Because no one wanted to believe their creator had turned against them over something they’d taken no part in. Something they’d been innocent of.
They continued to believe in a god who hated them. One who had not only turned his back on them but cursed them in his callousness.
Throwing his head back, Stryker roared with the injustice of it all. How could the entire Apollite race be damned over the actions committed by a mere handful?
Yet that was what they were facing.
Total extinction.
By the hand of his own 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 about you, never mind your children?
Granted, that was true—still, Stryker didn’t want to believe that his father would be this reckless.
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.
“Baba!” Archimedes whined as he held his stomach and dry heaved. “It hurts so much!”
“I know, m’gios.” He kissed his son’s brow and rocked him in an effort to soothe his pain. “Just breathe.”
Theodorus didn’t say a word as he buried his little face in the folds of Stryker’s cloak and cried harder. Likewise, his twins, Alkimos and Telamon, whimpered and moaned. Their matching curls were damp and tangled with sweat as they held on to him for dear life.
Hellen’s features turned as pale as her hair. “They’re cursed, too, aren’t they?”
Stryker’s gaze fell to his toddler daughter, who was an exact copy of her beautiful mother. Sick to his own stomach, he nodded as he watched Dyana’s pale eyes turn dark, and his sons’ teeth elongated into pairs of fangs like the ones he’d grown just hours before.
Since the children had gone the whole day without mutating, and because his wife was Greek and didn’t share his Atlantean blood, Stryker had assumed his father had spared his grandchildren from the curse. How stupid of him to think for one minute that his father would actually care.
Hellen let out a soul-deep wail as she realized that their children would never again be allowed to see the light of day without it killing them.
Or eat a bite of real food.
That Stryker would leave her a widow in only six years, and that she would be reduced to begging in the street for a mercy no one would give. Because he was cursed by the gods, and she was the mother of his half-bred spawn, everyone would hate her. The Apollites because she was Greek, and the Greeks because she’d married an Apollite and bred with him. People were ever cruel. They both knew that well.
For the first time ever, Hellen glared at him with fury in her pale blue eyes. “Why did your mother have to send out her soldiers to slaughter Ryssa and her son?”
“Because my father’s an unfaithful, horny idiot!” And Apollo couldn’t take five seconds to tell Queen Xura that Stryker was alive and well, and being raised in Greece by his priestesses. Rather Apollo had left Xura to believe that Stryker had been slaughtered by the gods because they feared he might be the prophesied infant of the goddess Apollymi, who was destined to overthrow their pantheon. Hence the reason Xura was so jealous that Ryssa’s son had been allowed to live after hers had been “killed.”
Leave it to Stryker to have two such unreasonable parents. His mother’s answer to jealousy hadn’t been to simply kill Ryssa and be done with her. On no, it’d been to tear her and her son into pieces. And his father hadn’t been content to just kill Xura and her soldiers in retaliation.
Nay, never something so simple as that.
The god of moderation had lost his mind and struck out at the entire Apollite race as if they’d all been guilty of the slaughter. And once such a curse was spoken, there was no way to undo it.
Ever. As Stryker had quickly learned, as every god and priest had concurred.
Apollo’s word was final.
“We’re damned,” Stryker whispered under his breath. No one would help him. While he’d never deluded himself into thinking for a moment that he was surrounded by anyone other than a bunch of selfish assholes, this more than confirmed it.
Everyone was out for themselves. They were only his friends until he turned the other way. They took what they could grab and left, and quickly forgot what they owed him. What he’d done for them.
His head swam from the horror of it all as he glanced to Hellen’s swollen belly. She would birth him another son any minute now. With his own Apollite powers he could feel the strength of the boy’s soul stirring.