Chapter 27: The Feast of the Gods (Part 2)
Zeus's approval was like opening the floodgates of a dam. The atmosphere of the throne room, previously tense and formal, overflowed into a torrent of divine hedonism. The music of the lyres and the satyrs' flutes became wilder, more rhythmic, a pulsing melody that invited dance and debauchery. Nymphs with flower crowns moved among the gods, their laughter like the tinkling of bells, filling golden cups with nectar that glowed with its own light.
The gods left their thrones, transforming the audience chamber into a chaotic ballroom. I saw a minor river god drag an Oread into a shaded alcove, their laughter turning into muffled moans. I saw the winged messenger, Hermes, steal a kiss from a nymph before vanishing in a blur of speed.
'A nest of unrefined instincts. Noisy. Careless.'
I did not participate. I did not mingle. I found my place instinctively, in the only zone of true darkness in the room: the shadow cast by Zeus's enormous throne. It was a pool of blackness in the middle of an ocean of golden light, and I sank into it, my colossal form becoming almost invisible, my ember eyes the only two stars in my private little night. From this vantage point, I watched. I was a predator studying a new herd at their watering hole.
The first to approach was not one of the noisy and flamboyant deities. It was a presence of calm. I felt her aura before I saw her, a soft and steady warmth that was not aggressive like the sun's, but comforting like a hearth. A middle-aged woman, in a simple tunic and an expression of infinite patience, stopped a few meters from my shadow. It was Hestia, the goddess of the hearth.
She did not speak. She did not judge me. She simply stood there, and in the stillness of her presence, I felt a strange form of recognition. She was an anchor, a center, as I was for my own realm. She bowed her head in a minimal gesture, a silent greeting between two fundamental forces. I returned the gesture, an almost imperceptible nod of my massive head, before she turned and returned to her place by the central hearth of Olympus, which burned with a flame that never wavered. We had not exchanged a word, but an understanding had been established.
The next encounter was less subtle. A god with flushed cheeks and a crown of vines stumbled toward my shadow, tripping over his own feet. He smelled of spilled wine and a joy so deep it was almost a form of madness. Dionysus. He stopped, squinting, trying to focus on my form in the darkness.
"By my grapes!" he stammered, a silly smile on his face. "A big dog. Do you want wine, big dog?" He raised his cup, spilling half the purple nectar onto the cloud floor.
I ignored him completely. My gaze passed through him as if he didn't exist. For a being of my antiquity, his intoxication was simply boring. After a moment of unsuccessfully trying to get my attention, he shrugged and stumbled away, looking for a more receptive nymph.
From the other side of the room, I felt a heavy, regal gaze. Hera, the Queen of the Gods, was watching me from her throne, to which she had returned. Her face was an impassive mask of severe beauty. There was no hostility in her gaze, nor curiosity. Only a cold assessment.
'As long as you don't touch her alpha male, you don't matter to her.'
I understood her position instantly. She was the matriarch of the pack, and I was a new wandering male. As long as I didn't directly challenge her mate, she would tolerate me. I looked away, a signal that I had no interest in her throne.
But not all gazes were so neutral.
I felt a pang, an irritation at the edge of my perception. It was the light. Intense, arrogant, and focused on me. Apollo, the sun god, had stopped in the middle of the room, his body glowing with a golden aura so bright it was physically annoying. He wasn't looking at me; he was scrutinizing me. It was daylight judging the night. Our antithesis was fundamental.
Our gazes met across the room. His eyes were orbs of liquid sun, mine were pits of void. A silent challenge. He represented everything I was not: order, clarity, predictable beauty, and a light that reveals all. I was chaos, secrecy, the darkness where all truths hide. A condescending smile curved his perfect lips.
"So darkness has learned to come out of its cave. Be careful not to burn yourself, Shadow," his mental voice was as bright and sharp as his rays.
'Light only casts bigger shadows, little sun god,' I replied, my thought a block of ice in his sunny mind.
I broke eye contact, deliberately turning my head to watch another group of nymphs. The message was clear. I did not consider him a threat worthy of my attention. I saw a flash of anger in his aura before he turned away, but the seed of enmity had been planted.
And then, I felt the other gaze.
This one was not hot or bright. It was cold. Precise. Deadly. It came from a quieter corner of the room, where a goddess of severe and athletic beauty was surrounded by a retinue of maidens dressed in hunting tunics. Artemis.
Her gaze was not a challenge. It was an assessment. The gaze of an expert hunter who has just found the most legendary trophy of her life. She was measuring me, calculating my weak points, imagining how my shadow fur would look as a rug in her temple.
And I knew why.
'The Amazons. My new pets. They are her charges.'
Her hatred was not conceptual like Apollo's. It was personal. I had claimed her warriors, subdued them, fucked them. I had invaded her domain.
I met her silver eyes, as cold as moonlight, and returned the stare. There were no words. Only a promise. An image projected directly into her mind: that of her hunters, broken and kneeling at my feet, just as the Amazons were now.
A stifled gasp of fury escaped her lips. Her maidens went tense, their hands moving instinctively toward the knives at their belts. But she stopped them with a gesture. She knew an attack here would be madness.
But war had been declared.
Having navigated the turbulent waters of divine politics, my attention finally drifted toward the two auras that had been the true purpose of this party from the start. One was a wildfire of raw power, smelling of blood, steel, and a fury so pure it was almost a joy. Ares.
