my only purpose was to protect her and then fuck her into the next century. I couldn’t let myself get close, though, because it would spell the end of me. One of us had to keep a cool head when it came to the human.

“My heart is firmly locked away in the prison of my chest where it belongs,” I told Teron, the sound of the chair scraping on the wooden floorboards making me wince as I stood. “I will be the faithful hound that destiny has cast me as, but I won’t fall in love with her like the rest of our brothers. I will keep a clear mind for us all.”

Teron had the audacity to chuckle at me, and I glared. Striding out of the room, I stomped down to my quarters like a petulant youngling. Wren’s laughter drifted up through the open windows, and I gritted my teeth.

She was everywhere, except one place. I opened the heavy door to my quarters, moving through them sightlessly. They hadn’t changed in a thousand years. The same heavy wooden furniture. The same coverings. The same tapestries on the wall and copper wash bowl in the corner. It had been the same for centuries upon centuries.

The broken pieces patched, but never changed.

Walking to another heavy door, I stepped out to the walled courtyard beyond my rooms and sighed as the warmth of the earth surged up to greet me. Surrounded by the small copse of fruiting trees, I let my toes sink into the soft clover grass. I spent a lot of time tending this garden, and it had become more of a shrine than a courtyard at this point. A place I could escape from the constant temptation.

Removing my clothes, I knelt down in the grass and let life seep back into my bones. I might be a forgotten God, no longer worshiped by many humans, but the townspeople were sometimes enough to rejuvenate me for a moment.

The energy of the nature around me, the soft budding of the trees—it all meant something to me. And yet my body still strained toward Wren. My dick throbbed as I thought about her, making me grit my teeth. She called to me; I could admit that to myself, even if I couldn’t admit it to Teron. She was so beautiful, with her open face and plush lips. Full breasts. The curve of her fruitful body.

Growling at myself and my hard dick, I reached down and gripped it, biting my lip hard in annoyance. I could hear the soft music of her voice, even though her words were lost in the distance.

I let my hand travel up and down my cock, and I groaned, throwing my head back and closing my eyes. I imagined it was her hand around me, gripping me just right, sliding along me with the perfect amount of speed and pressure.

My moans echoed off the stone walls, and I pumped faster. In my mind, it wasn’t her hand but her tight little body sucking me inside her as I thrust, wild and free for the first time in so long. I imagined her whispery little moans, the way those puffy pink lips would wrap around my cock like an embrace. The hooding of her eyes as pleasure made it hard to keep them open. Her mouth opened in a little gasping O.

Fuck.

All too soon, my balls were pulling up and I was shooting my seed across the clover lawn, feeding my release back into the earth. Slumping back onto my heels, I grunted angrily at myself and turned my face to the sun. Cold air whipped off the mountains, making goosebumps spread across my overheated skin.

Slowly, I stood, pulling on my clothes. This was as much as Wren could take from me, because I’d meant what I said to Teron. I wouldn’t give her my heart. I’d given that away once and almost died for the pleasure.

I wouldn’t hurry to make that mistake again.

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