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"Not interested." Kaia lifted her drink and leaned back in her lounger. "Sweating on a dusty dig site is not my idea of fun."
Frankie
Frankie sat with Mia and Toven at the breakfast table while keeping an eye on Dagor's teammates, who were seated several tables over.
She'd thought she would find him in the dining hall, but evidently, he was somewhere else, and it wasn't in a meeting with Aru and Negal or with Kian. He also wasn't having tea with the Clan Mother because Kian would have been there as well.
Where the hell was he?
"You are not eating," Mia said. "What got your panties in a twist?"
Mia knew very well why Frankie was upset. They had been friends forever, and it shouldn't be too difficult to guess that dining alone after spending the night with a guy was disappointing, to say the least.
"Nothing." She reached for a piece of toast and added it to the heap of scrambled egg she'd put on her plate before.
"Did you have a disagreement with Dagor?" Toven asked.
"We had a lovely time last night at the wedding and later in my cabin. I don't know what chased him out of my bed early in the morning or why he didn't bother to at least leave a note."
Toven's eyes shone with understanding. "He probably didn't mean anything by it. He just doesn't know what is expected of him in a relationship."
Frankie tried very hard not to glare at the god. "I'm sure things are not much different where he came from, and the ladies there expect the same courtesy that we lowly humans do."
Toven opened his mouth to say something but closed it and shook his head. "I don't know what the customs are on Anumati. I was born on Earth."
Mia and Toven had told her about what had happened to the other gods. They hadn't elaborated, and what she knew could barely fill one page of the series of books that would be needed to contain all there was to know about the gods and the immortals, but she knew that a small group of gods had arrived on Earth a long time ago and some of them had taken human partners, which was how the first immortals had been born.
"Just think about how your father treated your mother." Mia put her coffee cup down. "And if your parents were born on Earth too, how your grandparents interacted with each other, and you will have your answer."
Toven smiled sadly. "My father was a great god who wasn't born on Earth, but he was a philanderer. My mother was one of many goddesses he bedded, and his relationship with her was cordial at best. They preferred not to be in the same room at the same time."
Without giving it a second thought, Frankie reached over the table and patted Toven's hand. "I'm sorry. That must have been difficult for you growing up."
"Not really. Whenever I felt too stifled in my mother's house, I would go to visit my father and have a grand time building all kinds of contraptions with him. He realized early on that I didn't have a knack for science and engineering like he had, so the projects he pretended to be working on when I visited were simple, and I had fun making things with him and trying to solve problems. I learned a lot, and I got to spend time with my father, whose household was the exact opposite of my mother's."
Mia put down her fork and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. "And yet you married a goddess who was precisely like your mother."
Frankie's eyes widened. "You were married before?"
He nodded. "My wife perished with the rest of the gods while I was away. I've never forgiven myself for not being there for her."
"You would have died too." Mia took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'm so happy that the Fates prompted you to get away in the nick of time."
Mia and Toven were so adorable together that it brought tears to Frankie's eyes. She averted her gaze to spare them the emotional display, and as she looked at the table where Aru and Negal were sitting with Kian and several other immortals, her phone buzzed with an incoming message.
Pulling the device from her pocket, she looked at the screen, and if not for Toven sitting right next to her, she would have stuck out her tongue at it.
Dagor's text didn't contain an apology or an explanation for his stealthy morning departure. Instead, he was inviting her on an outing to some archeological site that Kalugal was arranging. It was only an hour away from Acapulco, and there was a treasure hunt for a lost amulet. He also mentioned that it might be dangerous because of the cartels operating in the area but promised to keep her safe, which was the only thing that stopped her from ignoring the text and not bothering to answer him.
"What is it?" Mia asked.
"Kian's cousin is organizing an outing to Tehuacalco, and Dagor's invited me to join them. Do you want to come?"
"It's too dangerous." Toven put his hand on Mia's thigh. "You shouldn't go either."
"Dagor thinks that it's fine. He promises to protect me." She leveled her gaze on Toven. "Aside from being stronger and faster, what can a god do that a human cannot?"
"It depends on the god." Toven shifted in his chair. "I can compel the gangsters to drop their weapons or turn on each other, but as far as I know, Dagor doesn't have compulsion ability."
