Rising

  Triton should have dropped Gael and his father on a sand dune in the middle of the Sahara Desert, but Sara made him swear to her that he wouldn’t kill them. And even though technically, it would have been the heat and baking sun that killed them, Triton knew his daughter wouldn’t see it that way, so he did the next best thing. He turned them into humans and left them stark naked on the Kansas plains, surrounded by hundreds of miles of dry, golden wheat fields.

  They deserved much worse, but a guilty conscience can make a god do things out of character. Actually, a guilty conscience was out of character for a god and lately, he seemed to have more than his ungodly share.

  Triton’s heart clenched as he thought of the tragic story that was his life. He could no longer blame his father and the Dagonians, although he’d tried for over two thousand years. Now he acknowledged that any other god would have done the same thing his father had done if they had been so severely disrespected and humiliated. And the Dagonians… Well, they were just following orders.

  The destruction of his children had been his own fault. It had been his fault for not teaching them respect, for not giving them boundaries, for overindulging them. He’d seen how Sara had turned out—so selfless, humble, and kind. Under Nicole’s mothering, his daughter had flourished.

  Triton fisted his fingers in his hair and crumpled into himself at the pain that was still there when he thought of Nicole. It had been twenty years, but he could still taste her on his lips, feel the shape of her body in his arms. She was the beauty that nearly crushed a god into oblivion—the most amazing, exquisite, and perfectly maddening woman he’d ever met.

  Triton had blamed Aphrodite for his lapse in judgment, but if it were her magic that had caused the torrid love affair, why was he still tormented by the memory of the human girl? The magic should have faded long ago.

  Regardless of where his feelings came from, he could no longer bury himself from the memory of them or the pain. Nicole was his daughter’s mother, the mother who had raised her. He could not continue to hide. He would have to confront her.

  He wished for a moment that he’d had the courage to ask Sara if her mother had found happiness with another man, but he couldn’t bear to ask. Some all-powerful god he was.

  He had to see her. He had to see if she was happy, see if she had found love. He dared not hope she could ever learn to love him again, learn to trust him again.

  It took all the courage Triton could muster to flash himself to Nicole’s home. He took in the view of her bright, yellow house and his heart sped up double time. Before he lost his courage, he stepped up to her front door. He was terrified. He remembered every detail of the day he had left, the day she had shredded his heart with her pleas that he not leave.

  Now that he was back, what kind of welcome would he receive? A loving one would be too much to ask. An angry reception would be what he deserved. A dispassionately civil one would be too much to bear.

  By the gods, he was over-analyzing this. With his heart pulsing under his ribs and his chest trembling with nervousness, he raised his fist and rapped on the door.