I lurched out of the bed, moving like a slightly high Godzilla. “Just because you’re a Pollyanna, Sethie, doesn’t mean you can boss me around.”
He shot me a bland look. “Apollyon, Joe. Repeat after me. Apollyon.”
I grinned.
His eyes narrowed. “You drive me crazy.”
Sidestepping him, I looked over my shoulder as I headed to the small adjoining bathroom. “In a good way?”
“Undecided.”
“Ass.”
Seth’s lips curved up on one corner, making him look downright wicked. He was lucky it was his birthday, so I was going to let the whole “Joe” thing slide. I opened the bathroom door.
“Josie?”
“What?” I turned, startled to find him standing right in front of me. I still couldn’t get over how quickly and quietly he could move.
“I . . .” He trailed off and then lifted his hands, gently clasping my cheeks. He kissed me, and it was sweet and tender, and so powerful. “Thank you for remembering my birthday.”
And then he was gone.
Out of the room and next door, probably already in the shower, while I was still standing there, staring at the spot where he’d stood, wondering if no one had ever remembered his birthday before.
Or cared enough to.
This year, this birthday would be different, though.
Chapter 2
Seth
Iwas an idiot to trade spending a few hours in bed with Josie for watching her accidentally set shit on fire when she was supposed to be summoning the air element.
Which was why we were standing outside, far away from any of the buildings, back near the cemetery, even though there was still a brisk chill in the air. It was only in the fifties here. Place never seemed to get that warm. Hopefully, she didn’t start blowing up headstones and statues next, because I doubted that would go over well with Marcus, the current Dean of the University, who was also not a member of my fan club.
And it was also why getting our asses out of bed and training was so important. Knowing how to fight in hand-to-hand combat was important, but when it came down to facing the Titans, she was going to need to know how to use and control her demigod abilities.
Plus, Luke helped take over during the afternoon sessions, and the first time—the last time—Josie had used the elemental powers around him, she’d accidentally blown him into a wall, damn near through it.
Hilarious.
But painful for him.
Josie squinted as she stalked past me, heading for the straw dummy that Deacon had been way too overjoyed to help create. The thing looked like a rather fashionable scarecrow, decked out in a polo shirt and wearing a fedora.
No idea why it had a fedora on.
I didn’t ask.
Crossing my arms, I waited until Josie appeared ready. Twenty hours later. She wasn’t comfortable using the elements, so she paced a lot, shifted her weight, practically prancing around until she stilled.
“It’s in the head,” I reminded her. “You have all this power at your fingertips, but you need to fully understand that.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her hands closed into fists as she looked over at me. Her blue eyes were vibrant, very much like her father’s when he was rocking irises, but when she was frustrated or angry, they reminded me of the deep blue of the Aegean Sea that surrounded the Cyclades.
They went that deep when she was turned on, too.
“I know I have the power,” she argued. “Duh.”
I arched a brow. “Yeah, you know you do, but you don’t really believe it or trust yourself. If you did, you wouldn’t be setting every damn thing on fire every time you get horny.”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “I do not!”
I smirked.
“That was like once or twice.” She threw up her hands. “Okay, maybe four times. I didn’t this morning.” A light sparked in her eyes. “Then again, maybe that just means you were slacking.”
“Is that so? Me slacking?” I laughed. “Babe, if you’d been any more ready this morning, the whole damn dorm would’ve caught on fire.”
Her entire face went red this time, but that spark in her eyes turned into a flame, and I knew her mind was back in the bed, when I was thanking her for the lovely gift of her breasts.
Josie blinked and muttered, “Assface.”
“Got a new nickname for you.”
“Oh. I can’t wait to hear this.”
Dipping my chin, I grinned as she watched me. “Anytime you get around me, you get so ready, I’m just going to start calling you Slip ‘N Slide.”
She choked on a strangled laugh. “Oh my God, that’s terrible. If I ever hear you say that again, I might hurt you, Seth. For real.”
Chuckling, I nodded at the dummy. “Tap into the wind, Josie. Feel it coursing through you. You got this.”
Josie’s nose wrinkled and then she focused on the dummy. Her hands closed into fists again. Her shoulders rose, and I felt it then—the small ripple of power. It flowed in the distance between us, washing over my skin. The kiss of power—of aether being tapped into and used—felt like stepping out into the summer sun.
Locking my jaw, I shifted my stance as I drew in a deep, steady breath and focused on Josie, only her, until the enticing wave of power dissipated.
