Chapter 1: Introduction
The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three. I didn’t have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the Minotaur’s horn, one set of spare clothes, and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my own dinner table, pick all my own activities, call “lights out” whenever I felt like it, and not listen to anybody else. And I was absolutely miserable.
Just when I’d started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and I might be a normal kid—or as normal as you can be when you’re a half-blood—I’d been separated out as if I had some rare disease. Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they were all talking about it behind my back. The attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages: one, that I was the son of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill me.
They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe. The other campers steered clear of me as much as possible. Cabin Eleven was too nervous to have sword class with me after what I’d done to the Ares folks in the woods, so my lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He pushed me harder than ever and wasn’t afraid to bruise me up in the process.
“You’re going to need all the training you can get,” he promised, as we were working with swords and flaming torches. “Now let’s try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions.” Annabeth still taught me sex in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Every time I did my techniques, she scowled at me, as if I’d just poked her between the eyes.
For instance, her jeans and underwear around her ankle as usual, but her expression was distracted. Today, she was supposed to be teaching me rimming. My tongue was currently in her
ass, not quite where it should be to properly perform the technique, but I was getting there. I could feel her muscles slowly relaxing, and she leaned into me more with each motion.
“Still distracted, Annabeth?” I asked her after coming up for air, smirking. “Something on your mind?”
“You can tell, can you?” she said. “It’s just—what you did in the woods.”
I frowned. “I already apologized about that.