My first reaction might’ve been wonder — awe, even — but as soon as the adrenaline bled off, something uglier took its pce: rage.

  A father. He called himself my father.

  A father was supposed to be there — lectures, birthday pancakes, crap minivan rides to school. Not lightning bolts and dramatic entrances a week before my nineteenth birthday.

  “Father…” I said, and the word felt like poison. “That’s what you call yourself? You weren’t there. Not when Mom cried herself to sleep, not when we had to sleep in shelters, not when we were digging through trash for expired sandwiches.”

  His face didn’t flinch. Of course it didn’t. He was a god. What were mortal tears to a thunderstorm?

  “I spent my whole life thinking I wasn’t worth staying for,” I continued, my voice shaking. “And now you show up and blow up a wall?”

  A flicker passed over his eyes — storm-gray and flickering with static. The air suddenly felt electric, like the sky before a hurricane. My instincts screamed duck, but I stood my ground. We stared at each other, neither blinking.

  Then — like a snapped wire — the pressure lifted.

  “Jason, my child,” he said, voice low and impossibly steady. “If only it were that simple. We gods… we are forbidden from interfering in mortal lives. Even our own children.”

  I ughed. Not the good kind.

  “You’re a god. Who’s gonna stop you?”

  That got a small, dry chuckle out of him. “Oh, Jason. You’ve barely scratched the surface of how this world works.”

  From behind him, the woman — Hebe, I remembered from some dusty mythology lesson — stepped forward, her eyes locked on Zeus. Her voice trembled. “They’re coming. They’ve found us.”

  Zeus’s eyes darkened. “How long?”

  “Three minutes. Maybe less.”

  He turned to her, then gnced at me. “Go. We’ll meet you—” He hesitated, just for a heartbeat. “On Olympus.”

  There was something else he wanted to say. He didn’t.

  Hebe looked at me again — and for a second, I swore she blushed. Then she dissolved into pure golden light, vanishing with the breeze.

  “Wow,” I muttered, still half thinking about her voice, her curves, the way she—

  "Jason."

  My name came like thunder — low, sharp, impossible to ignore.

  "Present," I muttered, raising my hand like I was in third-period Algebra.

  Zeus extended his hand. "We have to go now. Take it."

  I stared at his palm, then gnced at the pce Hebe had stood — all sunshine and swordpy and god-tier thighs. I’d much rather be holding her hand. At least she looked like she knew how to smile.

  But fine. Giant storm god wants to hold hands? Whatever.

  I grabbed his hand — and we started to levitate. Slowly at first, like an elevator with stage fright, then suddenly shooting forward so fast the trees bent and my desk spun off into orbit.

  “Okay, that’s... awesome.”

  He didn’t respond — just looked back at the wreckage of my house, eyes distant.

  “Wait,” I said, heart thudding. “What about my mom?”

  “She’s been informed,” he said, too quickly.

  “By who?”

  “We have messengers.”

  “And you couldn’t have come a day earlier? I could’ve at least said goodbye — like, a real one.”

  He paused. “That wasn’t possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re a demigod, Jason.”

  That stopped me. The word rang in my ears like a sp. Demigod. I’d read that in fantasy novels — usually right before someone’s arm got torn off by a minotaur.

  I blinked. “You’re serious?”

  “I am.”

  “And that woman — Hebe — she’s a goddess?”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re... Zeus. The actual Zeus.”

  “I was hoping the lightning bolt would tip you off.”

  I rubbed my face. “So, what, I can shoot lightning out of my hands now?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Great. So I’m magical but useless. Love that.”

  “You’re not useless,” he said. “You’re... unique. A male child of an immortal. That doesn’t happen anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  He hesitated. “Because it’s dangerous.”

  There it was again — that look. Like he was choosing every word with tweezers.

  “Wait, are there others like me?”

  “Gods, no,” he said with a bitter ugh. “You’re one of a kind. A once-in-an-eon thing.”

  Awesome. I’d always wanted to be an evolutionary accident.

  “So what happens now?” I asked. “Do I get a magic sword and die tragically by chapter six?”

  “We don’t have time for jokes. They’re already on our trail.”

  “Who is on our trail?”

  He looked ahead, jaw clenched. “They’ve sensed your awakening. The bance is shifting.”

  Oh good. Cryptic nonsense. Just what I needed.

  I gnced down — farmnd stretched beneath us, endless and ft. “Where even are we?”

  “Nebraska.”

  I turned to him. “I live in New York.”

  “We’ve been flying for a day.”

  “What?!” I looked around. “It’s been an hour!”

  “For you,” he said. “Time flows differently in the divine pne.”

  I stared. “Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it? Magical sky bubble. Totally normal.”

  Silence again. I was piecing it together slowly — my mom, his weird timing, the enemies I hadn’t seen.

  Then it clicked. “Wait. You’re married to Hera, aren’t you?”

  His eye twitched.

  “…Should I not have asked that?”

  He didn’t answer. Just reached toward me.

  “I think I’ll knock you out for the rest of the flight,” he muttered.

  Before I even got a chance to give a witty retort, he uttered a single magic-infused word.

  “Sleep.”