Lightning cracked overhead. Fat, dark clouds began to form. I lifted my chin, sighing as a raindrop smacked off the bridge of my nose.
“Shoot,” she muttered, shoulders drooping.
I pursed my lips as I watched the gray clouds break apart. “We’re lucky,” I announced dryly. “You’re not going to drench us this time.”
“Shut up.”
My lips quirked up. “Try again.”
Josie did just that. Lightning cracked again. She set the chair I’d dragged out on fire. The dummy started to smoke at some point, but then the quick shower she summoned put the fire out.
The fedora was a loss.
Finally, near lunchtime, Josie got it. She summoned the element of air, lifting the dummy up and holding it there for several moments.
Each time she tapped into the aether, I felt the kiss of power and used every ounce of control that I had to ignore it. Being around pures had helped me build up some tolerance to the minor displays of power. And I’d experienced harder shit. For example, the erection this morning was one of them. Denying the level Josie wanted to take our relationship to was the exact opposite of easy, even when I wanted to . . . well, do right by her. Strange concept and all, but behaving myself was hard. So I got this covered.
But it was when we worked with akasha that I almost couldn’t . . . couldn’t ignore the allure.
There was nothing more powerful than that, and when it hit the air, it was like touching lightning. It called to me, sang to what existed deep inside me—this thing that needed aether as badly as a daimon did. How fucked up was that? Knowing that I shared something in common with the daimons was one of the things that kept me in check, kept this thing inside me locked away.
Josie was the other.
Once the dummy was back on the ground, I made her use the element of air three more times, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. With her, you never knew.
Josie turned to me, pushing a shorter strand of blonde hair out of her face. A tentative smile appeared as she bounced over to where I stood. “I think I finally got the hang of the air element.”
Truthfully, I couldn’t say if she finally did have control over it or not, and we wouldn’t know until she could do it several days in a row. Josie stared up at me, eyes bright and hopeful. I didn’t want to piss on her parade.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning down and pressing my lips to her forehead. “You did really good, Josie.”
Stretching up, she looped her arms around my neck and gave me a quick, tight hug before settling back on her feet.
I stood there. Stared at her for a few moments. Like a creep. Sometimes I
didn’t know what to do with her. I could be touchy. Gods knew I had boundary issues. I had no problem being . . . affectionate, but I was not, under any circumstance, used to someone being affectionate with me. Not like this. When it was actually genuine, not forced for one reason or another, and went deeper than a physical thing.
Josie was free with the affection—the smiles and the touches, the soft kisses and the closeness.
She blew me away with all of that.
Sometimes I also wondered what I was doing with her, getting involved in a real relationship, because it wasn’t exactly fair to her. A handful of months ago, I would’ve laughed my ass off at the prospect of something like this, but here I was, in a relationship with Apollo’s daughter.
And besides all that terrible shit I’d done in my past and the shit with the aether that I was still struggling with, I literally had no future.
None.
Eventually, once the Titan situation was handled and I survived that, I would be going back to doing the gods’ bitch work, dealing out Remediations. In other words, hunting down and destroying those who had sided with Ares against the Olympian core. And then after that? Whenever I did die, my soul belonged to Hades. There was no promise of tomorrow and no paradise waiting for me.
So doing this with Josie was selfish. Unfair. The odds were stacked against me, against us, and just like I knew Apollo was eventually going to appear at the most inopportune time, she was going to end up hurt by all of this.
But, like I said, I was selfish.
I couldn’t walk away from Josie. I had tried to ignore what I was feeling for her. I had tried to leave her the day that I’d brought her here, to the University, as I’d been ordered to do, and I hadn’t been able to do it. I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I just hoped she didn’t end up paying for it in spades later.
Despite where my head had gone, Josie smiled up at me. “I’m hungry.”
A slight grin tugged at my lips. “Of course.”
Josie smacked my arm. “Jerk.”
Pushing the darker thoughts away, I draped my arm over her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s head to the cafeteria.”
“Can we grab some food and take it back to my room?”
“Sure.” Considering the cafeteria was becoming more of a warzone between the halfs and pures than a place to eat, I didn’t have a problem with that.
Since the very first birth of the half-blood—the child of a pure-blood and a mortal—the half-blood race was subjugated by those with pure bloodlines. It was a fucked-up caste system, reminiscent of ancient Greek times, where destinies were fated based on whether or not the blood was considered pure.
