Heir to a Fallen King

Chapter One

Zeus

Dawn was only a thought at the silvered edge of the black night when I pressed a kiss to my wife’s soft cheek, dragged in a lungful’a her cherry scent, and left our bedroom.

I hadn’t slept for shit, and I was done lyin’ in bed with my tragic thoughts.

On this day any year ’fore, I’d be gettin’ up at this time to wake up my firstborn son.

He woulda been twenty-two this year, so young in age and so fuckin’ wise.

In truth, he’d been a grown man in the body of a boy since he was eight years old and the circumstances of our lives made him responsible for more than he shoulda been as a kid.

But fuck me, had that boy made me proud.

My chest ached and ached in a way it had since King was shot on the coastal cliffs and plunged to his death in Entrance Bay. It ached just as acutely, just as raw and infected with regret as it did that day, eight months ago, when I’d found out he was gone.

I knew I’d ache that way ’till the day I died and joined him wherever good men like him went.

’Cause I wasn’t the best’a men––I’d done some serious shit in my life––but I’d move heaven and fuckin’ earth to end up in the same restin’ place as my boy and my wife, who’d undoubtedly gain access to the best kinda Valhalla in the afterlife.

I was learnin’ to live with it as much as a man can live without a limb or a vital organ.

I wasn’t whole, not anymore, but Lou was teachin’ me that was okay.

Those days when I couldn’t move past the crushin’ pain and the only thing I could do was bury myself in my woman, slake myself in her beauty until the burn flared a little less.

Couldn’t let my babies outta my fuckin’ sight without feelin’ panicked and wrong.

If someone could get to King—so strong, so sure, a man more like a knight than a foot soldier in my army’a men in leather—it seemed anyone could get to my twin babies and take ’em from me.

So I guarded ’em fiercely.

They were with me more than they were even with Lou.

I took ’em to the garage, strapped to my chest, little meaty fists curled, full lips smiling as they interacted with all their uncles at Hephaestus Auto. I drove the truck so I could have ’em near me even though I hated cages and the Prez of a fuckin’ motorcycle club should be on his fuckin’ bike.

For the first time in near on forty years, I was livin’ life afraid.

Not free, like the motto of The Fallen declared, but chained in heavy fuckin’ irons by the terror that God or whatever power wasn’t done wreakin’ havoc on the life’a me and mine.

It burned in me that my woman, my little warrior who’d already been through so much, had lost King too. That my little girl, my thorny Harleigh Rose, was without her champion. That Monster and Angel would never get more than just stories ’bout the wise soul’a my eldest kid.

That Cressida, a woman I’d come to think’a as kin and the best kinda friend, was dead at heart ’cause her reason for livin’ was gone.

I’d lived in chains ’fore, literal shackles durin’ my years in prison. It’d been a concrete hell populated by livin’, breathin’ demons out to take my life and remind me daily’a my sins.

This was worse than that.

This was a wakin’ nightmare I’d never fuckin’ escape.

King was gone.

And in his wake, so much fuckin’ grief.

I stopped in at the twins’ room down the hall, pushin’ open the door with the intention’a checkin’ on the babies ’fore I checked on my other son, Ares.

Shoulda known there’d be no reason for two stops.

The kid, ten now and growin’ quick, was splayed out on the carpet beside the twins’ crib with Angel’s stuffed rabbit a makeshift pillow under his head’a thick, curly black hair.

Wasn’t a man takin’ to cryin’ like a fuckin’ pansy at the drop of a hat, but fuck me, if wet didn’t kick at the back’a my eyes as I took in that sight.

Ares had appointed ’imself as sentry to the twins the moment they were born, and he’d snuck into the hospital room as soon as I went to inform the others we’d had two healthy babies.

Lou told me she’d never seen such a solemn look on a boy’s face, which was sayin’ somethin’ ’cause Ares was a damn solemn boy.

He’d whispered to ’em then, cradled at Lou’s beautiful breast, as if she wouldn’t hear him.

“I got you,” he’d whispered, knowin’ those were the words I’d spoken to my girl Lou the first time we’d ever met amid a hailstorm of gunfire.

“I got you,” he’d said, and just like that, he’d knighted ’imself to the newborn Garros.

If the kid hadn’t been mine already, he woulda been then.

And seein’ ’em all together as I crept closer to grab a blanket and drop it lightly on the snorin’ Ares, I felt the anchor in my chest tyin’ my heart to those three smaller chests tug fiercely in response to their immense beauty.

“You’re a damn lucky man,” I muttered, quiet, remindin’ myself’a the truth.

King was gone, and that’d be a tragedy I’d never learn to swallow down.

But fuck me, I was just an average man, a criminal at that, yet there it was bedded under the roof’a the house I’d built myself, a family better than any kinda man could rightly deserve.

