Sun God Seeks…Surrogate? (Accidentally Yours #3)(74)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

She shook her head. “I doesn’t matter. He made a choice—one that resulted in his killing my grandmother.”

“We’re not sure about that, Emma,” I argued. “Tommaso just said Guy was fighting her.” But then I recalled what Guy had said about his standard policy of killing Maaskab. Would he have really spared Emma’s grandmother’s life? Not likely.

“I’ll never be able to trust him again,” Emma whispered. “And without that, I can’t be with him. I’ll always be wondering and questioning his motives. His role—being a god—will always come first. I get it now.”

She was right. Ironic really, because it was the exact same point Kinich had made. It was the reason my heart now sat inside my chest, begrudgingly beating, shattered in a million tiny pieces. How could the universe be so damn cruel? I’d never asked to love Kinich. It happened. And it wasn’t a crush or infatuation. It was the kind of connection that makes your soul ache, that makes you crazy inside your head because from the moment you meet, you realize how alone you were all along but never knew. Because suddenly, there’s this other being out there you can’t live without. You can’t breathe or eat or think of anything but him, of being in his arms and hearing his voice.

So what was the point? Did the universe want to teach me how to feel hollow? Or what it was like to have my heart decimated? I simply didn’t know. I just…didn’t. And sadly, I no longer cared. Whatever I had with Kinich disappeared the moment he’d left me to deal with this mess all alone. My heart was in a place so dark, broken, and sad that no sunlight would ever touch it again. And it didn’t goddamn matter. Not one little bit. Because the world would end, along with everyone in it, if I didn’t find a way to suck it up.

I patted Emma’s hand. “I understand. I do. But right now, we have bigger things to worry about.” I glanced at her stomach.

“I know.” She sniffled and grabbed another tissue. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I wanted a baby so badly, and now I’m faced with losing him before he’s ever born. It’s really effed up.”

“It’s a him?”

She nodded. “I can feel him. It’s like I’m linked to the baby through my bond with Guy.”

Amazing.

“Well, he needs us to keep going,” I said quietly. “We can’t let it all end. We have a lot—and I mean a lot—of people depending on us,” I pointed out.

“I don’t know how you do it, Penelope,” she said. “I don’t know how you keep going after everything.”

Oh boy. Here goes. “That’s why I came to see you. I’m going to have help. You.”

She pointed her finger at herself. “Me?”

I explained the law and the outcome of the summit. Stunned, she stared at me in silence.

I knew exactly how she felt. But who better to save the world than us? We had everything to lose.

“So what’s your move?” I asked, using her line.

She frowned in silence for several moments. “I guess there’s only one option: fight.”

I felt a huge weight lift, knowing Emma would be at my side. “Great. We reconvene in two days.”

I hugged her and then wrinkled my nose. “Can you take a shower before the meeting? You smell kind of funky.”

She laughed a little as I stood to leave.

“Penelope? Is it true? About your mom?”

Good frigging question. It had been gnawing at me these past eight days, but my efforts to get the gods to talk came up empty-handed. They flat out refused to speak. That meant I’d have to get the truth from my mother, but she’d been in a vegetative state for the last eight days. I was beginning to worry she wouldn’t make it—a thought I didn’t dare say out loud.

“I kind of hope so,” I replied. “Then maybe she could call in few favors for us.” We were going to need all the help we could get.

“Well,” she said, “if she’s not, maybe we can call in the na**d leprechauns.”

***

My next stop was the Uchben hospital, where I received my usual debriefing from the doctors and made my rounds to check on the women, the Payals, who were now up and about, ready for release.

So what would we do with them? That was pickle number one. The women collectively suffered from amnesia. Maybe it was for the best, because heaven only knew what the Maaskab had done to these poor souls. But surely they had loved ones looking for them or who believed they were dead. Discovering their identities was a must, and we’d work around the clock until we did.

That brought us to pickle number two. We hadn’t killed off all the Maaskab and believed they had sects throughout the globe. The women wouldn’t be safe until we’d exterminated every last Scab.

Total effing pickle.

One pickle at a time, Pen. One pickle at a time.

I sighed and pasted on a bright smile. Viktor’s distinctive voice, deep with an unrecognizable accent, was rambling away when I entered my mother’s hospital room.

My pasted smiled became a real one. She was awake and sitting up in bed. “Mom? Oh my God! Look at you,” I said.

Her long, golden hair was elaborately braided and her hazel eyes were bright and lively.

“Penelope! Baby!” She held out her arms for a hug. I rushed to her side and gripped her tightly. It felt so good to hold her, to see her awake again, that I wanted to cry. But I decided not to ruin the moment with any blubbering.

“You look fantastic,” I said.

“I feel exceptionally great. Must be the company.” She glanced at Viktor, who sat in his usual place next to the bed.

He also looked different. Maybe because he wore a cream-colored turtleneck, brown suede boots, and soft, faded jeans instead of his customary black getup.

Wow. He cleans up nicely. I’d never really gotten a good look at the man before, but with his high cheekbones and strong chin, he reminded me of that actor who’d played Thor—Chris something-or-other. In fact, Viktor could’ve been his very large older brother. Pretty dang gorgeous. But what was going on with that hair?

“Matching braids?” I asked.

Viktor, a well-built man I often heard others refer to as the Viking tank—because he really used to be Viking—squirmed in his chair. “I—uh…wanted to show her the traditional braid from my village.”

Viktor braided her hair?

“I didn’t know they had metro Viking vampires.” Of course, I didn’t know there were gods, vampire gods, offspring of gods, evil priests, and leprechauns, either. Oh. And add angels.