STARRY NIGHT

  by

  Pandora Pine

  Starry Night

  Copyright © Pandora Pine 2025

  All Rights Reserved

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, events, business establishments or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Digital Edition: February 2025

  Editing by: One Love Editing

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  EPILOGUE

  1

  Orion

  It all started with an email. No, not the kind where a Nigerian prince wanted to give me all his money. I was too smart to fall for that. Again. This email was from some dating website called Heart2Heart. I almost deleted it four or five times. I’m still not sure what kept me from consigning the message to the trash. Maybe I was bored. Or wanted to believe the notion I had a romantic destiny.

  Sighing heavily, I tapped on the message and read it for the tenth time.

  Ready to meet the love of your life this Valentine’s Day? Put your trust in Cupid!

  You know that here at Heart2Heart we’ve helped thousands of lonely hearts find their perfect match, mate, and bond over the last five years.

  Now, your romantic future is about to get even brighter thanks to the cheeky cherub themself, Cupid. Known worldwide as the number one matchmaker, we’re thrilled to partner with them for this special Valentine’s Day event in which they’ll use H2H’s enormous database to find the magical match that’s just right for you.

  Ready to embrace your romantic destiny? Put your trust in Cupid and sign up today.

  Until the email arrived, I’d never heard of Heart2Heart. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about my romantic destiny in, oh, a millennium or so.

  I know what you’re thinking. Okay, Boomer! You’re only as old as you feel. Let me tell you, I felt each and every one of my 5,031 years. Damn, it made me feel old when I said it out loud.

  It’s probably a good idea if I introduce myself before I go any further.

  My name is Orion Starborn. No, Starborn isn’t my actual last name; I created it for legal purposes. Turns out you can’t get a social security card, driver’s license, or birth certificate with only one name here in the good old US of A. Makes me wonder if the government made exceptions for Cher, Madonna, and Prince.

  I was born into the empire of ancient Greece in what is now Messina, Sicily, in the year 3008 BC, to Euryale and Poseidon. If you’ve read Greek mythology or watched those Percy Jackson movies, you’ve heard of my father. You know, the god of the sea. Euryale was the sister of Medusa. Yes, that Medusa, the one with the slithery hairdo, who could turn men to stone with one glance. Thanks to circumstances beyond my control, I’m an immortal demigod.

  No, really. I am. Which makes me the ultimate nepo baby.

  Anyway, back to the email I couldn’t seem to delete. I hated Valentine’s Day with a literal burning passion. If I could incinerate every Hallmark store, florist, and candy shop within a one-mile radius, I would have. I mean, I could, but I wouldn’t.

  Maybe.

  I’m betting you see me as some brokenhearted loser whose only goal in life was to get through the season of love with my heart intact in its ice-encased coffin. A metaphorical coffin, not an actual coffin.

  I’m magically gifted, but I’m definitely not able to remove my heart at will. That’s the stuff of legend and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Let’s face it, Indy is legendary. Have you seen him in those tight pants and leather jacket, cracking his whip? Mmmmm!

  Where was I? Oh yeah, my literal burning hatred of Valentine’s Day and my eternally broken heart.

  It all started a thousand years before the birth of Christ. I really am that old. Ask me sometime about my skin regimen. I was crazy in love with Apollo, god of everything under the sun. His eyes were the deepest brown, his dark curls begged to be stroked, while his olive skin glistened like the Mediterranean on a summer’s day.

  Sounds promising, right? Wrong. No matter how I tried to capture Apollo’s attention, he never so much as cast a glance my way. But I didn’t let his attitude stop me. I had an ace in the hole, so to speak, in the form of my best friend, Cupid.

  Yes, that Cupid. The very same cherub who was working with Heart2Heart, claiming he could find everyone’s perfect match. The very same son-of-a-goddess who promised me my heart’s desire but got me killed instead.

  But Orion, I thought you said you were an immortal demigod?

  Please hold all questions until the end…

  Cupid told me the best way to get Apollo’s attention was to ignore him. Tale as old as time. So I listened to my friend and did just that. Instead of mooning over Apollo, I went hunting with his sister, Artemis, who, truth be told, was the only person, goddess or mortal, whose talent with a bow rivaled my own.

  We spent months on the hunt together. Killing wild boar, deer, hares, you name it. I threw lavish feasts in her honor. People would come from miles around to fete the goddess and to pray their own hunts would be successful. Artemis and I were having the time of our lives until Apollo got wind of what we’d been up to.

  I’d finally caught Apollo’s eye. He showed up at one of the feasts, practically vibrating with rage. Not only was he angry I appeared to be courting his sister, but also that I’d stopped lavishing him with all of my attention, praise, and sacrifices. Gods, am I right? Can’t live with them. Can’t live…at all, actually.

  I did my best to explain to Apollo he was the one I was trying to impress. Whose eye I was trying to catch. He was my one true love. The man of my dreams. My sun and my moon.

  Apollo was having none of my excuses and flowery words. He struck me blind, telling me I would never again be able to look upon his fair sister’s face. I begged and pleaded for him to return my sight so I could hunt again. With my sight restored, I would become a hunter of even greater renown, rivaling even his sister’s talents, all in Apollo’s name. I promised to build temples to revere him and to sacrifice a thousand bulls in his honor, if only he would heal me.

