Page 72 of Tangled Threads Of Fate

Sucking in a breath, I held it. “Do you want to go home?” It sounded like an accusation, but I hadn’t meant it to come out that way. Trying again, I softened my tone. “It’s okay if you want to return to your life. We have some unnatural bond chaining you to me, but if you want to return to Boston, to Clio and the house, to your friends, you can. I’d be okay with it. We could figure it out.”

Big fucking lie.

He went stiff behind me. “Do you want me to go?” His fingers flexed, like he wanted to move them away, but I linked mine over his, keeping them where they were, against my stomach.

“No! Never. I selfishly want you here with me.” Forever, but I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t need to guilt him into staying. “I just hate that I’ve trapped you in this nightmare with me.”

He spun me gently, tucking his fingers under my chin, tilting my head back so I was forced to look into his eyes. “Wren,fate might have tied us, but I promise you, there is something even stronger tying me to you.” His thumb dragged at my bottom lip. “Mo shíorghra,I love you.” He put my hand on his chest, right over his heart. “I’d forgotten this organ could even beat, but now it does, for you. I am right here, with you, with them”—he used his other hand to cup my stomach—“forever. You are my home. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

I gaped at him, this gruff God, whose eyes were so earnest right now, like he was willing me to believe his words.

I burst into tears. “I love you too, Nate. But I’m too hormonal for you to be so sweet right now.” The fucker laughed at me, hugging me close to his chest. “I don’t want to chain you to me, but I’m not sure I could do this without you. I would have tried for you, but I don’t want to.” I sniffled pathetically.

He kissed the top of my head. “You’ll never have to.” He pulled back a little and brushed another soft kiss across my lips.“Now, I still have the change table to put together, so we better get back to it.” He looked over my head at the bed. “Maybe you should get back in your nest and rest a little more.”

It was more tempting than I was willing to admit, but I knew I was only going to get more exhausted, so I needed to do this while I still could. Sighing heavily, I went back to sorting through the boxes of stuff that the guys had shipped from the mainland.

A few hours later, we sat around the dinner table, eating moussaka and bread that Demke had baked from scratch. It was the first time that everyone at this table was bonded to me. It was a surreal feeling.

Milo piled more on my plate, even though there was no room left inside me for food. I was always hungry, but I also felt like I was going to puke if I ate more than a few mouthfuls. Being pregnant was beautiful, but it was also fucking miserable.

“The pack has ballooned out to at least seventy dogs now,” Tryp told Demke, his mouth filled with food.

Holy shit.There were seventy strays in town now? “Are you sure they’re all strays? Maybe some of them are lost.”

Demke frowned. “Cy isn’t a real dog. He’s a… supernatural dog. He’s very old. He was once a favored companion of our Goddess.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Cy? The chunky white dog that lives in town?”

He nodded. “Yes, that’s the one. Sometimes, he’ll call out to surrounding dogs if he thinks something is coming, gathering more and more hounds to him. During the last battle, he had an army of hundreds of dogs from all over the island at his back.”

I shook my head. “So he’s a magic dog, but doesn’t live with you?” I chewed my lip. “I get the impression you don’t like him much either.”

It was Teron who answered. “He was from the enemy side. He is from the Greek Pantheon.”

“Oh. He’s not, like… Cerberus or anything, right?”

Demke snorted. “No. He’s not a Hellhound.”

I thought about the seventy dogs outside our walls, and wondered what they were eating. Were they hungry? Were they eating the native wildlife in order to survive? Or were the locals trying to feed them all?

“Are they okay out there? Should we feed them?”

Demke grumbled beneath his breath, and Tryp was actually laughing at him now. “If that’s what you want to do, Wren, I’ll make arrangements to get food tomorrow.”

I grinned at him. “It is.” I reached across the table to grab his hand, and once again, the feeling of rightness washed over me.

The following day,a truck arrived at the compound with an entire pallet of dog food bags. I didn’t know the brand, but it looked high-end. I made a note to thank Demke for not skimping on the food, despite being reluctant.

We stood close to the doors so the guys could move me back behind the wards at the merest suggestion of danger. Someone in the village had dug large troughs, so that we could feed as many as we could. Milo was pouring in bags of food now, and I watched dog after dog appear from the landscape around us. Big dogs the size of small horses, and small ones the size of designer handbags, and everything in between. Fluffy dogs and ones that looked like they were half pooch, half broom.

What quickly became clear was there were far more than the seventy Tryp had estimated. There must’ve been at least twice the amount, including a very pregnant mama dog. I spotted Cy walking her to the trough, snapping at any dog that got too close.He sat beside her until he was convinced she’d eaten her fill, then he wandered over to me.

He placed his blocky head on my lap, and I stroked his ears. “Is that your girlfriend?”

The dog gave me an incredulous expression, which made me laugh.

“No? Well in that case, you’re a very good dog. Though, Demke tells me you’re not really a dog—you’re some kind of immortal Greek companion animal?”

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