by Lazu, Sotia
Nancy looks at me expectantly. She asked me something. I replay her question in my head. “Sounds great,” I say. “I love Eggs Benedict.”
“Awesome. I’m sleeping with one of the waiters, so we’ll get pancakes for free.” Nancy beams while I open and close my mouth, trying to come up with a response. “Dionysos says I don’t have a brain-to-mouth filter. I tend to believe he’s right, but I don’t care.” She shrugs and pulls out her phone. Taps something and hands it to me. “I’ll call you when I wake up.”
New Contact is on the screen, and beneath it, Moira Whatshername. I laugh and add my number, but don’t correct the last name. “Filters are overrated.”
Business picks up around ten, with three more groups showing up. They’re all hungry, and Dionysos disappears in the kitchen. Hermes swings by the bar to wish me a good night and tell me it was nice to meet me, which is a little weird but makes me feel special.
It’s almost midnight, when Dionysos resurfaces. Phone to his ear, he undoes his apron one-handedly and tosses it on a bar stool. “I’ll be right there,” he says to whoever is on the other end of the line. He ends the call, slides the phone into his back pocket, and turns to me. “That was my grandpa. He wants me to swing by. I should be back before closing time, but if I’m not, can you lock up? Maybe bring me the keys upstairs?” He winks, and I go weak in the knees. “I’ll drive you to your hotel.”
Meh. That last part wasn’t the best thing he could have said, but we’re taking things slowly.
I want to kiss him goodbye, but from the corner of my eye, I see Nancy watching, a smirk playing on her lips. She’s not close enough to make out what Dionysos said, but she can’t miss my swooning.
I put some distance between me and him. “See you later, then,” I say.
Dionysos nods. As he turns to leave, he calls out, “Last round, people. The ladies need to go home at some point.”
The remaining five patrons grumble, but it sounds good natured. It’s not long before they pay and leave.
“So how do you wanna do this?” Nancy asks. “Kitchen or bathroom?”
When I just blink at her, no clue what she means, she elaborates. “One of us cleans the kitchen, bar, and dining area—since Dionysos usually leaves the kitchen in a good condition—and the other cleans the bathroom.” Her grimace at the last word clearly indicates her preference.
I shrug. “I’m okay with doing everything. I’m not that tired, and I need to wait for”—oops, almost said Dionysos—“a friend, to drive me home.” No need to mention where I’m staying.
Her face lights up, as if I gave her a very early Christmas gift. “If you’re sure,” she says, already disappearing into the employee bathroom. When she comes back out, she has her coat on and a bright-green bag slung across her body. “I’m out of here before you change your mind. Talk tomorrow.” She blows me a kiss and is out the door.
The bathroom is in better condition than I feared, and once that’s out of the way, I move to the kitchen. Dionysos has left it in perfect condition—all surfaces are spotless, and everything is where it should be.
Except for his car keys, that lie on the floor, beside the prep bench. I pick them up with a small groan when my back complains. I should call him. Let him know they’re here.
But if they’re here, how did he go meet his grandfather? Did the man drive all the way here? I assume he’s old, and if he did come by, why call and not show up?
They’re filthy rich. Maybe he sent a chauffeur to pick up Dionysos.
Or maybe Dionysos lied to me. What grandfather calls you at midnight? The young and female kind, I bet.
Ugh. I was worried he was sleeping with his employees, and all the while, he had another woman on the side. Nancy’s words mock me. They’ve sure as hell slept with everyone else. At least one of them is still sleeping with someone else. Bet he’s upstairs doing just that this very moment.
I should go catch him in the act.
Or not. It’s not like we have something. We just now started dating.
Specialist input is required. Sofia may be in bed already, but I need her point of view. Hope she forgives me for interrupting her beauty sleep.
I try to video call her, but a warning flashes across my screen. Low storage space. What does that have to do with the video call, if I’m not recording it? I could ignore the warning and go with a regular voice call, but my brain isn’t wired to ignore issues. Which is why I want to go upstairs and tell Dionysos that I’m not an idiot.