And the other... the other was a supernova of lust. A scent so overwhelmingly potent that it made the combined desire of the entire grotto seem like the perfume of a single flower. It was the smell of nectar, of hot skin, of silk sheets, and the promise of a pleasure so absolute it could drive gods mad.
Aphrodite.
I saw her, reclining on a divan, surrounded by a retinue of satyrs and minor gods vying for her attention. And she was watching me. Her eyes, the color of the summer sea, held no curiosity or analysis. They held an invitation. A promise. And a challenge.
The game of observation was over. The true hunt, the one that had been orchestrated from the beginning, was about to begin.
My inspection of the Olympic pack had concluded. I had identified the neutrals, the potential enemies, and the irrelevant ones. The party, with its incessant noise and superficial joy, was beginning to wear on my patience. Boredom, my oldest enemy, threatened to return.
'A nest of peacocks. Too many feathers and little power.'
I was considering withdrawing, dissolving into the shadows and leaving this realm of light to its childish games, when I finally felt the gaze I had been waiting for.
It was not Athena's cold assessment, nor the hostility of Apollo and Artemis. It was a gaze that neither analyzed nor judged. It simply desired.
It was Aphrodite.
She was reclining on a pink silk divan, a vision of beauty so perfect it was almost a violence to the senses. Her hair was a waterfall of molten gold, her skin glowed with its own radiance, and her eyes were the color of the sea on a summer day, deep and full of promises. A retinue of minor gods and satyrs surrounded her, but she ignored them. Her attention was completely fixed on me.
In her gaze there was neither the fear of mortal women nor the arrogance of gods. There was recognition. A predator recognizing another. Her smile was slow, sensual, and I felt her power spread through the room, not as an attack, but as a perfume, a wave of pure conceptual lust that crashed against my indifference. She smelled of nectar, of hot skin after sex, and the promise of a pleasure so absolute it could break worlds.
And beneath it all, she smelled of something familiar. The scent of her priestesses, the ones who had crawled before me in the grotto.
'So the queen has heard of her pawns' games.'
As I held her gaze, a new presence interposed itself. It was a shadow, but not one of darkness. It was the shadow of a power so dense and brutal it seemed to absorb the very joy from the air. Ares. The god of war.
He was a mountain of muscle and scars, his bronze skin glistening with a fine sheen of sweat, even in the cool of the party. His eyes burned with the fire of eternal battle. He did not walk; he marched. Every step was a hammer blow on the cloud floor. He smelled of dried blood, steel, and the pure adrenaline of slaughter.
He ignored everyone else and stopped beside me, his imposing form the only one in the room that did not seem dwarfed by mine. He did not look at me with fear, nor with contempt. He looked at me with the raw, unadorned respect of a warrior for a perfect weapon.
"So you are the wolf," his voice was deep gravel, the sound of stones clashing. "I have heard the reports from Earth. My Amazons... they say you fought well." He paused, a crooked, brutal smile on his lips. "And that you fucked even better."
I did not answer. I simply watched him.
He laughed, a short, harsh sound. "I like your silence. It speaks more than all the bragging of these other 'gods'." He slapped my flank, a solid blow that would have felled a bull. I didn't move. "Pure brute force. Pure intent. A true engine of war. You are one of us, beast."
At that moment, Aphrodite slid between us. She moved with liquid grace, her body rubbing against Ares' side and then against mine, a casual act of possession over the two most dangerous beings in the room. Her scent enveloped me, a mist of pure seduction.
"Don't bore him with war talk, my love," she purred, her hand tracing a pattern on Ares' muscular arm before resting with breathtaking boldness on my shadow fur. I felt a slight tingle, the energy of her dominion over desire interacting with my darkness. "The beast has not come here to talk of battles. He has come to participate in them. Of a different kind."
Her eyes, the color of the sea, met mine. "My priestesses speak of you with a reverence that makes me jealous. They say your dominion is... absolute."
Ares let out a loud laugh. He wrapped an arm around Aphrodite's waist, squeezing her against his side, while his other hand rested on my back, a gesture of camaraderie between alphas.
"My mistress is intrigued, wolf," he said, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial growl. "Hephaestus, the crippled smith, is busy in his forge, hammering away at his useless toys. The goddess of love's bed is cold. And I feel... generous."
His gaze moved from me to Aphrodite, and then back to me, a spark of divine madness in his eyes.
"I have known the heat of a thousand battles. You are the coldness of a thousand shadows. She is the fire that consumes all. How about we show the goddess of beauty the combined power of War and Darkness?"
The proposition hung in the air, raw, direct, and absolutely devoid of any subtlety. It was not an invitation to an orgy. It was a challenge. A gauntlet thrown by the god of fury, an invitation to a three-body battle where the only victory would be absolute ecstasy.
Aphrodite laughed, a low, guttural sound of pure anticipation, and licked Ares' neck while her eyes remained fixed on mine.
'A new game. With interesting pieces.'
Boredom dissolved, replaced by a cold, predatory interest. They were no longer peacocks. They were lions, inviting me to their hunt.
I did not answer with words. Simply, I separated myself from the shadow of Zeus's throne and took a step into the light, my colossal form eclipsing the minor gods.
My movement was my answer.
Ares smiled, a wild grin that was all teeth. "I knew you were one of us."
He grabbed Aphrodite, lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and began to walk, pushing his way through the party crowd.
"Follow us, if you dare!" he roared at the other gods. "But the first blood... and the first scream... are ours!"
And I followed them, a tide of silent night trailing the god of war and the goddess of love, heading to the heart of Olympus. Toward a new altar.
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