Worth It - Lisa Oliver Page 0,48

“You and I will talk real soon.”

Talk. Talk. Talk. That’s all anyone wants to do. The only person I should be talking to is Zeus. Paulie held out a finger to the baby in his arms, his eyes widening as she took it and gripped it hard. Something shifted inside of Paulie in that moment and he knew what he had to do. Hiding in the Underworld wasn’t going to solve anything. Hopefully, his friends would understand and lend him a hand.

Chapter Sixteen

Zeus was ready to start the next great war among the gods. Seven days he’d raged and threatened across every pantheon known to man, searching for Paulie. He’d begged, he’d bribed, he’d threatened some people, and cajoled others. The answer was still the same. No one knew where Paulie was.

The only two godly realms Zeus hadn’t visited was the Underworld, and Owen’s in the Artic circle. But he had met up with Owen and Baby in Scotland, and they hadn’t even heard of Paulie. Sei was with Claude all the time, although he let Zeus search his palace under the sea. Paulie wasn’t there. That only left the Underworld, and Zeus figured Hades was far too involved with his own mate and fatherhood to worry about Zeus’s love life.

And yet the tiger couldn’t have ceased to exist. The mating scar, given by the powerful animal, still gleamed on his shoulder. If Paulie had been taken out of the tapestry of life for some reason, the scar would be gone too, and Zeus wouldn’t be left with an aching hole where his heart used to be, because technically he’d have never laid eyes on the man.

Death wasn’t an option either. Paulie was a demigod, he’d ingested Zeus’s blood. By all accounts he was as immortal as Zeus himself – yet another reason Zeus didn’t bother checking the Underworld. Besides, no one living could enter that realm without Hades’ permission.

The depression and frustration were slowly driving Zeus insane. Incessant thoughts ran through his head – none of them good. I don’t deserve to have a mate like Paulie. I never appreciated him when he was in my arms. When I should’ve been protecting him, I abandoned him and let him be taken. He could be hurt. His tiger will pine for me… On and on, Zeus’s thoughts wouldn’t let him have any rest.

It didn’t help that any time he took a moment to catch his breath, Zeus’s mind kept revolving back to the one night they’d shared. Hell, because of him, it wasn’t even a night. And that was Zeus’s fault too. He’d let a stupid thing like a feelings overload send him running, treating Paulie like a casual fuck, when the truth was the man evoked more feelings in him in a few short hours than Zeus had ever felt in his long existence.

And now, Zeus was running out of options. If Paulie wasn’t being held by one of the other gods, then he had to have been kidnapped and was being held on another realm completely, although the idea didn’t make any logical sense. Why would any being – Fae, Djinn, or Elf – steal his mate without making demands for his return? Paulie was pretty, and still held a sense of innocence despite Zeus’s debauching of him, but was that enough to justify a kidnapping? Who would see the most value in a pure soul?

Zeus’s stomach rumbled, but he ignored it. Oh, Zeus knew he looked an absolute fright. He hadn’t showered, eaten, or slept since he’d seen those horrible words on his computer screens. His minions were working around the clock, trying to identify the breach in his system. But all they could report was that it was a specific targeted attack on his search engine, and Paulie was the only person in existence the search engine couldn’t find.

It shouldn’t be possible, and yet that was the reality Zeus was facing. Along with the realization that he had far more feelings about Paulie than he’d ever admitted to himself - far more than mere protectiveness and arousal. All those months of watching him, Zeus hadn’t realized how much his daily happiness depended on seeing Paulie’s face on his screens every day. He’d gotten close to the tiger, depended on seeing him, before he’d ever met him.

And now Paulie was gone. And he’d been taken by an unknown enemy who was clever at covering their tracks. Zeus was positive about the taking part. No shifter would ever