Star sighed exaggeratedly and said snarkily, “What does that have to do with the beautiful woman I saw you kissing and calling yourbest girlin the kitchen?”
“She's my daughter.”
Star blinked his eyes several times, wondering if he had heard wrong. “Daughter?”
“Yup.”
Star looked at Anubis, who was in his early thirties, and the young lady looked close to his age. So, when did he get someone pregnant?
“I know what you're thinking.”
“How? How could you possibly know?”
“It's written all over your face. Baby, I'm a lot older than I look. Remember, people like us age slowly; for someone like me, age and time are just a construct.”
For some odd reason, that tidbit of information had quickly slipped in and out of Star's thoughts as an insignificant thing. He’d had to learn so many things recently, and he was so damn overwhelmed that he had to pick and choose what stuck. But now he was intrigued.
“So, how old are you?”
“Old, but let's not worry about that,” Anubis said. “All you need to understand is that I care deeply for you and would never cheat on you. And when I find out who broke your heart like that, I won't hesitate to break him. As for Kebechet, she popped in to see me on a whim. You'll get used to her never staying in town long. If her mother, Anput, and I didn't have tracking spells on her, we wouldn't know where she is half the time.”
Kebechet and Anput both sounded like the names of goddesses he’d read about—one the daughter, the other the mother, both devoted to the god Anubis. Star shook his head. What he was thinking could not be real.They are supposed to be myths and fairy tales to keep humans entertained. Some archeologists had claimed to find the tomb of this god or that goddess, but Star had never put much stock in it. To him, they were simply stories.
But since living in this new world, he had started believing in the unimaginable—shifters, witches, and now gods. The names were too coincidental not to be true. Star knew that Anubis was magical, but he hadn't done anything majestic that Star knew about. Who would have imagined? Then Chase's words came back to him.He's so strong he's godlike.
Star stared deeply into Anubis's eyes and blurted out his thoughts. “Are you the god Anubis?”
The handsome man smiled and wrapped his arms around Star, leaning close to whisper in his ear, “I am. And I'm also yours.”
Star gasped at his answer as one thought came to him.Oh fuck, I mated with a god. Wait, if he's the judge of souls and god of mummification, does he know about my previous life?
“If you really are the god Anubis, then you know about my past,” Star said, stepping down and away from Anubis, who didn't stop him or speak. “And about what I've done?” He lifted his head, connecting with Anubis's, and he saw the truth written all over the other man's face. “You know that I died and who I killed. You know all of my horrors and the life I lived.”
Oh fuck, why is he with me if he knows everything about me?
Anubis didn't speak for so long, and Star wasn't sure what to think. “So that's your secret,” Anubis said after a while. “I've been trying to figure out the puzzle since the night you drunk rambled. I even sent my people to look into your past, but they haven't gotten the information to me, which is unusual for them to take this long. I have a feeling someone is keeping that information from me on purpose.”
“Are you saying you didn't know, when you’re from the underworld? They call you a god of death.”
“I'm not the only one who goes by that moniker.” Anubis shrugged. “Plus, I haven't dealt with the underworld since I turned it over to my father. He's the king of the underworld. By the way, how did you retain memories of your past life? Which god did you make a deal with for a second chance?”
Star never thought to ask Chase that question. He figured it was normal. “I don't know how I can still remember things,” Star said. “I was killed one night in my jail cell, and then I closed my eyes, accepting my death as an added punishment but regretting my past decisions. Then in the next instant, I opened my eyes and was sitting at the conference table with the man I had killed, ready to sign a modeling contract with Equi-Noxx.”
Anubis sighed and cupped his face. “It must have been scary and confusing for you.”
“You can say that again. Everything seemed the same, but it wasn't. The dates didn't match.” Star's lips raised in a mocking smile. “Chase said my parents made a deal with the gods to give me a second chance.”
“Chase?” Anubis frowned. “He knows about you?”
“Yeah, he's been helping me navigate the whole magical world thing. The world I came from thinks of shifters and magic as fairy tales and make-believe.”
Anubis tsked. “And Chase knew all of this?”
“Yes,” Star responded.
“I can't believe that crafty grim reaper was keeping secrets from me.”
“What? Grim reapers are real?” Star tried to picture the sweet, kind, handsome guy as a skeletal figure in a dark hooded robe carrying a menacing scythe as he escorted souls to the afterlife, but that image wasn't coming to him.