Instead, I open my Photos app, to get rid of a selfie or ten. Last thing stored here is a video, from two days ago. The still frame shows my face, eyes crinkled at the corners and mouth wide open. Must have hit Record without realizing it. I hover my thumb over the thumbnail, meaning to delete it, when it starts auto playing without sound. The camera switches from my face to the interior of Denny’s.
Seems I accidentally recorded my last chat with Sofia, when I was showing her my new place of employment.
A white shape flashes in a corner of the screen. What was that? I click on the video and drag my thumb slowly across the time line, until Hermes shows up on my screen, wrapped in a sheet. He vanishes as suddenly as he appeared.
Sofia said something about a hot naked guy while we were on the phone. Is this what she saw? Did Hermes really drop in and out of the bar in the blink of an eye? How?
And is he the only one who can do it?
Dionysos got to me impossibly fast when I almost dropped the glasses. And sometimes it feels like he can read my mind. And that dream...
No. This is crazy. Humans don’t have super-speed and mind-reading powers.
Humans don’t.
Hermes, Poseidon, Ares, Hades, Dionysos, and Hephaestus. The Olympios brothers’s names no longer seem like odd choices made by a quirky old man who loves mythology, and something tells me the biggest mystery surrounding Dionysos Olympios isn’t whether he’s fucking someone upstairs.
My better judgment screams at me to drop this, take a cab to the hotel, gather my things, and go back home to Halkida, never to cross paths with Dionysos and his freaky family again.
But my brain isn’t wired to ignore issues.
Chapter Sixteen - Dionysos
C called to say he was waiting for me at my place. I didn’t ask how he got in, when I haven’t given him a key. He’s never pretended to be human, and we never pretended to believe he was one. Plus he recently blinked his head to Sei’s living room or something, so this is par for the course.
I sometimes wonder who or what he really is. Could he be our supposedly long-lost brother, Apollo?
Nah. My gut tells me that’s not the case.
I unlock the upstairs door, to find him standing by the foot of my bed. He’d never stoop so low—literally—as to sit on the throw pillows by the coffee table and wrinkle his immaculate, tailored, midnight-blue suit.
He straightens his bright-pink pocket square, his touch of whimsy for the evening. “I hear congratulations are in order.” His tone and posture are formal, but his gaze is warm and a hint of a smile curves his lips.
I don’t bother fighting back a smile of my own. I’ve been negative toward anything bonding-related since I found out it entailed forever, but for the first time, the notion doesn’t daunt me.
As long as Moira doesn’t hate me when she gets to know all of me.
“I see news travels fast,” I say, approaching for a handshake.
He grabs my proffered hand and pulls me in for a tight hug, like the ones he used to wrap me in when I was a kid and woke up screaming from a nightmare. “You’ll be so happy, my boy.”
I almost believe all he cares about is my happiness, not the power to come with my impending ascension. Power my brothers are certain he has plans for.
“Nothing’s set in stone yet.” I break away and drop my gaze to his handmade leather loafers. How to tell him I’ve been dreaming snippets of who I used to be, and they scare the fuck out of me? Only one way I can think of. I
look him in the eye and say, “I’ve been dreaming snippets of who I used to be, and they scare the fuck out of me. I see me running into Ariadne, after Theseus ditched her. I see my power ripping through the magic binds that hold her will and memories.” I wipe dry lips with the back of my hand. “She went crazy, C. Tried to kill herself.”
C rubs his clean-shaven chin. He hasn’t aged a day since I first saw him, and if it weren’t for his pure-white hair—and the fact that that’s impossible, since he wasn’t a teen when he adopted us—I’d say he was in his late forties. “How long have you been having those dreams?” he asks.
I’ve been hiding the truth for over a decade. Time to stop. “Since my eighteenth birthday.”
“And how much have you seen?”
He knows. He knows what happened to Ariadne. Knows exactly what’s been haunting my nights.