Up until recently, the halfs had it bad, absolutely no choice. The Breed Order that had been in place since the beginning stripped them of rights and prohibited the mixing of the two breeds. At the age of eight, halfs had been brought in front of a council of pure-bloods and had been determined if they would be given the Elixir, a serum created by the gods that robbed a half-blood of all free will, and placed into indentured servitude, or if they would go into training. Some believed that training to become a Sentinel or Guard was better than the servitude, but Sentinels and Guards had notoriously short lifespans. Most didn’t make it out of their mid-twenties, dying while hunting daimons—pures and halfs that had become addicted to aether—or from guarding the pures.
Becoming a Sentinel hadn’t meant that the halfs had free will. It just meant they had been chasing the lesser of two evils.
But the rule of the Breed Order was over and gone, just like the Elixir. Halfs had all the rights of the pures, and while many pures had fully supported the change, some were not overly thrilled that they no longer had access to free labor. And there were also halfs who weren’t ready to let thousands of years of injustice go.
Couldn’t really blame them for that.
Some of the halfs chose to continue training to become Sentinels. Some left their posts. Others stayed. And there were even some pures, much like the saintly Aiden St. Delphi, who had risen to the occasion and were now training to become Sentinels.
Chaos had a nasty habit of sneaking up on everyone when it was least expected, and although things had been quiet the last couple of days, I doubted it would remain that way.
In the cafeteria, Josie bypassed the grilled chicken and salad bar, bum-rushing the fried foods section. My kind of girl right there. She grabbed a basket of fries and I went for the fried chicken tenders. After loading up on drinks, we headed back to the dorm, and the whole time, Josie smiled in a way I began to worry might crack her face.
I eyed her as we headed down the narrow hall toward our rooms. “What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing,” she chirped, walking ahead of me.
Shifting the bottles under my arm, I found myself smiling when my gaze dropped to her heart-shaped ass. Damn. She made standard, Covenant-issued sweatpants something to dream about.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” I replied.
“Sometimes I just like to smile for no reason.”
“Smiling gives you premature wrinkles.”
“And resting bitchface doesn’t. Yeah. I know.” Stopping in front of the door to her room, she glanced over at me. “Or maybe I’m just smiling because I like being around you.”
I stared at her.
The corners of her lips tipped down. “Too much?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “No. Never too much.”
That smile returned in full force. “Good.” She unlocked the door and said, “Just remember that.”
My brows rose as I followed her and then stopped in the middle of the doorway, my jaw unhinging as I stared into the room.
“Surprise!” One—no, two or three voices shouted in unison, and I think I heard Josie giggle and say, “Happy birthday!”
I couldn’t stop staring at all of the . . . balloons. Red. White. Yellow. Some were shaped like . . . penises? My gaze narrowed on a red one that was a good ten inches long with—yep—with balls as the base. Penis balloons. My gaze tracked down, and there was Deacon St. Delphi, Aiden’s younger and definitely not as saintly brother, under the penis balloon, blond curls sticking out everywhere and silver eyes full of laughter.
“You’re awestruck, aren’t you?” he said, smirking. “Told you, Luke. The balloons sealed the deal.”
Luke was leaning against the wall, ankles crossed. “I had nothing to do with the balloons.”
“That was all me.” Jerking his thumb back at his chest, Deacon smiled proudly. “All. Me.”
Josie placed the basket of fries on an end table next to a small loveseat in the sitting room area. Then she took my chicken tenders and the drinks, placing them next to the fries.
She smiled weakly. “I might’ve, um, mentioned that you had a birthday coming up.”
“Really?” I murmured.
“Cake,” Deacon interjected, springing toward the coffee table. “We got you a cake.”
“I also had nothing to do with the cake,” Luke announced, and when I looked at him, he shrugged. “I’m pretty much just here to bear witness to your reaction.”
I had no words.
“You have no idea what I had to do to get Libby to make this cake. By the way, Libby is one of our awesome cooks in the cafeteria,” Deacon explained. “And I think it’s a really awesome cake.”
At that moment, I looked at the cake, really looked at it, and my eyes widened. “Spider-Man?”
Josie dipped her chin, unsuccessfully hiding her grin.
“You seemed like you’d be into Spider-Man.”
I opened my mouth. Yep. No words as I stared at the small, round cake. Libby should go into the cake-making business, I
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