Lover, Divine

by A. Star

  I gasped. "You can't be serious! She is my baby. Mine. How dare you suggest tha' I allow Isolde to be raised by another woman! It's because you interfered with the curse she put on Medusa, isn' it?"

  "No. It has nothing to do with that."

  I shook my head. "I won't allow it. I don't want Athena anywhere near my daughter."

  Apollo shot me a look. "I wasn't asking your permission, Siobhan." His expression softened. "But I would never seek to keep your children from you. They will know you as their mother. You will see them often."

  Tears ran down my cheeks. I brushed my fingers over Isolde's soft cheek. "Do you promise?" I knew I had no choice here. There was nothing to argue.

  He nodded once. "I promise."

  "And wha' abou' you?" I didn't need to elaborate. Apollo understood what I meant.

  He leaned toward me and planted a gentle kiss on my lips. "I love you, Siobhan. More than I have ever loved any mortal. You may not agree with my ways and manner of dealing with things, but you should never question whether I love you. I do. But you must never forget that I am a god first. I have responsibilities to the kingdom that I must fulfill, but I don't ever want you to feel like you're not important to me. You couldn't fathom how much you mean to me. I leave my heart here every time I go away, and I always come back for it. I will always come back to you, Siobhan. You are the mother of my Prince and Princess, and the Queen of my soul. I could never exist without you."

  He kissed me and I got lost in it. Same as I had. Same as I always would.

  "Will you stay with me for tonight? Before you take the children?"

  "Of course, Siobhan." His hand slipped under my sun dress as he grinned wickedly. "I've been dying to get back between these sweet thighs of yours anyway."

  I gasped and covered Isolde's ears needlessly. "The children!"

  "Need to be off with Emmaline. Mummy and daddy have some private business that needs tending to."

  I sniffed and looked away. "No."

  "No games today, Siobhan. You know you missed me. You know you want me. Now summon Emmaline so I can show you how much I missed you."

  Of course, there was no saying 'no' to that.

  Later when we lay in bed, face to face, with his arm around me and his fingers softly stroking my back, Apollo asked me something I never expected.

  "If I said there were going to be more, what would you say?"

  "More wha'?" I said, kissing his jaw, then his neck.

  "More children. Our children."

  I pulled back and stared into his eyes. "Are we going to have more children?"

  He nodded.

  "How many more?"

  "Three."

  "Three?" I sounded astonished because I was. "How long before the next one comes?" I was sure that it would be soon.

  "Four years from now."

  "Four years?"

  "Yes." Apollo kissed me. "It will be a boy."

  "A boy," I parroted. I was still trying to register the fact that I would have three more children. With Apollo, the god of the Sun. An Olympian. I was going to be the mother to five demigods.

  "Say it again," I said. I needed to hear it.

  "Say what again?"

  "That you love me."

  He kissed me. "I love you, Siobhan. Forever and always."

  And I believed him.

  I cuddled up to him. "Wha' do you want to do, besides spend the rest of the day in bed?"

  "That was my one and only idea. What do you suggest?"

  I grinned and made a request I hadn't in quite some time. It was like starting us all over again.

  "I want you to tell me a story."

  EPILOGUE

  8 years later

  "Hey, Ma!"

  A smile stretched across my face as I set down my violin and rose to greet my first born son. I wondered how long he had been standing there listening to me play. It wasn't often that I had a day free from Influential politics or P.O.D.A (Parents of Demigod Alliance, of which I was the president) business. So I'd taken advantage of the freedom and beautiful weather and decided to compose outside so I could feel the sun on my skin. I'd never finished composing Lover, Divine because what Apollo meant to me kept morphing into something more and the piece never reached a point where it truly expressed what I felt for him. I wondered if it ever would.

  "Strafford! Wha' kind of surprise is this?" I held out my arms to him. He bowed to me, then bolted into them.

  "I missed you, Ma!"

  "I missed you too!" I ran my hand over his shaggy, black hair and kissed his forehead. "I feel so unprepared. I wasn' expectin' you."

  "Tha's wha' demigods do, Ma. We always pop up when you don't expect us."

  I grinned and kissed his forehead again. "Is your sister with you?" I asked.

  "No. She's in Olympus with Athena. I rode in on my pegasus, Spitfire."

  I tried to keep my heart's reaction from showing on my face. I wasn't sure if I succeeded or not, but either way, Strafford didn't seem to notice.

  "Are you hungry?" I asked, forcing a smile. "Carrington made stroganoff for lunch."

  "Ooh, yeah! Tha' sounds really good!"

  "Excellent."

  "Strafford!" Ace, the son born to Apollo and I four years after the birth of Strafford and Isolde, came barreling out of a bush brandishing a plastic sword.

  "Strafford!" Ace squealed again, his little arms pumping as he ran to greet his brother.

  "Hey, Ace!" Strafford let his little brother tackle him to the ground. "I've missed ya!"

  Ace didn't seem to care. "Fight me, fight me!" He stabbed Strafford with his sword.

  "Fin! Be careful!" I scolded. Finbar was Ace's true name. He was named after my great-uncle on my mother's side.

