Free Ravaged: An Eternal Guardians Novella (1001 Dark Nights) by Elisabeth Naughton

you.”
    “But yours defines you.”
    “My situation is different.”
    Daphne continued to stare into the flames. “What was her name?”
    Ironically, it was no longer pain that consumed Ari when he thought of his soul mate. It was emptiness. Emptiness for a life he’d never have again. “Penelopei.”
    Daphne was silent several seconds. Then softly, she said, “‘Duty crumbles to ashes in the fires of love.’ My father said that once. He wasn’t a nymph. Just a human. Caught between two worlds. He left his job, his responsibilities, everything for my mother.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that kind of love. Not like them. Not like you.”
    Ari held back a huff. “I don’t know much about love either. Penelopei sure as heck didn’t love me.”
    Daphne finally turned his way, her soft green eyes no longer tormented by the past, but filled with a thousand questions. Questions that made his belly tingle. “But she was your soul mate. Silas said—”
    Gods, she was gorgeous. More gorgeous than she probably knew. And he had no right being anywhere near her. He looked back at the fire so he didn’t do something stupid. Like grab her and never let go. “Silas likes to romanticize the entire thing. I think it makes him feel better about choosing to stay here with me.”
    She stared at him, eyes wide and curious, waiting for more. And though he didn’t look at her, though he knew he shouldn’t go on, that he had no reason to tell her any of this, for the first time in forever he found himself wanting someone to know the truth.
     “Silas told you I found her on one of my missions in the human realm, didn’t he?”
    She nodded.
    “And that she was injured?”
    “Yes.”
    “When I came across her, her dress was ripped to the thigh, her leg scraped and bleeding. She begged me to help her. Told me Zeus had been chasing her. That she was trying to get away. I believed her. Took her back to Argolea, knowing she’d be safe from him there, and tended her wounds. Penelopei was...” He watched a flame devour a branch and couldn’t help but see the similarity in the way Penelopei had devoured him. “She was like wildfire, consuming everything in her path. When she wanted something, she didn’t let consequences influence her desires.”
    Disgust rushed through him when he remembered how he’d dropped everything for the female, even his duty. How he’d so easily walked away from his family. He shook his head. “As thanks for saving her, she seduced me. It was then I realized she was my soul mate. This may sound silly but sex is a powerful medium. Every Argonaut in the history of Argonauts has found his soul mate that way. What I should have keyed into, though, was the fact a soul mate is a curse, not a blessing.”
    “You’re talking to a nymph,” Daphne said softly. “I know how powerful sex can be. I’ve seen it firsthand. Zeus’s desire for it destroyed my village.”
    And Ari’s desire had destroyed not only his life, but his son’s as well.
    Guilt crept in. A guilt he’d tried so long to ignore, but it was there. It was always there, hovering in the background, telling him there was no way he could ever make up for the pain he’d caused his son because of his blinding desire for Penelopei. For a soul mate who’d never truly seen him as anything other than a pit stop.
    “Penelopei quickly grew bored of me and life in Argolea,” he went on, “and when Zeus’s Sirens showed up to take her back to the god, she was more than willing to go. To her it was all a game. Jumping from one male’s bed to the next.”
    He sounded bitter. And maybe part of him still was. Because thanks to Penelopei, his whole world had shifted. Not because he’d loved her and lost her but because a stupid curse had made him crave a manipulative and shallow female.
    “When the Sirens arrived at my home outside the capitol city of Tiyrns,” he went on, “I wasn’t willing to let her go. I was blinded