Page 9 of Mate Me

A loud thud sounded in my ears and pain exploded in my head as I unceremoniously dropped to the concrete sidewalk like a lead balloon.

My cousins shouted my name in panic, kneeling beside me.

“We’ve got you. We’ll get you home,” Clara said in a soothing voice.

I stared up at the sky as the clouds wisped across a blanket of stars, and a bright white orb came into focus for a brief moment, almost as if to laugh at my current state.

“Told you . . .” I mumbled, feeling my eyelids flutter as my consciousness faded.

Clara crouched beside me, stroking my head. “Told me what, Rea?”

“Nothing good happens on a full moon.”

Chapter3

Caius

The waves crashed softly on the shoreline, the rhythmic splash creating a sense of peace and calm in an otherwise chaotic world.

Time crawled slowly into the early morning hours, but the eternal night dragged on.

Darkness consumed Tartarus, never changing. There was no bright, burning star to warm the ground. No colorful changing of the seasons. After a while, the drab atmosphere grew on me. The longing for a vivid and lively environment eventually waned, though the anger I felt over my loss never truly did.

I couldn’t remember the feeling of the sunlight on my skin. I couldn’t recall the scent of spring, or the sound of songbirds.

I’d almost lost hope that one day I’d leave this place, but I still held onto a fraying thread.

I sighed, shifting my weight to my right leg, and crossing my arms. My actions caught Styx’s attention. She’d come looking for me, knowing where I went when I needed to think.

“That’s twice now you’ve sighed like that since I’ve been here. What troubles you, Caius?” she asked.

Styx was observant, always watching her surroundings and sizing up anyone around us. With bronze skin and dark hair, she was stunning, but it wasn’t her looks that drew me to her all those years ago. It was the calculated gleam in her eye. She was as dangerous as she was beautiful. Kelpies often were. I’d found her here, banished for a crime, yet, unlike so many others, she didn’t beg for forgiveness. She didn’t apologize for what she’d done, and when I’d heard the story, I understood why. I respected her for it. She may not have crossed from Earth to Tartarus with me, but she became part of my court, and her loyalty was just as fierce as Abyssian and Pollux’s.

She didn’t exactly get along with everyone, but that wasn’t a requirement to earn my trust.

Angling my head toward her, I pressed my lips together. “The visions.”

“Did something new happen in them?”

I lifted my shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “They’re becoming more frequent. I can’t get her face out of my head.”

“We’ve searched for years and found nothing. If she was in Tartarus, we’d know.” She took an extra moment, considering her next words. “I don’t think it’s anything more than a dream, Caius.”

I shook my head. “It’s not. I don’t know who she is, but it’s maddening. Something about her calls to me. Her beauty is . . .” I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, almost as though I was trying to imagine her scent. “I’ve never seen anyone like her. She haunts me.”

“You speak of her as someone would a mate,” she said, a hint of disgust in her tone.

With a chuckle, I said, “Primordials don’t have mates. No one could ever be our equal. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to find her.”

It was a sad and lonely truth to my kind. Even if having half my power stripped away demoted my status to a measly god, there were some aspects of my creation that remained unchanging, and I had accepted that truth long ago. Fuck love anyway. That’s what doomed me to this prison in the first place. It still didn’t stop me from wanting to taste the woman who’d plagued my dreams for years.

“Will you miss it?” she asked, jutting her chin out to the vast, dark ocean. “When the day comes for you to leave, I mean.”

A small smile graced my lips. “Yes, surprisingly.”

The realm was meant to be filled with the damned, and yet, in my rule, it evolved. Families were born here. Civilization formed. Industry thrived. Yes, the damned still suffered, but life was alsolived.

The creators—the ancients—they had it wrong all along. At one time, I had been too. There was no black and white. No one was all good, and no one was all bad. This place showed that to me day in and day out. Gray was a beautiful color, and Tartarus was a testament to it.

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