  Not only were my pleas all in vain, but vowing I would eclipse his sister with my bow and arrow was the absolute worst thing I could have said in that moment. Apollo created a giant scorpion from the sand beneath his feet. He promised to spare my life if I could defeat the beast. Without my eyes, my sword and bow were useless. When my arms tired and I could no longer stand, the creature came for me, stinging me relentlessly. I felt its poison course through my veins, burning like a thousand suns. I spent my last breath begging Apollo for mercy, which he did not grant.

  Later, I found myself on Charon’s ferry, handing over a coin for my passage to the Underworld, where I was doomed to spend an eternity suffering, alone and blind, mourning my own misfortune and the loss of Apollo.

  Oh, stop your sniffling. Spoiler alert: I didn’t spend an eternity in Hades. Artemis, grief-stricken over my death, begged Zeus to place me among the stars. Which he did, but he also placed the scorpion alongside me as a warning that no mortal, demigod or not, could ever eclipse a god of Olympus.

  Zeus always was a dick.

  As it turned out, Artemis wasn’t the only goddess who was in love with me. Aphrodite, unbeknownst to Apollo, sent my corpse to Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, who was able to revive my mortal body and restore my sight on the condition I leave Greece for all eternity. At the goddess of love’s command, I was to be made immortal until such time as I was able to find true love and have it returned to me.

  It would be a cold day in Hades before I allowed my heart to overrule my head again. I accepted the arrangement and escaped to Carthage, across the Mediterranean Sea. I was whole again, with one small exception. Instead of the cerulean eyes praised by poets, I was left with one eye green as the forest and one eye golden as summer wheat.

  If I was being honest, immortality wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I’d spent the last several millennia drifting from place to place. I was a vagabond. A man without a country, never once finding a place that remotely felt like home. All the while keeping my heart safe in its ice-encased coffin.

  Until today.

  I couldn’t help thinking Cupid owed me one. I never thought he’d amount to much, but of all the Olympian gods, he was the only one who remained relevant in this modern age. Zeus’s magnificent temples lay in ruins. As did Apollo’s Oracle of Delphi. No one prayed to Athena for her wisdom or to Demeter for a bountiful harvest. Cupid was all that remained of the bygone, classical era.

  Clicking the link in the Heart2Heart email, I started to create a profile. Like the ad said, my romantic destiny was waiting.

  2

  Kaden

  Man, did I love the smell of old books. Yeah, I was one of those old-schoolers who thought e-readers were the first sign of the apocalypse. Kindle was a dirty word in my vernacular. Apps were chicken wings or mozzarella sticks, not something you downloaded on a phone to read a book with. Who the hell wanted to read tiny words on a tiny screen? Although, I had to admit, sooner rather than later, I was going to need reading glasses to see the tiny words in my paper books. Whose idea of a sick joke was that?

  My life had a 1980s vibe. I listened to Madonna on my Walkman. I read actual books made from paper. I drove a Pontiac Trans Am. The car was the spitting ima ge of the one Burt Reynolds drove in Smokey and the Bandit. I even had a rotary dial phone with an extra-long tangled cord mounted to the wall in my kitchen. Don’t hate me because I was too cool for school.

  My entire life revolved around books. As the head librarian in the Myths, Legends, and Folklore department of the Boston Public Library, I spent my days helping people research vampires, zombies, and werewolves. Oh, my!

  Seriously though, books were in my blood, even though this world seemed content to bury them in the past. I loved my job at the BPL. It came with certain perks, like working in a place with John Singer Sargent murals and stunning Renaissance-style architecture. My wing of the library was the largest depository of myths and legend texts in the world. The books ranged from ancient Mesopotamia, the Holy Roman Empire, ancient Greece, and Turkey to more modern classics like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

  My favorite perk was a bit more personal. You see, not only were these ancient tomes old friends, but they could be the key to my salvation.

  Can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell? Pinkie swear?

  I’m a werewolf. My pack’s origins trace back to rural France in the twelfth century. Round about 1776, when the American colonists were preparing to declare their independence from jolly old England, my ancestors escaped to Canada, along with other undesirables. My family later immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, finally ending up in Malden, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

  Yeah, you heard me right. I’m a French-Canadian werewolf. Mon Dieu! I’m Kaden Devereaux, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.

  Let me start by debunking a few common werewolf myths. A bite from a werewolf will not turn you into one of us. It will require a trip to the emergency room for antibiotics and possibly treatment for rabies. Silver bullets will kill us, but, spoiler alert, they’ll kill anything if your aim is true. Lastly, the light of a full moon does not make me shift into my lupine form.

  Le sigh. One guy shifts during a full moon, eats half a village, and BAM! A new myth is born. No one liked great-great-grandfather François much anyway, or so I’m told.

  But back to the ancient books in the collection being my salvation. No, I’m not being dramatic. I wish I was. Lycanthropy is a genetic trait like dark hair or male-pattern baldness. The Devereaux family had been producing virile werewolves for centuries. However, in my case, my genes or something went a bit haywire somewhere along the way.

