Total extinction.
By the hand ofhisown father. Brutal annihilation over a slaughtered whore his father had barely tolerated. One who would grate the nerves of a saint. It was so unfair.
“Stryker?”
He winced at the sound of his wife calling to him. Though she was beauty incarnate, with blond hair, perfect blue eyes and features and curves that were the envy of every woman born, including his aunt Aphrodite, he cringed every time Hellen came near. Not because she wasn’t desirable but because he’d never wanted to marry her. Yet to please his Olympian father who’d cursed his race, he’d abandoned the real woman he’d loved. Left her cursing his very name so that he could appease his father by taking Hellen for his bride and leaving Phyra forever.
So much for wedded bliss. And familial obligations.
“Stryker, come quickly! Please! Something’s wrong with the children!”
Terror seized him at the panic in her voice.
Nay! Surely his father had spared his own grandchildren …
Are you an idiot? Since when does Apollo give two shits aboutyou,never mindyourchildren?
Granted, that was true—still, Stryker didn’t want to believe that his father would bethisreckless.
Or stupid.
While his father might not care about him or his children, surely Apollo wasn’t suicidal …
If he and all his children died, so would the god who’d tied them to his life.
That was his thought until he ran into the nursery to find his children writhing and throwing up. Their little bodies were shaking as they sobbed and moaned in absolute agony. It was a pain he knew well, as he’d gone through it himself only hours before as he’d transitioned into the very monster his father had made him.
Tears welled in his eyes as he saw a cruel truth he couldn’t deny.
His father hated them all, without mercy or compassion.
“Seal the windows! Now,” Stryker growled at his pregnant wife and the two female servants who were assisting her.
They rushed to obey his orders.
If the rays of the dawning sun touched their children, it would kill them instantly. For that was the curse of his father, Apollo. Henceforth, no Apollite was allowed in the Greek god’s domain. If Apollo caught any who possessed one drop of their blood out in the light of day, he would singe them to the bone and kill them instantly.
Why? Because the Apollite queen, Stryker’s birth mother, in a fit of jealousy had ordered the death of Apollo’s Greek mistress and the bastard son she’d birthed for the Greek god. As further punishment for the queen’s atrocious crimes, Apollo had cursed all of her people to feed from each other’s blood—they were damned to know no other sustenance.
But the worst of all … no Apollite would ever again live past their twenty-seventh birthday. While they would now age faster than humans from the moment of birth, on the morn of their twenty-seventh year, their aging cycle would speed up even more and by the end of that day, they would painfully die of old age and decay into dust.
No exceptions. No alternatives.
Anyone who held a single drop of Apollite blood.
That was his father’s mandate. And it applied to all of them.
Including Stryker and his children—Apollo’s own grandchildren.
Horrified, he gathered his four young sons into his arms to comfort them, even though there was no solace to be had. “Shh,” he breathed.
Like him and their mother, they were all golden-haired and fair, with tawny skin and bright cheeks. Said to be the pride of their grandfather who’d turned his back on them.
Hellen held their daughter, Dyana, against her shoulder. And to think, they’d actually named her for Stryker’s aunt, Artemis—Apollo’s twin sister. The thought turned his stomach now. How could he have ever honored any of his paternal family?
I won’t go against my brother, Strykerius. Not even for you. Do not ask me for help again.
How he hated that Olympian bitch for her selfishness. His only prayer now was that Artemis would one day lose something she held as dear to her as he held his children.
