PROLOGUE
Asterion stomped on the ground, snorting puffs of smoke through his large nostrils. The heavy brass septum between the two holes was a torturous reminder of those who had sought to control him for so long. Magicked to be unbreakable, it irked him that his shifted form bore such a miserable token of less than happy times.
Growling, he pawed at the packed earth beneath his thick, black hooves, sending clouds of dark, red dust floating through the air.
Could shrubs and flowers even grow in this place?
It was the only thing that gave him pause as he surveyed his new home.
The terrain was rocky and arid—desolate even—from his point of view atop this outskirt of the scenery below. He snorted and shook his head roughly. It did not matter. This was home now, and he would find a way to make it work.
He had arrived after months of trekking through the unknown. At last, Asterion was in the Underworld. He gazed at the village-like settlement below, wondering at the modern looking homes and shops. Not at all what he’d expected, but maybe that was a good thing.
A perfect place to start his new life.
After being villainized and imprisoned for so long, he was more than ready to settle down and have a real life. The desire to find a mate—someone to love, to build a real home and family with—burned inside him like a fire that refused to go out.
Leaving that half-life up top was the best damn thing that had ever happened to him. No one respected him or knew who he was. The Minotaur was pure myth now. His beast had been misrepresented, feared, and hated for centuries.
But what could he do about it?
Not one single thing.
Asterion was tired of the false reputation assigned him—not to mention the grievous treatment he had to endure because of it. Accused of cannibalism, he’d been damned to wander the labyrinth near the palace of Knossos for eons with only one old fool of a servant to tend his princely needs.
Luckily, Alfred—the servant he’d once thought immortal—had died—well, lucky for Asterion, not for Al, er, anyway—and suddenly, a mysterious golden lock to the outside world had been revealed within the labyrinth.
Turned out, the old beggar held the key to Asterion’s prison—literally. And all this time, he had thought the gods had forsaken him! After turning the key in the lock, Asterion took a fortifying breath and then he’d pushed the gates open.
That first step had been the hardest.
But he plowed on, starting his journey on a positive note. He kept his head high, horns low, and passed the throngs of females who’d been left on his doorstep. All of them were sacrifices to his supposedly voracious appetites, but he had no use for any of them. Pointedly ignoring their pleas and screams for him to eat them, Asterion walked on.
As if he would stoop so low as to consume the flesh of mere humans. He was a Bull Shifter, not a Werewolf—and not just any old run of the mill stud. Asterion was the Minotaur—aka the Cretan Bull.
The only one of his kind.
A legendary beast with virgin fur and horns blacker than soot. His hide was pure white, with no markings or blemishes. The only parts of him that were not that untainted shade of alabaster were his beast’s eyes, horns, and hooves.
When shifted, his eyes glowed red like fire, and were heavily lined as if with kohl. He had enormous cloven hooves, both blacker than pitch. Those deadly appendages were strong enough to hold the over three ton beast that Asterion shared his existence with. Last, were his horns. Huge and lethal, those bony structures began as white but were black just at the tips, stained as if by Demon blood, or so the poets had said.
Heavily muscled, he was easily twice the size of the human world’s largest bulls. With smooth shoulders, powerful, straight legs, and a free-moving gait, Asterion’s Bull was the envy of all the other cloven-hooved beasts—even certain prominent members of the Underworld—if the rumors were true.
He supposed the rumors were true, since knock-kneed, bow-legged Demons did not bring in all that many sacrifices these days. Life was a popularity contest, even among minor deities. For Demons and monsters like Asterion, their worth was often weighed by what the common folk were willing to pay in tribute to them—sacrifices, offerings, prayers, and the like.
People always paid more for beauty, and he was one bodaciously beautiful bovine, if he did say so himself. As the females lining the exterior of his former abode could attest to, Asterion was not lacking for sacrifices. He simply was not interested.
Those virgin sacrifices with their “eat me” signs and ear-piercing screams as he walked past them—like he was some sort of human rockstar—were mooing up the wrong bull. He liked his women a little more subtle than that. At least, he thought he might. Being a prisoner in a labyrinth for centuries put a serious cramp in his style.
Fine—he could admit it to himself. The man had no love life to speak of. His experience with the opposite sex added up to some very minor making out sessions with a couple of virgin sacrifices who ran screaming the second they saw his, er, manparts swell. To his consternation and epic frustration, Asterion the mighty Minotaur was a virgin.
Freaking sacrifices, all they wanted was for him to devour them.
Gross.
And no matter how many times he told them—contrary to popular belief—Asterion did not eat meat, they would get all angry with him. Nothing was worse than an ornery female who did not listen to reason. After the first few times, he’d stopped trying to explain himself.
How many ways could he say the obvious?
Um, helloooo.
I’m a Bull.
Vegetarian.
Duh.
That was just another dark spot in his life. He’d had to put up with all sorts of nonsense from other Shifters when he was a calf, but that was centuries ago. He still recalled the fights and verbal lashings he’d received from his parents after he had gored a certain pug-nosed Satyr with his then still-budding horns.
The fight wasn’t his fault, though. The Satyr had called Asterion’s mother a teat-dragging, grass-eating cow. Two things were very wrong with that statement. One, his mother was Queen Pasiphae, and she was human—not Shifter born—and two, as his foster father, King Minos, had told him often, there was no shame in being a vegetarian.
So what if Asterion preferred a nice meal of sorghum and wheat silage?
And if he chose to spend hours grazing in rolling green and gold fields of tall, sweet grass or stacking bales of hay for fun, who was to say that was wrong?
No one should make him feel ashamed of his animal or his likes and dislikes.
Damn.
He still missed the old man.
Minos and his mother had been very good parents, but even they could not stop his fate. Imprisoned, scorned, and alone, he’d lived for so long in his own company—well, his and Alfred’s—that Asterion could not believe he was now free.
He puffed a cloud of smoky breath from his Bull’s nostrils. His beast’s inner fire always ran hot. He was a Shifter, yes, but he had other innate powers his kind did not usually exhibit—fire breath, unmatched strength, and a fierce loyalty he had yet to lay at anyone’s feet.
He had his shortcomings, too. Asterion’s animal was mighty, but also a tad hard to control. Quick to temper too. That last trait had cost him the one thing he’d craved throughout his life—a friend.
It had been lonely growing up a Greek prince with a giant, raging beast inside of him. Tricked in his youth, he’d been imprisoned, but instead of iron bars, his was a gilt palace with a large courtyard and a garden maze—the very reason he hated hedges to this day—but it was still a jail.