Page 20 of A Single Thread Of Hope

Flopping onto the floor beside me, Cy looked longingly at the end of the couch. Sometimes, he slept behind my knees in his dog form. A totally normal place for a dog to sleep, but if I actually thought about the fact he was a man nuzzled beneath my ass cheeks with his nose pressed into my thighs, I freaked out a little.

He held my gaze, but I got the feeling that his attention was on Demke. “Apollo is on the island.”

Demke’s hiss told me that was a bad thing, but I didn’t need to be a theologian to know that Apollo was part of the Greek Pantheon. “What does he want?”

“There’s been a prophecy.”

The world went quiet. Nate’s chest went rigid beneath me. It was like time stopped, like history was holding its breath.

Demke turned ashy beneath his normal golden tan. Fear flashed across his face, his eyes recounting a moment far away ina time, long before the world as I knew it existed. He was caught in a memory of a different woman, a different prophecy.

I reached out, gripping his hand, anchoring him to this moment with me. He looked down at our fingers, recognition slowly leeching back into his face along with the color of his cheeks. Swallowing hard, he nodded at Cy. “Tell us.”

Not taking his eyes from mine, Cy blew out a long breath. “With the death of the mother, the new weavers will be born into the tapestry, and a new age will begin.”

Icy dread filled my veins.Well, that doesn’t sound good.

Chapter 11

TRYP

The prophecy from Apollo had been like pouring hot oil into an ant nest. Everyone was panicking, and we were almost divided about how to react. None of us wanted to lose Wren. It would also mean all of us would go with her, our lives intrinsically bound to hers now. Then who would care for the babies?

I almost wished that Demke had held out a little longer before bonding with Wren. He might be apathetic at times, but there would be no way he’d leave the babies to fend for themselves if anything happened to the rest of us.

Wren, on the other hand, seemed to be pointedly ignoring the prophecy. She didn’t want to talk about it, plan around it, or hear about it. She’d decided to be in complete denial, and honestly, I was right there with her. Prophecies weren’t set in stone; sometimes it only took one small deviation for it to not come to fruition. Worrying about it every day wasn’t going to help, and it would probably just be fulfilled sooner, especially as stress was bad for both her and the babies.

Teron, however, was beside himself with worry. He’d been awake for days, consuming every piece of literature he couldfind, sourcing medicine and equipment we probably wouldn’t even need. He was basically setting up a specialist obstetrics hospital in our formal living room. Well, he was when he could wrestle control back from the Gryphon.

The very thought of his mate dying had turned the normally reasonable beast into an absolute nightmare. He’d built the walls of Wren’s bed nest so high, she was going to need a stepladder to climb into bed soon.

“How much can we trust Apollo’s word, anyway?” Néit asked. He made a good point, but I wasn’t so sure that Apollo was lying. He’d gained absolutely nothing from handing us this prophecy.

They were considered almost sacred among Mythics. Somewhere along the line, a myth had been perpetuated that if you didn’t give a receiver their intended prophecy, ill fortune would befall you ten times over. We were all a superstitious bunch, so if someone had told Apollo the prophecy, he might’ve felt obligated to share.

But I wasn’t about to take it at face value, even if he was Cy’s father. Even if he’d once been as happy here on Crete with the Goddess as we’d been.

Delphos had always been rather impartial as well. I doubted he would suffer too much from the change of the Fates. He hated people. Rumor had it that he’d been absolutely elated when people stopped doing pilgrimages to the temples of Delphi. He just wanted to live in his little cave and have his prophecies and get on with his life. He would still have prophecies under the next Fates, and the ones after them. He wouldn’t be losing power with the shift.

The only people who stood to lose real power were the Moirai, and if Clio and Morrigan were to be believed, they were good at convincing others that they too would lose power if there were new Fates, especially because the triplets wouldn’t be obviously aligned with any Pantheon.

Morrigan obviously believed that they would fall under the Celtic Pantheon, since Wren had been maneuvered into Néit’s path. There weren’t enough of us Minoans left to rise through the ranks of power. Unless Demke rose to some monolithic level of power, we were no threat to the status quo, yet she’d been very obviously placed in our path too.

Would these be the first impartial Fates? Would we all die, and the different Pantheons come to fight over possession of them, to raise them and use them for their own gains?

Worry was beginning to burn a hole in my gut, but Wren was looking to me to be the calm, easygoing one right now. Teron had her in his examination room once again, and then I intended to eat her out until she was so relaxed, she’d be as floppy as overcooked noodles.

I had to do my part, and realistically, I was never going to be useful in the war room with Néit and Demke, or Morrigan. I couldn’t look after her health like Teron, nor protect the borders like Cy. I couldn’t construct her a fortress masquerading as a nursery like Milo. In fact, he was constructing nursery-style boltholes all over the compound, with Erus helping him.

What Icoulddo was make her orgasm on my tongue several times a day, ensuring she was happy and content. A task I would do with a smile on my face.

I skipped into the examination room, and when Wren looked up at me, giving me a tight smile, I knew I wasn’t a moment too soon. Teron was checking on the babies yet again with the ultrasound machine. If he kept this up, by the time the triplets were born, they’d have enough radio waves in them that they’d come out picking up the BBC.

Just like a week ago, they looked like tiny little aliens, all smooshed together with hardly any room. Teron was making satisfied noises as he entered numbers on his tablet.

I walked over and leaned down, kissing her softly. “Beautiful girl, you take my breath away.”

She did. She was glorious, the epitome of life and nurturing. I’d already started painting her every time I picked up my brush, and I had no intention of stopping until I’d recreated her in every position, every light, and every season, even if it took my entire immortal life.

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