“Last night, I dreamed that I talked her down and promised to punish Theseus for her. Did I?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Just studies my face, without speaking.
“You need to tell me how to stop dreaming about the past.” A hint of pleading weaves through what should have sounded like an order. “Moira is tapping into my subconscious and picking up scenes she shouldn’t witness. At first I was afraid my power would harm her, but she’s impervious to it. Now I’m worried she’ll resent me if she finds out how I drove Ariadne to madness.”
“Have you seen what happened with Ariadne, in the end?” he asks, as if he hasn’t heard me. It’s how he is. He’ll lead the conversation where he wants it to go, and I’ll have to follow.
The end sounds ominous. I shake my head.
C’s hand rises so fast, I think he’ll strike me. Instead, he cups the left side of my head. A slap or punch would be preferable to the searing pain that explodes behind my eyes.
Faintly, as if from far away, I hear C say, “I really thought one of you would have figured it out by now.”
I’m lying on soft fabric, but something grazes my ass as I shift. The smell of grass and sea air fills my nostrils. I begin to sit up, but stop. A warm body is pressed against my side. Ariadne lies beside me, her back to me and her head on my arm.
I caress her belly and lay a kiss on her soft hair, taking the opportunity to inhale her scent. Like the most expensive wine, she’s intoxicating.
She hums and pushes into me. Wiggles her ass against my hip. A sneaky hand reaches back to wrap around my cock that’s always hard in her presence. She tugs lazily, slowly, driving my hunger for her to new peaks.
I glide my palm down her soft belly and between her thighs. Two can play this game. My fingers slip easily between her folds. She’s wet for me. Ready. I trap her clitoris between middle and forefinger. Pinch. Rub.
She squeezes her legs together for a heartbeat, before spreading them open and folding one across mine.
I know what my woman wants.
I roll toward her and push inside her from behind, relishing her moan. She fits me like a glove. Squeezes me like a vice. Is made for me.
My Ariadne.
Later, when we’ve both come apart, she turns to face me. Her hazel eyes swim with tears, but her smile is the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in my long existence. “I’m so happy you found me,” she whispers. “I love you, Dionysos.”
“I love you too.” I study her eyes, intent on memorizing every fleck of green in her hazel irises.
I’ve seen these eyes before.
Will see them again?
In my past, but in this Dionysos’ future.
They’re Moira’s eyes.
Ariadne’s face shifts, her brows becoming thinner, her cheekbones a little more prominent, her chin a touch more pointed. Her nose has a tiny bump. Her smile is the same, though.
I didn’t notice before, because I never dreamed of Ariadne smiling.
I blink, and I’m in my room again, standing by my bed, alone.
Moira is Ariadne.
It’s so glaringly obvious now, I feel stupid for not realizing sooner.
Has C known all along? Obviously. He said he expected one of us to catch on by now. By us, did he mean Ariadne and me, or is this happening to my brothers too? Are their soulmates women they loved before too?
The banging on my door interrupts my thoughts. What time is it? How long was I gone?
“Who is it?” I call out, rubbing my face with both hands, to clear my mind, as memories of my life with Ariadne pour in through the dam C demolished tonight.
Yes, she and I shared a life together. Her life. And until she passed away peacefully in her sleep, she was as breathtaking to me as on the day I met her. The day I made her whole again.
“It’s me,” answers a woman’s voice.
“Ariadne?” I ask, before I can stop myself. I should know better, damn it.
Silence for a heartbeat, and then a huff. “No. Moira.”
The hurt in her voice forces my feet to the door, even as mental images of my first life threaten to make me stumble. I open the door, aching to pull Moira into my arms, tell her everything, and ask her to be with me for the eternity we didn’t get the first time around.
The deep line between her eyebrows says she has something else in mind.
Chapter Seventeen - Moira
Ariadne? Seriously? He has a woman in there and is worried yet another found out? Ugh.
I should go.
I will go.
