Page 222 of The Delta's Rogue
I shut my eyes at the thought. The prideful tone of his voice slices through me like a freshly sharpened blade. As he intended it to, I’m sure. He cares for nothing and no one but himself. He always has. That’s how he came to be “king of the gods”. Not because heis the strongest or the smartest or the most powerful, but because he is the biggest bully, with infinite pride and a nonexistent moral compass.
“Why are you so desperate to hurt me? What have I ever done to you?”
“It’s what you didn’t do. What you refused to do until tonight.”
My jaw drops. “You’re telling me that all of it—bringing Lyall back, telling him to hurt me however he wanted, the trafficking… You started all of it because I refused to sleep with you?”
I knew I bruised his ego with my refusal, but I never thought it was enough for him to retaliate like this. He had demigoddesses and nymphs, and countless other beings, fawning over him and tripping over themselves to be his bedmate. I was certain he’d move on from my refusal quickly and find himself a new conquest to chase after.
How foolish I was.
“You say that like it was a one-time thing, Selene.” He says my name with a sneer. “It wasn’t once. Millennia of asking, and always a refusal. At first, I understood. I let it slide. You’d lost your daughter. You were mourning. I figured if I gave you space, you’d come around. You’d see what’s been there between us all along. But when you came to me, asking for permission to have another daughter, you refused my offer once more and chose a human instead!”
“I didn’t sleep with—”
“You chose a human over me! You turned me down countless times and then chose a fucking human instead of me!”
“Her father had to be a human. It was the only way she’d be human and raised in the mortal realm. Don’t try to tell me you would have made an exception for her. We both know that’s a lie.”
“If I was her father, she would have grown up at your side.”
At my side.
He may not be omniscient, but damn does it feel like he is sometimes.
How many times have I dreamed that Haven grew up with me as her mother? How many times have I woken up and instantly sobbed because there was no joyous, rambunctious, blue-eyed child waiting for me to braid her hair and show her the wonders of our world?
My beautiful, graceful, red-haired daughter.
My choice—to use a sperm donor and leave her in the care of humans—hurt both of us. At the time, I thought it would be selfish to keep her instead of gifting her to an alpha, like I promised Conan I would. But it was my selfishness, my need to protect my image as the goddess of the werewolves, that forced my hand. I see that now.
As much as it pained me, the choice to deny Zeus of his request was never really a choice. I knew if I accepted his offer—if I agreed to let him bed me so we could create a child of the sky and the moon—she wouldn’t truly be mine. She’d be his. Raised by him, or shunned and ignored by him, she’d always know that her father was a tantrum-throwing toddler disguised as a god.
“But she’d haveyouas her father,” I spit at him. “You, who would hurt countless innocents to get back at me for something so trivial as refusing to join you in bed.”
“What are you going to do about it? You can’t hurt me. The rules forbid it.”
I laugh. “You’d be surprised how many of your ‘rules’ I’ve broken these past few years. But this one… This one, I’m not going to break. I will not hurt you.”
He sighs in relief, but I smile.
I gesture towards the far side of the bed as six more individuals join us in the room, transported from my realm on the moon where they’d been waiting this whole time, listening to our entire conversation through communication crystals Brenna crafted.
Wesley. Reid. Nolan. Sebastian. Madeleine. And Sarina.
“I’m not going to hurt you, but they are.”
Zeus scoffs. “They can’t hurt me. Only a weapon crafted by a god can hurt me. And you don’t have one.”
“You’re right. I don’t have one.” My eyes gleam with triumph, and I raise my chin higher as my warriors all extend their claws in unison. “I havesix.”
Zeus’s face falls ashe realizes his mistake—his overconfidence, his underestimation.
For what are lycans and werewolves if not weapons? Weapons created by a god.
No. By agoddess.
How like a sadistic, overly cocky male to think he’d get out of this scot-free.
