"l have a baby for you, Acheron."
He'd jerked his arm away from her as fury singed every part of him. "You bitch! Do you honestly think that could ever replace my nephew you let die? I hate you. I will always hate you. For once in your life, do the right thing and return that to its mother. The last thing a babe needs is to be left with a heartless viper like you."
She'd slapped him then with enough strength to split his upper lip. "Go and rot, you worthless bastard."
Laughing, he'd wiped the blood away with the back of his hand while he stared venomously at her. "l may be a worthless bastard, but better that than a frigid whore who sacrificed the only man to ever love her because she was too self-absorbed to save him.
The look on her face had scorched him. "I'm not the whore here, Acheron. You are. Bought and sold to anyone who could pay your fee. How dare you think for one minute you were ever worthy of a goddess."
The pain of those words had seared a permanent place in his heart and soul. "You're right, my lady. I'm not worthy of you or anyone else. I'm just a piece of shit to be dumped naked in the street. Forgive me for ever sullying you. "
And then he'd vanished from her, and for two thousand years he'd avoided any and all contact with her. The only thing he'd accept from her was vials of her blood so that he could eat and live.
If he'd had his way, he'd have never seen her again. But then she'd used the powers she'd stolen from him to create the Dark-Hunters under the guise of using them to protect the humans from the Daimons Apollo had created. The reality was, she'd used the Dark-Hunters to tie Acheron to her forever and to force him to come and barter with her for their freedom.
They were the only reason he had anything to do with her.
Them and the guilt he felt over their creation.
Damn them all for it.
But that was the ancient past and it was best left alone. "Why are you dredging up such bitter memories now, Artemis?"
And as soon as the words left his lips, he had sudden clarity. "I have a baby for you, Acheron."
Ash stepped back as disbelief and pain slammed him hard in the stomach. "The baby... "
Artemis nodded. "She was your daughter."
Acheron staggered away from Artemis as his rage ripped through him with razor-sharp talons. He put his arm against the wall and watched as his skin turned blue. His breathing was ragged as his teeth grew to large fangs and his vision became cloudy.
He wanted Artemis's blood so badly, he could taste it. More than that, he wanted to rip her throat out.
"Damn you!" he snarled.
"I tried to tell you. I gave her to you and you rejected her."
He spun around to glare at her. "You said, 'I have a baby for you.' Not 'I had your baby,' Artemis. There's a big fucking difference. I thought the baby was nothing more than an offering to you from one of your worshipers that you were trying to pawn off on me to make amends for my dead nephew, and you knew that." All of her handmaidens had come into her service in such a manner. Back then, it was nothing for people to leave infants as offerings to the gods.
He raked his hands through his hair as more hated memories surged and tore through him.
He could see himself again as a young man on the cold stone slab, chained down and held in place by servants as the surgeon came forward with a scalpel.
Acheron hissed and flinched at the remembered pain.
His breathing ragged, he approached Artemis with his hands clenched into fists so that he didn't begin choking her. "They sterilized me. There's no way I could father a child. It's not possible."
Her face hardened. "As a human you were sterile. But on your twenty-first birthday..." His godhood had been unlocked.
He wiped his hands over his face as he remembered that. All the scars on his body had been removed. Physically, he'd been restored.
Obviously it hadn't all been on the surface. That night must have undone their surgery, too. Dammit, how could he have been so stupid?
"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?"
She glared at him. "I tried. You wouldn't listen to me or speak to me 'I hate you, Artemis. Go die.' That's all I heard from you for two thousand years."
Ash laughed as bitter grief assailed him. For once, she was right. He'd been the one who ignored her. Dear gods, who would have thought this was what she'd been trying to tell him?