The word dies on my lips, and my insides lurch in a way that has nothing to do with Little Bean’s lingering protests. Ares finally turned around.
“Thanos?” I breathe, not believing my eyes.
The weight inside me lifts, bubbling up like air under water. Elation and bewilderment leave me dizzy, like I’ve been knocked senseless, even though I’m somehow still standing. A giddy spiral of emotion sweeps me backward in time. Memories flit like colorful mosaics through my mind, some good, some bad, some painful, some messy and chaotic. All with a constant—Thanos. The broad cheekbones, strong nose, deep-set eyes, and multiple scars are the same as I remember, but everything else is bigger. More. This incredibly potent male is taller, more muscled, broader—and my childhood protector was already gigantic to begin with.
Ares flashes me the rare grin I saw only occasionally as a girl. “Hello, little monster.” Even his voice is fuller, richer, round with power.
I stop breathing and simply stare, incapable of anything else. When I blink, he’s still there, still Thanos, and yet he’s not. He’s aGod.
Swaying on my feet, I stumble forward. Griffin reaches for me, maybe to stop me, maybe to steady me. I don’t know because I brush past his hand and keep going, suddenly running. I don’t stop. I can’t. I crash into the God of War and throw my arms around his Titan-sized waist, burying my face in the center of his bare torso. He smells of iron, fire, and wind, just like he always did. Arms the size of tree trunks close around me, engulfing my entire upper body. My shaky inhale shudders between us. I barely hold back a sob.
The fear and dread crushing my chest disappear, and whatever Selena did with her healing touch seems to have calmed Little Bean. Ares is Thanos.MyThanos. He practically raised me. Everything will be all right. Before I ever knew Selena’s fresh rain and budding leaves perfume or Griffin’s light citrus and sunshine scent, Thanos’s unique blend of warrior male and primal elements was the smell of rescue and refuge, of my invincible house.
I pull back, ball up my fist, and then pound Thanos on his bulging pectoral. “You left me!”
“You walked out of Castle Fisa on your own two feet.” He looks down at me with a warm expression that does little to dispel the hurt I’ve been carrying around inside me for more than eight years.
I thump his chest again as hard as I can. “And you refused to come with me.”
Thanos’s expression sours as he shoots a heated glare at Selena. “It was her turn. It was decided.”
“Decided?” I echo. “By whom?”
He turns back to me, half his face in shadow. The other half is bronzed, battered, and beautiful. “And you were getting far too pretty and grown up to stay in my care.”
His voice gives nothing away. Neither does his expression, but my heart starts galloping like someone just hit it with a whip. When I begged him to run away with me, did he want to?
“From birth, you were spoken for,” he adds quietly, as if reading my thoughts. “As am I.”
I swallow. Ares and Aphrodite. Thanos is Ares. If the legends are true, Aphrodite is the only one of the Gods who can stand him. I don’t know why. He’s powerful, protective, and discriminately violent. In my eyes, perfect.
I glance at Griffin. The man I married. The father of my child.From birth, you were spoken for.
Griffin has always felt so right. I love him. I had no hope of resisting him, even though I tried. He’s always saying I was made for him,meantfor him, but from the shocked and almost stricken look on his face, I think he’s more focused on my obvious adoration of the God of War and on my running into another male’s arms than on the fact that he was right about us all along.
I step back from Ares. Whatever romantic feelings I had for him are long gone, leaving only the reality that for the first fifteen years of my life, he saved me every time I truly needed it. He also let me get hurt. A lot.
A sliver of pain pricks my heart. And he let me walk off, alone and utterly devastated by my sister’s death, without seeming to care what happened next.
Ares looks at me sharply, his wide brow furrowing.
My nostrils flare.Ishe reading my thoughts?
“How are you feeling now?” Selena’s voice is back to being like a mist-cloaked stream on a spring morning—slightly lilting, cool, mysterious. It soothes me.
I glance at my belly, as if the still-flat surface should reveal something of note. “Fine. I guess she’s over her outburst. Or sleeping.”
“Good.” Selena very pointedly inserts herself between Ares and me.
Does she think Thanos would hurt me?
The God’s tawny eyebrows slam down. The same glinting, bluish-green eyes I remember from my childhood flare with anger, but now, tiny bursts of light skip along their power-bright surfaces. “Lightning bolts on Olympus, woman! What do you think I’m going to do to her?” Ares growls.
Selena shrugs, looking him up and down with visible distaste. “Squash her? You’re not exactly delicate.”
“She used to fit in the palm of my hand. I bounced her on my knee and tickled her. If I didn’t crush her then, there’s no chance of my doing it now.”
So that just exponentially increased the weird factor of my one-time crush. In my defense, it didn’t develop until later, along with breasts and hips.