  I’m a mutant. A freak. Due to this supposed genetic flaw, I’d been shunned. I was no longer a member of the Devereaux pack. I had no contact with my parents, siblings, or the rest of my family. That’s where my precious books came into play. I’d been studying werewolf myths and legends from the moment my mutation was revealed fifteen years ago when I shifted for the first time, in hopes of finding a cure and ultimately being welcomed back into my family’s loving arms.

  What was this terrible trait that got me kicked out of my pack and ostracized by the alpha? I was allergic to animal dander, meaning I was allergic to myself when I shifted into wolf form. It didn’t sound like a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but life with swollen, itchy eyes, asthmatic wheezing, a drippy nose, and constant sneezes was a nightmare. So much so I was forbidden from siring children of my own for fear the mutation would be passed down to future generations.

  Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play…

  I don’t mean to be a Donnie Downer, but welcome to my life. Or at least what passed for life these days.

  All of my free time was spent with my nose in old books, hoping I could find a cure for my condition. I’d tried over-the-counter antihistamines, allergy shots, and biologics to suppress my immune system, but nothing worked for long, and Benadryl made me sleepy. My next step was looking into magic spells, curses, hexes. My condition might not be a function of biology at all but rather the result of a terrible curse. I mean, I’d investigated science, biology, genetic engineering, and the like. What did I have to lose?

  There was only one person who knew my full truth. My best friend, Jon Clifton. We’d been friends since middle school when he saved me from bullies who were in the process of stealing my lunch money. No one fucked with Big Jon, which was as true now as it was at John Quincy Adams Middle School back in the day.

  His motto when it came to my parents had always been “Fuck them and the werewolf they rode in on.” He had a point. And the best parents on the planet. When Jon came out to them in the eighth grade, there had been hugs and tons of support. They marched in Pride parades alongside him. His parents fostered gay youth. They were just as supportive of me when I came out as a gay, allergic werewolf.

  My parents kicked me out of the house when they discovered my mutation during my first shift when I was fifteen. It wasn’t bad enough being a teenage werewolf, dealing with zits and algebra, but to be homeless on top of everything was a blow I still hadn’t recovered from. Thankfully, Jon’s parents took me in as one of their own. His mother gave me ear scritches when I shifted and always had tissues and my inhaler handy when I changed back. They even helped put me through college.

  Jon got married last year. It was a gorgeous Star Wars–themed ceremony held at a swanky hotel in downtown Boston. Paul was one hell of a guy, and he loved Jon to Tatooine and back. They’d met courtesy of the dating app Heart2Heart. With a drunken arm slung around me during Madonna’s “Crazy for You,” he’d told me my one true love was out there waiting for me to find him. All I needed to do was take a chance on love like he’d done.

  I sure as hell couldn’t argue with his results. After a year of marriage, they owned a house on the water in Salem and had adopted a pair of rescue greyhounds named George and Ringo, with plans for a human child to someday join their fur babies. Jon had the world on a string.

  All I had were my moldering books and a free membership to Heart2Heart, courtesy of Big Jon. I’d spent the last few months staring at the invitation and trying to decide if I should join or not. Finally, last week, after one too many piña coladas, I’d made a profile. I was sick to my stomach over the whole thing when I saw “Cupid” would be the one making matches for Valentine’s Day.

  The only thing worse than being alone on Valentine’s Day was the possibility of being set up by an equally lonely dude costumed in a wig and diaper. It was only Jon’s success with meeting his husband that made me press the Join Now button.

  If nothing else, it would be a funny story to tell at the old-age home one day, right?

  Anyway, I clicked the button three days ago. It had been crickets ever since. I didn’t even get a welcome email offering me upgrades to my standard membership. I suppose with the holiday only a few days away, the website must have been slammed with lonely people like me looking for their happily ever after.

  Some of them would find true love. But as for me, I had a feeling I would be spending yet another Valentine’s Day alone with sappy movies and a box of choc—

  The pinging of my phone broke me out of my pity party for one. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw a single text message had been sent. After reading the message several times, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry.

  Hey Kaden, it’s Cupid. Have I got a date for you! Tomorrow 4 p.m. BPL. Are you ready to fall head over paws in love?

  Paws? Nowhere in my profile had I mentioned I was a werewolf. How the hell had this Cupid wannabe found out my secret? Making matters worse was that my date was supposed to meet me here at the library. How humiliating.

  All I could do now was cross my fingers and hope this blind date didn’t turn into a complete catastrophe. I mean, what could possibly go right?

  3

  Orion

  What the hell kind of name was Kaden? I rolled my eyes and scanned the email from Cupid for what had to be the twentieth time since it arrived last night. It seemed to be a form letter of sorts, introducing me to Kaden Devereaux and giving some vague details about him. Black hair, green eyes, five foot eight, librarian. To my chagrin, there was no photograph.

  Christ, it took Cupid to set me up with a short, emerald-eyed dork? I could have found a man fitting his description by myself in the coffee shop near my office.

 

1 2 3 4