Page 12 of Loved By Aphrodite

He’d been working on undoing the layers of magic and code woven through the app’s systems for hours non-stop. But the program was vast and complicated, not to mention, he had to work carefully. One wrong move could trigger an alarm and cause the system to kick him out and put up stronger firewalls.

At first, he tried to do everything manually, but it was taking too much time. So, he switched tactics and instead created a separate program to automate the process. This would take even longer, but at least he didn’t have to spend another couple of hours hunched over his keyboard. All he had to do now was wait.

He blew out a breath. Why was he helping Aphrodite anyway? This wasn’t his problem.

But then again, since the beginning, he was making her problems his.

Initially, he hadn’t noticed the bruises. As they stood in front of Zeus that day he announced they were to be married,Hephaestus had been so struck by her breathtaking beauty he couldn’t even think. However, a breeze had caused one of the gauzy sleeves on her dress to lift up, revealing purple-blue marks on her upper arms. As he looked past her dazzling presence and aura, he scrutinized her and made out the cakey white powder on her cheekbone that was meant to conceal any discoloration under it. His awe had quickly turned to rage. The thought of anyone hurting his future bride had sent him into fury, but he managed to hide it.

In the weeks leading up to the wedding, she began to disappear from Mount Olympus for long periods of time. Then, one day, she’d been late to a brunch hosted by Hestia. While he had not been thrilled about attending the engagement festivities himself, it was very rude to be tardy to a celebration thrown in one’s honor by the goddess of the hearth.

So, he had confronted her, and that’s when he found out about that bastard who had kept her a virtual prisoner by holding their son hostage. He’d been enraged at that odious creature for hurting her and vowed to help her in any way he could.

She had protested, of course, and refused his help, even offered to break the engagement as she didn’t want him mixed up in her business. But he wouldn’t hear of it and even suggested they continue with the marriage—in name only—as it would allow them to stay in Zeus’s good graces while they formulated a plan to retrieve the boy and keep him safe until he was old enough to eat the golden apple of immortality. After that, they would go their separate ways. Aphrodite agreed, and they were married.

Taking Eros away from his father hadn’t been simple or easy. Cyncus had placed a blood spell on the boy, which prevented him from being separated from Cyncus without causing extreme pain and eventually death. Blood spells could not be undone byanyone but the person who cast the spell, and even upon the death of the spellcaster, it moves to the next of kin, which means the only way to truly break the spell was to kill anyone related by blood to Cyncus—and their children—which they didn’t want to do.

So, Hephaestus came up with a different plan. He built an enchantedpyxisthat would draw out Cyncus’s magic and trap it. Of course, that meant they would have to get him alone and away from his guards. So, Aphrodite devised a ruse and pretended that she needed to speak to him privately, drawing him into her personal quarters. While she kept him busy, plying him with wine and food, Hephaestus had set off the device. By the time Cyncus figured out what was going on, Hephaestus already had the boy and Aphrodite, whisking them away from his palace.

There was also the problem of where the boy would live until he became immortal. While Aphrodite could go to Mount Olympus, Eros as a demi-god could not. But Hephaestus had already thought of a solution. He knew of a sparsely inhabited island where they could stay, hidden away from Cyncus or anyone who might seek to harm him. After a decade and a half of living there, Eros finally gained his full god status after eating the golden apple.

To an immortal god, fifteen years was a mere blink of an eye. But the divorce Aphrodite obtained seemed to have come even quicker than that. While they had agreed to stay together only until Eros could live on Mount Olympus, but he didn’t expect Zeus to grant their divorce so soon.

Since then, they had somehow avoided running into each other, though for Hephaestus it was more a conscious effort than not. He even skipped attending the sealing ceremony every ten thousand years, as he wasn’t needed there anyway after he constructed the door that held the Titans inside their prison.

But seeing her again, it was difficult not to be caught up in her orbit once more. She was like the sun, and he had no choice but to revolve around her.

A ringing jolted him from his thoughts. Grunting, he glanced over at his phone, Artemis’s name flashing on the screen. “Yes, Artemoula?” he answered.

“I need your help, H,” she said as soon as her face appeared on screen.

“What is it?” His body went on full alert. “Is it the babies? Are you having any contractions? Where’s Cade?”

“Don’t you say that name to me right now.” Artemis’s bottom lip stuck out like a pouting child’s. “I’m not speaking to him.”

He let out a sigh. “What is it? What did he do?”

A tear—an actual, honest-to-goodness tear—appeared at the corner of her eye. “He forbade me to leave the house while he’s away. Can you believe it?”

“Uh-huh.” He glanced at the clock, hoping this wasn’t going to take too long.

“I mean, come on, I’m pregnant, not an invalid.” She tsked. “I just wanted to go to town and do some shopping. How could he even….”

Tuning her out, he turned to his keyboard to check on the progress of his program, making a few adjustments here and there, and once in a while, muttering an “oh yeah” and “really?” to Artemis.

“You’d do that for me?” she squealed so loudly, the tiny speakers on his cellphone blew out. “Thanks, H, you’re the best.”

“Sure…huh?” His head whipped back toward the screen. “Do what for you?”

She laughed. “Get me some pears from Hestia’s garden. You know, since I’m craving some fruit but Cade won’t let me leave the house. Thank you for offering to bring them here for me.”

“Get you pears from…” He scrubbed a palm down his face. “What am I, DoorDash? Why can’t you just buy pears from your supermarket?”

“Because they’re not the same, and it’s the only thing I’m craving right now.” Artemis pouted. “You promised, and you can’t break a promise to a pregnant woman, or you’ll get seven years of bad luck.”

He was pretty sure that wasn’t true, but there was no reasoning with Artemis when she was like this. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do right now. “Fine, fine. I’ll get you those pears.”

“Make sure you pick the ripest ones, okay? The one from the upper part of the tree.”

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