If he doesn’t open the—
He opens the door, fully dressed, hair pulled back from his face in a sleek ponytail. He doesn’t seem rumpled and recently fucked.
And that’s not why I came here. I came to tell him I know something is seriously off with him and his family, and I can’t work for him anymore. Also, he’s an asshole for stringing me along when he’s seeing multiple other women.
“Hey.” His smile is so wide, his cheeks must hurt. “I was just coming down.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Everything okay with your grandfather?”
“Better than okay. I’ve been dealing with something, and he gave me a brand new perspective.” He steps back and opens the door wider, motioning for me to come in.
I don’t move, though I do take the opportunity to glance inside. Bed is made, and there’s no half-naked seductress in sight. Did he hide her in the bathroom or the closet?
Focus, woman.
“Does he appear and disappear at will too?” I ask. “Like Hermes?”
Dionysos works his jaw, and his eyes are liquid silver.
Say something, I scream in my head.
He winces.
Can he hear me? I suspected he could, but—
“I can,” he says. His lips are pressed together in a hard line. “Can you hear me?”
I want to run away, but my feet are rooted to the spot. “What are you?” I ask. Aloud. Like normal people do. My stomach is doing cartwheels. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. I’m leaving. You and the job.” I force my gaze from his eyes and start to turn away, when his hand closes over my forearm.
“Wait,” he says.
“Why? So you can call me by someone else’s name again?”
Fuck. That’s so not my biggest problem.
And there’s the smile, making another appearance. “Please come inside. We’ll talk, and you’ll see there’s nobody else. Never has been.”
It’d be romantic if I believed him. Now, it’s teetering between creepy and outright lie. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I ask, “What about Ariadne?”
He chuckles, and my cheeks burn with rightful indignation. Unless it turns out Ariadne is his long lost Golden Retriever, and I really have nothing to be jealous of, he’s laughing at me.
“Come in. Hear me out. If you still want to leave afterward, I won’t stop you.”
A profound sense of sadness coils in my gut, threatening to dislodge my anger. But the sadness feels foreign. Not mine.
When he holds out his hand, I take it and let him lead me to his bed.
He must sense my hesitation, because he backtracks toward the kitchen area, putting a couple meters between us. “Sit. I’m not going to touch you, and the door stays open.”
I nod and sit, but tension bunches my shoulders. “Talk.”
“My grandpa can indeed blink like Hermes can. I can’t. Not yet. Sei, our eldest broth—”
“I met him,” I say drily. “What is blinking, and how do they do it?”
He shrugs, and hops on the bench, legs swinging. “You saw what it is. They will themselves elsewhere, and they’re teleported to that location. And they do it by not being mortal.”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I swallow, but it’s like my throat contracts around razor blades. I slouch, because sitting upright requires more strength than I can muster at one thirty in the morning, and after that revelation. “Not mortal?” But he’s not like them yet?
Dionysos shakes his head. “Not like them, but not mortal.” He speaks in my head again.
It’s scary, but what’s scarier is that his presence in my mind is soothing. Is he using some not-mortal power, to stop me from bolting?
“No,” he says, lips moving and sound travelling through air and all. “I can’t do mind control, either.”
I hear the yet that he doesn’t say. “But you will, at some point?”
He nods slowly. “After I ascend.”
Ascend? Like to a higher plane? Is he totally mortal but crazy? In a cult?
He sighs. “We’re Olympian gods, for fuck’s sake. Not cult leaders. We’ve been reborn before, but never all at the same time, because the conditions weren’t ripe for our ascension. Now they are. We’re going to reclaim our position as kings of the world, but we mean humanity no harm.” He snorts. “Chaos knows the Titans would end us if we did. Sei and Hermes have regained their full power, and”—he bites his lip—“I believe I’m next.”
Well, shit. I made out with an Olympian god. And Titans are real too.
I should be terrified, but I’m too busy absorbing all this information, to react properly. Plus, there’s the shock, numbing me. “So you’re—”