Angel and Monster were curled into each other in the black blankets, sister’s hand curled up against brother’s cheek, two identical mouths pursed as they dreamed. Sometimes, they didn’t sleep right, wakin’ and fussin’, but they settled right as rain soon as someone was in the room with them.

I peered down at Ares again, his hand wrapped loosely around the wooden leg of the crib, and grinned before I headed outta there.

The only thing to do on a mornin’ when grief stalked me too tight, on a mornin’ I used to spend with my birthday guy, King, was ride out on my Harley.

The family was gatherin’ up at our cabin near Whistler later that night, and I figured I’d ride up to turn up the heat for the crew to work out my restlessness.

The Sea to Sky Highway was a narrow ribbon’a asphalt threaded along the seam’a cliffs juttin’ out from the mountains over the water’s edge.

It was empty so early in the mornin’, the windin’ road open to the smooth roll’a my bike around tight corners, the roar’a the engine stronger than the rush’a wind in my ears as I sped through the dawn away from the demons chasin’ me.

It was February, but the sun was crestin’ hot and clear in the sky, and I was sweatin’ by the time I pulled off the highway onto the back road that swept through the trees up to the secluded cabin I’d rebuilt for Lou years ago.

The sight’a it as I pulled up the slopin’ drive made my bruised heart clench.

This was where my daughter, my woman, and her sister had almost died.

This was where my son by choice, Mute, had died in the clearing behind the A-frame house.

This was where we’d found Ares crouched like a feral cat livin’ in the rebuilt structure without a possession to his unknown name.

A house’a memories for a man mired in ’em.

I felt older than my years as I swung off my Dyna and trudged over the frost-crusted grass.

Hesitatin’ at the front door, some impulse made me cross ’round the side to the backyard.

I’d put a porch in, couple’a Adirondack chairs, and one’a those swingin’ benches ’cause Loulou wanted one to sway in with her babies, and I wasn’t gonna say no to anythin’ in my power to give that woman.

I almost didn’t look at ’em then, my gaze drawn out to the field so I could say a silent kinda prayer for the soul of Mute Garro, my first fallen son.

But somethin’ was there in the corner’a my eye.

Some glint’a gold that shouldn’t have been there.

Instinct froze my form ’fore my brain could catch the fuck up.

’Cause suddenly that low-grade fear I’d been livin’ with flared bright enough to blind. Some crazy fuckin’ terror that warned me I was startin’ to hallucinate my son in strange places as if the strength’a my grief was magic that could conjure him into bein’.

On that day, his birthday, I didn’t have it in me to fuckin’ withstand the break’a my own mind in addition to my mournin’.

So, I didn’t look.

Just stood there, hands fisted so tight the knuckles ached, draggin’ air that felt sharp as blades into my lungs.

There was a creak.

Just a fuckin’ creak, so slight I wouldn’t’a heard it if I’d been doin’ anythin’ but standin’ like a moron.

But it came from the goddamn porch.

The porch my son’d helped me build. Could still remember the shape’a his smile as he laughed at me for bein’ an old man as we’d laboured over it together.

The smell’a his sweat with mine, the pride I’d felt watchin’ him do somethin’ I’d taught him, the fuckin’ joy I’d known seein’ the glory’a the man I’d made and raised.

The memories sucker-punched me like a prize fighter, so I was fuckin’ breathless when I manned up and let my eyes slant to the right.

He was there in my memory so fuckin’ clear every atom of my body stopped functionin’ for one surreal second.

Leanin’ against the porch railin’, long and lean as ever, gold hair gleamin’ in the strengthin’ sun, eyes so pale they mimicked ice, body strong and easy in denim and an old Metallica tee I’d given him as a kid.

He was there.

I was bein’ throttled by tears, throat swollen with ’em, eyes aflame with the effort to hold ’em in.

I knew it was some kinda mad mirage ’cause King wasn’t smilin’, and my boy was always smilin’, always laughin’ like life existed just to entertain him.

The real King, seein’ his dad, had always broke into a wide, wild grin.

I was ’bout to turn on my heel and leave the haunted house behind, maybe seek out a fuckin’ professional or a full bottle’a Crown Royal, when a sound I’d never thought I’d hear again in real life punctured the still mornin’ air.

“S’okay, Dad,” King said quietly. “You’re old, but you haven’t lost your mind yet. It’s me. I’m here.”

My heart beat against my ribs like a heavy fist as I turned slow, grass crunchin’ under my boots, to face the porch.

He was still leanin’ against the porch.

But there it was.

The grin.

Small, compressed with the weight’a strain, his smile was a thin mimicry’a his normal beamin’ expression.

But…

Fuck.

Me.