Hurricane Warning (Olympic Cove Book 6)

Love is stronger than a hurricane…

Resigned to a ghostly half-life, the centaur Chiron is shocked to find himself not only alive again, but human. Trying to adjust to life on two legs, he gets a second surprise when he meets a human scientist who is the twin of his long-dead wife.

When impossible things start happening to paleontologist Nessa Antoniou, the snarky, sexy Chiron is the only one who can provide her with answers. She might have to trust him with her life, but can she trust him with her heart?

Thrust into a magical coma as punishment, god of healing Asclepius is revived by Chiron and Nessa only to discover they’re his mates. But their fragile new relationship must be put on hold as they try to stop the Mad Nereid and her prehistoric ally from destroying the planet.

Excerpt available here.

Fantasy Romance, MMF
Word Count: 94,000
Heat Level: 4
Published By: Belaurient Press

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Novellas and Short Stories in the Olympic Cove series:

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Excerpt

A streak of violet lightning forked across the bruise-colored clouds massed like boulders over the storm-tossed sea. Moments later thunder boomed, competing with the rolling crash of waves on the beach.

Run.

Chiron raced as fast as he could across the damp sand, his hooves digging into the grainy surface with each pounding step. The dunes on his left flew by, forcing him to run along this narrow strip between land and sea. The ancient wound on his thigh burned as always, courtesy of an arrow tipped with poisonous hydra blood, but he ignored the pain, just as he ignored the stinging rain pelting his skin and eyes. Someone he loved was in danger and he had to get there before it was too late, too late—

Another bolt of lightning streaked down through the clouds. This time it struck a palm tree behind him. The brightness and the concussive wave hit him at the same time, shoving him forward. He stumbled, grimacing as he struggled to regain his pace. You can’t stop me. I’m going to get to them, no matter what you do.

There. Ahead of him, a break in the dunes that revealed distant lights, glimmering wetly in the storm. His loved ones were there, he knew it. He pounded towards the gap, arms flung out as his hooves thrust him forward. I’m coming, wait for me, I’m coming—

Light encompassed him, burning brilliant white. Agony stabbed through his right side and the instantaneous roar deafened him as something flung him through the air. He landed a good ten feet away in a jumble of equine legs, tail, and human torso, wet grains of sand clinging to his face.

The storm continued overhead, soaking him. He tried to say he was sorry. But the universe didn’t care as it went dark.

****

Agonizing lightning crackled through Chiron’s chest again, causing his back to arch. He gasped before falling back to a padded surface.

“He’s back in sinus rhythm,” a woman’s voice said.

He tried to say something snotty about not actually having a heart anymore, but his tongue felt fused to the roof of his mouth. Cracking his eyes open only showed a blur, although he could hear machines beeping and people performing mysterious tasks around him, and the sharp scent of alcohol made his nose itch.

Okay, vision’s hosed but I still have hearing and smell. What else? He could taste iron, salt, and stale saliva in his mouth, and felt a thin, fabric-covered pad under him that did nothing to mitigate the hard surface he was on. Worse, he also felt a throbbing pain that ran from right shoulder to hoof, almost masking the old agony of the wound in his thigh and the way his head was doing its best to explode.

He hadn’t truly felt anything in millennia, not since his half-brother Zeus had taken pity on him and allowed him to pass on his immortality to Prometheus. Human legend had it that Zeus had placed him in the sky as the constellation Centauri.

He tried to laugh, but it came out as a croak. Goes to show human legend is full of shit.

Now he felt something attached to the back of his left hand, pulling at the thin skin there. He grunted, pawing at it.

“Leave that alone,” the same woman’s voice ordered, clearly used to being obeyed. Nurse. I’ll put a hundred drachmas on it.

His tongue finally uncleaved itself from the roof of his mouth. “Why?” he rasped.

“Because it’s attached to an IV.” Her voice gentled a bit. “You were struck by lightning and your heart stopped.”

What heart? “Where am I?”

“The ER at Olympic Beach Medical Center.”

He snorted weakly. Lightning bolts couldn’t hit ghosts, that was just silly. But the hospital name rang a distant bell, leading to another name— “Nick.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nick Gardner. Get Nick Gardner. He’ll explain…”

The soft fog began to close around him again, but not before one last thought limped across his mind; how can a centaur lie flat on a bed?

****

When the fog cleared, Chiron stood on the far reaches of Mount Olympus. Behind him, the green mount rose proudly with its spiraling marble road and palaces of the Greek gods. He’d visited most of them over the millennia, sometimes as a welcome guest and sometimes as a gadfly prodding a god or goddess to perform their duties.

But he’d never visited this particular area before. Cautiously, he pushed through a green, sweet-smelling forest and entered a clearing that held a thatched stone cottage, an extensive garden, and a collection of bee skeps. The cottage’s walls were covered with roses of every color that swarmed up the stones in wild proliferation. He could hear a soft hum from the bees slowly flitting from blossom to blossom, busily collecting pollen for their hives.

In front of the cottage was a hard-packed dirt courtyard, freshly swept. A young woman with long black hair and large almond-shaped brown eyes sat there on a tall wooden stool as if waiting for him. In one hand she held a mass of shining golden fiber, drawing it out with her other hand and twisting it into a thread. The end of the spun thread was looped through a small hook in the top of a device that looked like a disk with a long stick thrust through it. As Chiron watched, the girl deftly unlooped the thread and wound it on the spindle, then relooped it and began spinning out more thread.

