22. Dionysus

M edusa was sleeping in the crook of my arm while Cas spooned my back. She felt more content than she had in a long time. So, I was content. I knew I had been enough for her until she met these new men, but they completed both of us. I'm sure it was the same for all of us.

We were all this mess of terrible memories from our past. I sometimes had flashbacks of the things I did when Hera messed with my mind. I usually only felt settled around Medusa, but I'd felt it when I was alone with Pax and Benji. There was just something comforting about Cas. He snuggled like a beast.

"You awake?" Cas whispered.

"Yeah."

"Want to get up and plot while we make them something to eat?"

Yeah, I really appreciated Cas and his need to care for his mates. I slipped my arm from underneath Medusa. She sighed and snuggled into Pax. I just stared at her for a minute. I loved seeing her this happy even if she was thinner than she should have been.

"Thank you," Cas said when we got to the kitchen.

"What for?"

"For taking care of her before we met her. For being kind to Benji and protecting Pax when he decided to hitch a ride when you decided to confront Athena. Because you did all of this because someone took her."

I shrugged.

"I love her. She's complicated, but she's such a good person. I don't think Athena would have blabbed until she met the three of you, but if I would have known I would have gotten answers by visiting Cassandra, I would have. She might have told me about you three and we could have started this earlier."

"I hate what happened to her, but I think everything happened the way it was supposed to. What should I cook her?"

"Do you have chickpeas? Revitha is a chickpea soup she really likes. Pair it with a nice salad and some fruit with a little ambrosia and you've got a perfect meal for a green witch. She loves tea, of course, but we discovered boba on our travels, so I pop out and get it for her a lot."

"She has that in common with Benji. He introduced Pax to it and they both go nuts for it. It's a little sweet for me. I love cooking. It's one of my love languages. Can you teach me to make her favorite dishes? Your favorite food as well because you're mine, too. I don't give a shit if you're a god. You probably need someone to take care of you sometimes, too," Cas said, his bear flashing to the surface.

Yeah, Cas was a good one. I was thrilled he was paired with us. Medusa got it. Gods weren't immune to trauma either. If we hadn't experienced it, it was probably because we were inflicting it on everyone. My father and stepmother were prime examples of that.

Hera had her own trauma. She was one of Zeus's victims, too. She just decided to marry him rather than call him out because it was different times. She also tried to take Zeus's cheating out on him and he beat her for it. Hephaestus was just a kid and tried to stop him. Zeus beat the shit out of him and flung him all the way off of Mount Olympus. He taunted Hephaestus by forcing him to marry Aphrodite, even though Aphrodite didn't want to marry him and Hephaestus didn't want to marry anyone at all.

But yeah, sometimes, we needed to be taken care of, too. I couldn't be vulnerable with the Maenads. They wanted the party god and the orgies. Sometimes, I didn't want to be a god. I just wanted to be a man bothered by shitty people doing shitty things. Medusa got that and Cas did, too.

I joined him in the kitchen to start teaching him how to make this soup and salads how she liked it.

"First things first," I said. "We are thousands of years old. We lived during a time where we didn't have refrigeration, so we ate things fresh or salted. You're old enough to get that, but you were born in an entirely different country, so you didn't have access to some of the things we did. The overly processed stuff is great every once in a while, but she's a green witch and I'm associated with orchards, fruit, and vegetation, so we need a lot of fruits and vegetables to keep our magic up. I didn't escape that because I'm a god."

Cas nodded while he chopped an onion.

"We do that for the most part, anyway. Pax and I like eating that way and Benji can be picky. The goddess help you if you serve Benji something he doesn't like."

"As he should. I hate peas. Medusa and I got invited to a cookout and someone bought mac and cheese with fucking peas in it. What is it that Benji says? It was morally reprehensible. It was an affront to macaroni and cheese. I question every life decision that led to that person thinking that was a good idea. It was the slimy peas from a can too."

"Benji would riot and declare a blood feud. He's been fucking with the sheriff relentlessly because he cost Benji some Pokémon and he had every right to tell Benji he was parked illegally."

I shrugged.

"Benji is the kind of free spirit everyone needs a little more of in them. Plus, he's half demon. He'd be fucking with that sheriff for literally the most insignificant slight."

Cas started laughing.

"Yeah, demons don't particularly do well with authority figures. And the authority figures don't usually know they are getting played. Sheriff Riddle is a good man and if we want Calamity to heal, we're going to have to unleash the two of them on him."

I looked at Cas. He was a good man. I looked into him before I hired him. I needed to know who fate had paired with Medusa. On the surface, he was a guy who was smart with investments and owned a lot of property he refused to sell.

The Dark Web told a different story. Cas had this entire underground network involving the Coalition. He had people watching every single facility. If it looked like a supernatural was about to escape, they helped them. If they saw someone they could liberate, they did it.

Cas's network was vast. Things were different now. Most people had to reinvent themselves because of background checks and the Coalition. You needed a birth certificate for a lot of shit and some of us were born before all that. The Coalition had connections that could look into that kind of thing to identify supernaturals.

Cas had someone everywhere who could make fake identities. He even had a fund set up to get people a head start after they escaped. He seemed to have taught Pax and Benji how to invest and he ran webinar classes for Coalition victims on building wealth.

These men were fucking good men, and I was honored to be co-mated with them.

"She'd never say this out loud because she thinks it'll be passive aggressively demanding it all the time. That's just how she is, but Medusa loves it when you wake her up with kisses and food in bed. I do it all the time and every time, she reacts like it's the first time I've ever done it."

"Let's do it. Benji and Pax will love it, too. They both adore trying new foods and they like chickpeas."

"Ooh, we should go all out. Medusa sleeps like the dead when she feels safe. We should light candles."

"Ooh, totally. You could set off a bomb and Benji wouldn't wake up. Pax is a light sleeper. He'll probably wake up and help."

We were doing this. I tried to romance her every day. I tried to do little things to show her how special she was, but there was always that little voice in the back of her head that was calling herself a monster because her life had been dictated by her glasses.

Not anymore. She was back, baby, and she was about to learn her fury powers. Her broken pieces were already healing.

We had one major task to complete and we could just work on putting together the rest of them.