Mount Olympus
Aphrodite was more than satisfied with the blond's appearance. He was more than she had expected at first: a very attractive man in her eyes, tall, with messy blond hair that gave him a wilder air, round earrings black as the night with odd white markings in the center, and a body that, from what could be seen, looked well-built, with no excess softness in his features and no poorly distributed muscle.
And even though only his neck and hands could be seen, the latter bearing a sort of black rings on the fingers of his left hand while the rest of his body was hidden beneath his clothes, she would have sworn that the man she was seeing through the Iris message had a very good body.
And those eyes...
Blue like the sky itself.
It was like looking at a cloudless sky on a summer day.
Why did they feel familiar to her? Had she seen those eyes before?
Before she could keep thinking, a shout from one of the few women present in the room startled her. A voice that, honestly, she never believed she would hear raised unless it was absolutely necessary.
"IT'S HIM!" Artemis shouted, rising from her throne as she stared at the blond she had encountered a few months ago.
That caught everyone's attention, and several of those present raised a brow at the moon goddess's reaction.
"Is something wrong, Arty?" Artemis's brother asked, confused by his older sister's actions.
"I met that boy a few months ago in a forest," Artemis answered.
Far from helping anyone understand, the hunter's answer only confused those present even more, because after all, it was not that strange for someone to withdraw from society and live in the woods.
"And what's so strange about that?" Athena asked, somewhat confused by the words of her half-sister and at the same time best friend, Artemis. "After all, there are still people who live in the forests."
"That's not the problem," Artemis replied quickly, with clear displeasure in her tone. "That boy was with Kaia and Orien."
The moment she said that, everyone present was left in shock.
Each and every one of the gods, both lesser and Olympian, knew of the existence of the two wolves who matched the raw power of most lesser gods. What no one truly knew was where they came from; all they knew for certain was that they were far too powerful to be simple wolves.
There had even been rumors that Zeus went after them to demand their services, and that encounter had not ended well for the king of Olympus.
According to Zeus's own version of events, they had been driven away, and some even claimed they had heard the thunder god boast that he himself had killed them with his own hands while trying to impress some lesser goddess and get her into his bed.
But he never took into account what that story had meant to Artemis.
The goddess of the hunt loved Kaia as though she were her sister. She had learned to hunt beside her and fallen even deeper in love with the hunt thanks to the white wolf. The day Kaia disappeared had been very hard on Artemis, and hearing that her own father had been the cause of it made her lose much, if not all, of the respect she still had left for him, reinforcing even further her belief that most men were trash.
"Are you sure, Artemis?" Poseidon asked in a serious voice.
Artemis glared at him.
"Are you saying I wouldn't recognize Kaia standing right in front of me?"
Poseidon sighed when he felt the displeasure coming from Artemis.
"No, I'm only saying it because no one has known anything about them for many years, and I don't want some kind of illusion or trick to have made you lower your guard by showing you Kaia."
Artemis calmed down a little and sat back down on her throne.
"I don't need anyone's protection. I can take care of myself."
"No one has said otherwise, Artemis," Poseidon murmured. He still felt uncomfortable every time he was near the goddess of the hunt; after all, everything related to his son Orion had left a wound that not even time had managed to erase.
And with the possible war over the damned bolt, the last thing he wanted was to add more fuel to the fire.
"Is there anything else besides the fact that he was with Kaia and Orien?" Athena asked, trying to calm the situation. She was not on good terms with Poseidon, but this argument was unnecessary, and she wanted to focus more on the encounter her sister had had with Chaos's champion.
When Artemis heard Athena's voice, she visibly calmed down and proceeded to answer.
"Besides the fact that Kaia was ready to attack me if I acted against the boy..." Artemis said, leaving the gods present petrified. "He had strange marks on the palms of his hands that gave off an energy... I don't know how to explain it, the one on the palm of his left hand felt like I should have known what it was, but at the same time I had never seen it before."
"Iris, try to show his palms," Hermes commented as the image blurred in an attempt to show the blond's hands, drawing the attention of everyone present, or almost everyone.
While all of that was happening, Hera remained on her throne, observing everything. Honestly, she could not have cared less. Even so, it was still better than listening to Zeus's idiocies or enduring the constant pain of watching her domain be sullied again and again.
And if you added to that the fact that the worst day of her year was approaching... she tried to distract herself from that train of thought, not wanting to torment herself any further and suffer bitterly in silence. It was enough that she thought about it at night.
So she looked around the room again: Hermes, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Athena, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and herself.
"How strange, Hestia is usually present for this kind of thing," she thought to herself as she kept watching the Iris message, which now showed a strange white tattoo in the shape of a sphere, almost like a sun.
Then she noticed Apollo's odd reaction, prompting Artemis to speak to him and say something like:
"You felt it too?"
And the sun god responded with a nod.
Half-Blood Camp
To say Damon was bored would be an understatement. Add to that the fact that Chiron himself seemed far too used to doing this, using a voice so monotonous that it did not help at all, and on top of that he still had not even been shown most of the camp, and things only got worse.
He began to look around, seeing some of the campers pointing at him and murmuring among themselves, which drew a sigh from him. There were nymphs watching him curiously and even greeting him in low voices. Looking on the bright side, the place seemed to have a rather healthy natural energy.
But everything stopped.
Even his own body.
There she was.
After so many years, one of the people he had loved most in his entire life. The person who had pulled him out of loneliness and darkness in his earliest years.
Beside a great bonfire sat a girl who looked about eight years old, staring into the fire as though it were the most interesting thing in the entire camp.
A soft smile appeared on the blond's face before he turned toward Chiron.
"Chiron, I think you have other things to do. You can leave the rest to me."
"Are you sure?" the centaur asked, with barely disguised relief at the possibility of not having to continue with that.
"Of course," Damon answered with his usual smile. "If not, I can ask someone else to show me around. That way I can get to know the others too."
"That sounds good, I'll leave it to you then," Chiron said. "A pleasure meeting you," he added before walking away in the opposite direction.
Damon approached the bonfire.
With every step, he could hear his own heart beating louder. In all his immortal life, he had never been more nervous. He was aware that, with the appearance he had now, she would not recognize him, but that did not change what he still was deep down.
Damon.
How would she react?
He did not know.
And, for the first time in a long while, that uncertainty struck him in a strange way. Honestly, there were very few things Damon truly feared, but the rejection of someone he considered family, someone special to him in every way that mattered, was one of them. The idea that time and distance might have been enough to break the thread that bound them unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.
Even so, the love he felt for his own was greater than any insecurity.
That was what pushed him forward.
Without saying a single word, he ended up sitting beside her and held his hands toward the fire, letting the warmth calm his pulse a little.
Then she looked at him.
The reddish-brown eyes of the woman who had saved him from darkness and loneliness at the beginning of his life met his. Hestia observed the blond sitting beside her with a mixture of curiosity and confusion, studying him until at last she heard him speak.
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Yo, what's up? I hope all of y'all are doing well. I appreciate all of you who have shown interest in the story, whether it's garbage or good, and also thank you to those who dropped a review, whether is good or bad. Your thoughts and comments have been all heard,lol. Read the end of the next chapter, hopefully it helps clear some of your thoughts.