Page 2 of Jayce

A false definition created to sell clothes, hair, makeup, and plastic surgery. What one person finds attractive doesn’t make it true that those qualities are the only attributes that determine sex appeal.

The programing us women undergo our entire lives to fit a made-up image is all too effective. It takes determination not to let those lies rule my self-image.

I put on a strong façade for Cill our whole lives because I never doubted her plus size curves made her any less than the girls on the cover of magazines.

Yet, I’m just as much at war with my self-image as her. A war I win at the end of most days. Until a man who must have been molded in a factory looked me up and down like he’d won a prize.

He hasn’t officially asked me out on a date. Mainly because I haven’t given him the chance. Jayce doesn’t have to say a thing for me to understand his intentions. He looks at me the same way Anjal looks at Cill.

Even though my biological clock hasn’t ticked in his heart, and if I have any control over it—it never will. Children are messy, whiny, and time consuming. My life’s plans do not include an infant on my hip.

Once he learns that I’ll never willingly give him kids, he’ll go back to Circe or someone else. Maybe even the Minotaur destined to send him the mating tick-tock that he’ll never hear from my heart. Because it’s not me. The Fates would never pair a male with a female who won’t produce another boy for the many girls that outnumber them ten to one.

That’s only the beginning of the reasons why Jayce will come to his senses when he gets to know me.

Not even my sister knows my secret.

Chapter 2

Jayce

The advanced knowledge that I’d run into Shay tonight did nothing to ease the punch in my gut when I walked through the door of Twins and saw her sitting on a barstool.

Ours.

My bull’s insistence with each encounter grows.

The ticking of the mate call is what the Fates use to ensure that two mates who’ve never met and might never run into one another in a chance encounter will meet.

Sometimes a Minotaur meets his other half before her biological clock ticks. There isn’t a definitive stamp like the ticking call, but our bull somehow knows. Like a dog with a bone, he’ll never let go once he’s found her.

I, the man, didn’t need my bull’s chants, mine, ours, mate, to know I’d met the woman the Fates picked for me that night she stood before me and my cousins half naked.

When my eyes landed on Shay, time stopped. My heart skipped a beat before racing with an intensity I’d never known. It was as if the world had faded into a blur, leaving only her in sharp, vivid focus. Her existence lit up the night sky, while her eyes radiated a warmth that I felt deep in my chest. A welcome home sign flashed in front of my eyes.

A wave of emotions hit me all at once, overpowering the fear I felt for Anjal and Priscilla that night. Excitement, awe, and an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if I’d been waiting for this moment my entire life.

My stomach fluttered with a mixture of nervousness and joy, and the undeniable pull toward her. I didn’t see it, but an invisible thread connected our souls.

I never considered myself chauvinistic about what a woman wore around other men until she stood there with her perky nipples poking through her crop top. Pierced nipples. I nearly growled at my cousins to look away.

Her refusal to cover up angered and excited me. I don’t want a woman who’s going to roll over at my every whim. I need a challenge.

Maybe that’s the difference. I’ve grown accustomed to the heifers in my herd who jump when I say jump. They meet my sexual needs for a night, but they bore me.

I’ve never had to ask a woman twice to come home with me. While Shay has me standing outside of her door often, just hoping she’ll let me ask her out. My determination hasn’t worn her down—yet. I’ve no doubt it will—soon.

Shay rolls her eyes at her sister when I step in behind her. Like she knew the night’s plans had been setup to bring us together.

Cill hadn’t told me they were meeting Shay, but I knew by the glint in her eyes that my cousin Anjal’s mate didn’t really want to spend the evening with me when she invited me to tag along. And I jumped at the chance to see Shay for more than the moment it took her to look me up and down before closing her door in my face.

Priscilla, or Cill as those close to her call her, and Shay, were both raised by humans. Separated at birth and adopted, neither knew they were sisters, fraternal twins, in fact. Nor did they know anything about their demigod heritage as children of Helios. Heifers.

Heifer is the term the females of the herd prefer over cow. While my counterpart is a bull, our females’ counterpart is a heifer. It’s not an offense to our women like it is to a human.

Our females don’t shift. The shifted beast is only a bull. While the blood of a demigod flows through the veins of the women in our herd, they don’t turn into the embodiment of a heifer. The animal remains buried, clawing at the surface.

Sometimes our women are more hotheaded than us. We have the advantage of letting our beastly other half out when we shift, and they do not.

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