She didn’t look up from her work but an amused smile curved her mouth. “Hi, Chiron. It’s nice of you to finally visit.”

“Yeah, well, things to do, places to be, gods to annoy,” he replied. Something felt off, but he wasn’t sure what it was. “Why am I here, Clotho?”

Now the young woman looked up at him. The youngest of the three Fates, Clotho was responsible for spinning the threads of life used in the Great Tapestry. “We need to talk to you. It was Attie’s idea, if that helps at all.”

“It doesn’t.” He walked across the clearing, then stopped when he realized what was wrong. Glancing over his shoulder for confirmation, his eyes widened in shock. “What in Chaos did you do to me?”

Clotho bit her lip. “That wasn’t us. You showed up here like that. I think you better come inside.”

“Ya think?” Instead of his human torso stopping at the waist and joining onto a horse’s body, it continued down to an unremarkable pair of human legs. And a rather impressive cock. Whoops.

He covered his junk as best he could with his hands. “You got something I can wear?”

“Hold on.” Putting her spindle in the basket of golden fiber, she ducked inside and came out with a long strip of undyed linen cloth. “You can wrap that around your waist.”

After a few ungraceful moves he managed to get the fabric wrapped around him sarong-style. “You sure you didn’t have anything to do with this?”

“Believe me, it comes as much of a surprise to us as it does to you. Although it does explain a few things Lachesis saw in the Tapestry.” She led him into the cottage. The interior was one large room, the smooth whitewashed walls lit by oil lamps set into niches and morning light shining through an east-facing window. In the center of the room, a familiar blonde in a green tunic sat before a massive tapestry loom, passing a shuttle between the loom’s warp threads. The picture she wove was a stunningly complex array of images that seemed to move in the tapestry.

Lachesis glanced over her shoulder and whistled. “Nice gams, Chiron.”

“Bite me,” he snapped. “Where’s the lady with the blades?”

“Over here.” The fourth occupant of the room moved into view. Atropos had tightly curling silver hair that lay close-cropped to her round skull. Unlike the other Fates, her gown was floor-length and woven in all the shades of the rainbow. Her face possessed the peculiar beauty of elderly women, wrinkles and lines accenting the bone structure instead of obscuring it. And in her hands was a pair of long, gleaming shears. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“No shit. How and why did you do,” he gestured to his human body, “this? And why am I alive again?”

Lachesis slotted her shuttle between the threads and spun around on her bench. “That’s a damn good question. We were hoping you knew.”

His hands clenched into fists. “What?”

“Lachesis,” Atropos said quietly.

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Fine. We have no idea why you’re alive again, or why you have a human body. All we know is that someone wove you back into the Tapestry, and it wasn’t me.”

Her words made no sense. “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, neither do I,” the Weaver said sharply. “Look, our job as the Fates is to keep humanity going as best we can. The massive snarl that Thetis caused and your half-brother and his family have been fighting all summer has been a never-ending headache for all three of us. You would not believe the amount of ripping back and reweaving I’ve had to do just to keep the Tapestry in one piece. And then this morning I sat down at the loom and discovered that somehow your life thread had been woven back into the middle of that damned snarl. And I didn’t do it.”

Now he remembered what it felt like to have his stomach drop. “Who else has the ability to weave life threads into the Tapestry?”

“Don’t look at me,” Clotho said. “I just spin the threads. I have no idea how to work the loom.”

“Technically, I can substitute for Lachesis if needed, but I didn’t do this,” Atropos said. “I swear by Mother Gaia Herself.”

Chiron rubbed his face, momentarily distracted by the texture of his own skin. “Is there anyone else who has the ability to weave in life threads in the Tapestry apart from the two of you?”

Lachesis and Atropos shared a worried look. “Mother Gaia can,” the Weaver admitted. “I mean, technically she created the Tapestry, so she can spin, weave, and cut as necessary. But I’ve never known her to intervene like this.”

“Except she’s already been intervening on Earth,” Chiron said sourly. “She’s been throwing agapetos together on that damned cove at a rate of knots. Apparently that wasn’t getting the job done, so she decided on the direct approach.” He looked down at his new form. It wasn’t bad, physically or aesthetically—lean, with fairly clean lines, and apart from the pain in his thigh it felt hale enough. “But why did she put me into a human body?”

Atropos held up her hands in surrender. “We have no idea. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“Trust me, I plan on it.” He fingered the length of linen wrapped around his waist. “Mind if I borrow this for a bit?”

“Keep it,” Clotho said. “We can always get more.”

“Thanks.” He stalked out of the cottage, retracing his steps through the green thicket surrounding the Fates’ compound. When he reached a dirt path he paused. Turning left would take him to the marble road that spiraled around and up Mount Olympus. That would also march him past every divine residence on the place, and the last thing he wanted right now was to get stopped and interrogated by Hermes or Athena—or worse, Apollo.

He turned right, following the dirt path along a rocky ridge. Below, the Aegean sparkled in the morning sunlight, and after a few minutes he was sweating lightly from the exercise. Irritated as he was, the sensation after so many millennia was exhilarating.

The path led to a collection of roughly hewn granite boulders that had been arranged into a circle. Any humans familiar with places like Stonehenge would have immediately recognized it as a place of divine power. Chiron limped between two boulders, feeling a wash of energy lift every hair on his skin. He reached the center of the stones and looked up towards the perfect blue sky.

“Okay, Grandma,” he called. “Let’s talk.”