  "It's okay, Ma," Strafford said as Ace continued to assault him. "He's not hurtin' me."

  I smiled. "O' course he isn', Your Highness."

  I let the boys wrestle for a few minutes before I broke up the match. I sent Ace off for a nap with his mortal nanny, warning him with just a look not to do anything even remotely demigod-ish. Sure, Ace was an undeclared hero and had no real powers, but he wasn't normal by any means. And I liked this nanny and didn't want to scare her away like all of the others. All of the immortals and orphs on the property knew to steer clear of the nanny, but Ace was my little troublemaker, and he didn't care for nannies or authority of any kind, even less so when his big brother came home to visit. I told him to be good and he gave me a smile that told me he would do no such thing. I kissed his forehead anyway and sent him off with the nanny and hopefully, the blessings of the gods. I wanted some alone time with my Strafford and would sacrifice the nanny to have it.

  I shooed Carrington, our butler of two years, out of the kitchen and grabbed a bowl to fill with stroganoff for my son. I poured two glasses of apple juice, then joined Strafford at the nook.

  "Have you seen Da, Ma?" Strafford questioned, his mouth full of noodles.

  I nodded. "I have." That's all I offered up. I couldn't very well tell my little boy that his father came to see me almost every day and that we spent most of our time together making love. In fact—

  "Da says you're going to have a baby," Strafford said, stealing the very thought from my mind.

  I blinked. He caught me completely off guard. "Um, aye. I am. It's going to be a—"

  "Girl. Yeah, he told me tha' too. Her name will be Felicity."

  I stared at my son. "Are you okay with this? Abou' havin' a sister?"

  He shrugged. "Yeah. Only thing is, now Isolde will have someone around to help her beat me up and she was already doing a pretty good job all by herself."

  I laughed when Strafford grinned at me. I loved that my son had accepted the fact that Isolde was the most powerful demigod in the universe, even more powerful than the demigod Prince born to Zeus and Aella Kalonimos. Strafford wasn't jealous or bitter. He was proud of his twin sister and that made me proud of him, more than he would ever know.

  "Guess wha', Ma?"
>
  "Wha'?"

  "Da said I could get a tattoo!"

  "You will do no such thing, hero!" I replied. "You are only a child."

  "Aw, Ma."

  "Don't you 'aw, Ma' me, Strafford Law. You may be a famous Sun Prince up there in the clouds, but down here--" I reached over and swept my hands through his black hair. "--you're still jus' me little boy."

  "Aw, Ma." But this time, he was smiling.

  Strafford told me all about his first mission with Isolde and how they had defeated the O'Delos hydra dragon and were the champions of the province.

  "I'm so proud of you," I said, almost in tears. My son had triumphed in his first mission at only eight years old. I was emotional, to say the least.

  "Oh, I forgot to show you wha' Da got me!"

  Strafford reached into his sheath and pulled out a dagger. As a mother, I wanted to snatch it out of his hand and lecture him about playing with knives. But since I was a mother to a demigod, I simply smiled.

  "It's beautiful," I said. And it was. Shiny and sharp, the blade was the finest empyrean bronze with fancy Greek lettering etched across it. "Wha' does it say?"

  "Radiate," my son replied with a grin.

  "Ah, your motto." I reached for the dagger and Strafford let me have it. It wasn't as heavy as it looked. "I imagine you can do quite a bit of damage with—"

  And that's when I noticed the image of the dragon coiled around the black handle.

  A feeling deep in my gut made my breath catch. I recalled the beautiful chest I had seen in Sol before the twins had been born but hadn't seen in years. I knew without a doubt that this dagger had come from that chest.

  "Did your father give Isolde one of these as well?" I asked.

  "Yup!" Strafford grinned. "But mine's better since I have the cooler motto."

  I smiled even as a shiver iced over my spine. I knew who my children were and all the power they possessed, but as a mother, I still worried about them. War hadn't come yet, but I knew it would come nevertheless. I still feared for the my children's involvement and wondered if Ace and my new baby girl would also be called to battle. What did these daggers represent? Were they just gifts, or something more?

  I had to accept right then that I may never know the answers. But I knew she would, when she was old enough. The little redheaded girl from America that Apollo reported wasn't much older than Ace. She would know about my children. She would know everything even when it seemed nothing made any sense at all.

  Her name was Chloe, as she had always been fated to be named, and she was Pythia, the future Oracle of Delphi.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A. Star is a fan of dirty passion. She likes to read it, and she damn sure likes to write it. Her first adult romance/fantasy novella is called Invasion, an alien romance about sacrifice. Lover, Divine is the first release from the Mythos: Gods and Lovers series. Future releases under A. Star include, King, Desired (Mythos: Gods and Lovers #2), the Love & Steampunk series, the Purr, Inc. stories, and more.

  www.diantha-jones.com

  Next book in Mythos: Gods and Lovers,

  King, Desired

  What the king wants, the king gets.

  Coming Early 2015!

  Want to know what happens when the Oracle of Delphi finally enters the picture twenty-two years later?

  Check out,

  Prophecy of the Most Beautiful

  Book One in the Oracle of Delphi series

  The future is now.