Page 12 of For the Love of the Gods

“Yes,” I grated out, holding the priest’s gaze so he could sense the affirmation in my eyes.

Dominic reached a hand out to me without waiting to hear what the priest had to say. I grabbed it quickly, the dread that settled in my muscles was making me jumpy.

The second his large, calloused hand closed over mine, I had the realization that we’d never really touched.

He must have realized the same thing, because he pulled back a bit and stared at my hand in confusion for a fraction of a second before engulfing my palm. Dominic pulled slightly, bringing me to stand directly next to him.

It seemed like he grew half a head, standing that close to him. I was tall, for both a god and a human, but Dominic still had a good six inches of height on me.

Standing there next to him, I felt somewhat concealed. It aided by the way he was invading every one of my senses. I couldn’t see much else besides him and the priest, the pressure of my hand in his was occupying all the nerves in my arm, his woody cologne was burrowing itself in my nose, and I could hear him breathing.

“Get on with it,” Dominic snapped through the silence. Holy Fates, this was tense. I felt on the verge of breaking.

The priest nodded, mumbling out an apology.

He began speaking Latin, the language Dominic’s ancestors used. Mine used Greek, but every House was fluent in both.

The ritual the priest was spinning was elaborate and dramatic, his words lifting dust off the floor and blowing out candles throughout the temple. My hair was forced behind my shoulders on a cold wind, plastering the thin dress to my body. If I wasn’t as steady on my feet as I’d been trained to be, I would have fallen over from the force of it.

This wasn’t some simple feat, it was the colliding of two worlds. Almost three decades ago, Mila Zeus, the princess of the Grecian gods, and Cassius Jupiter, prince of the Roman gods fell in love. It was forbidden love and scandal and intrigue and everyone who knew thought it would end as a sordid love affair.

Except it didn’t.

Mila got pregnant and they got married and months later Adrian Zeus Jupiter was born.

His existence shook our worlds to their core. When I was told the story as a girl, there was so much emphasis placed on the stupidity of his parents’ actions and the “abomination” that was his birth. He was a raging asshole to me, but I never thought he deserved the blame he shouldered.

Gods and goddesses of every House, from the powerful down to the forgotten, freaked out. There were kidnappings and children dying and couples who were slaughtered before they could ever get around to having children. The divine craved their power, and no one was satisfied with letting the other side win and for theirs to drift off into nothing.

It was particularly tense with the Hades and Pluto Houses. Two children born the year before Adrian’s birth and one four years after, all of whom possessed seemingly equal power.

There were discussions early on between our families of this exact situation, betrothing Dominic and I. But my father was a power hungry monster who thought marriage was surrender and Dominic’s parents didn’t want anything to do with my family.

It was supposed to be a fight to the death. My brother was already gone, and I should have been next. It was the natural progression. My brother died by my hand, and Dominic killed me in revenge. I was never supposed to survive.

We were never supposed to be standing here, with Dominic looking at me through the whirl of dust surrounding us like he was regretting tying himself to a brother-killer.

He blamed me for the death of his best friend and he had a right to. But how he dealt with that blame was another story, that was the source ofmyanger.

I squeezed his hands a little harder, just to remind him that I was there.

“Yes, sweetheart?” He ground out, visibly fighting a flinch as my nails dug into the back of his hand.

“Nothing.” I smiled so sweet it hurt my cheeks.

The look in his eyes could have lit a match on fire. It certainly had an effect on my own temper. This was fucking upmyplans and he’s the one who is pissed?

Oh, I needed to get out of here so fast, or I’d punch him in the gut.

The wind surrounding us dropped at once, startling me back to reality. I was too focused on trying to break Dominic’s hand that I hadn’t really paid attention to any part of the ritual.

We were married.

I walked into this willingly, and if we were Fated, it would have been forced eventually, but the shock of it all was still tough to deal with. Even if I did only plan on seeing him when it was absolutely necessary.

“It is complete,” the priest said, still in Latin, before switching back to the modern language. “Only death will sever this now.”

Someone laughed. Someone in that temple laughed, I was sure of it.

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