Midlife Muse: Nine Heirs and a Spare, #1

By Donna McDonald

I may look like a 40-year-old mortal woman, but inside I'm a goddess.

 

My name is Goddess Atlanta. Haven't you heard of me? No? Bet you've heard of my twin sister, Athena, the Goddess of War. Sure. Everyone's heard of her.

 

Shunned by my birth family, I grew up with the Muses as sisters and friends. Not having any of their inspiring tendencies is the least of my Goddess sins.  

 

What more can I say about the most epic failure of my life? Being a warrior is the song that sings in my blood. Just hand me a sword and move back while I call down lightning. Be careful though because my aim's not what it used to be. Becoming a mortal woman has taken a toll, especially on my knees.

 

Because of my father, our entire pantheon is becoming mortal and dying. The first thing on my to-do list today is finding a worthy champion to help save us all. 

 

My name is Atlanta, Goddess of the Doomsday Prophecy. 

 

And this is my Mortal Midlife story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donna McDonald
• Release date: Dec 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950619368

Donna McDonald

Donna McDonald published her first romance novel in March of 2011. Fifty plus novels later, she admits to living her own happily ever after as a full-time author. Her work spans several genres, such as contemporary romance, paranormal, and science fiction. Humor is the most common element in all her writing. Addicted to making readers laugh, she includes a good dose of romantic comedy in every book.

Book preview

Chapter

One

Atlanta, what are you doing?

I looked up from my tasks. Getting ready to work out. I’m almost done.

Zavak snorted as he stomped away from me. When he got to the other side of the dirt circle he called a training area, my long-time trainer stopped and glared at me as if I was ruining his entire day.

I needed to hurry. Zavak’s patience with me was time sensitive, so I quickly shoved my muscle rub, aspirin, and B-12 vitamins back into my workout bag, hoping they didn’t break the glasses that had gotten tossed in there first. I normally left my reading glasses behind in the office. When I grabbed my workout bag, I’d forgotten the reading glasses parked on top of my head.

We’d been following the same routine since my exile into the Mortal Realm. It had worked smoothly for the six years I’d been living here. I kept a ready bag with all my stuff at the office with me. When Zavak opened a portal, I grabbed it and leaped through into his tiny part of the God Realm. We would spend an unpleasant hour keeping my fighting skills as sharp as possible before he sent me back.

Atlanta? What are those Gaia-forsaken things covering your knees?

He’d yelled the question across the distance now separating us. Surprised by Zavak’s observation, I looked down at my stretchy knee supports and sighed before yelling back my answer.

They brace my kneecaps and keep my joints warm. I don’t want stiff knees after working out.

It wasn’t a total lie, but to be fair, it wasn’t the whole truth either. If Zavak suspected that, he didn’t show it. Precautions were necessary now that I had aged so much. Healers in the God Realm were powerful. Healers in the Mortal Realm couldn’t instantly heal broken body parts, especially things like knees.

As best I could estimate, my body was around forty-years-old in mortal years. A serious injury might not speed up my aging spiral, but I couldn’t take any chances that it would weaken me further. Everyone needed to eat, and I ran a business that currently employed my whole freaking family.

Not that my personal trainer had sympathy for my family situation. How could Zavak understand? Demigods were a grumpy bunch with their inferiority complexes over being half-god instead of a full one, but at least no one was running them out of their native realm. Gaia, for whatever reason, had left the demigods in the God Realm.

Zavak was a burly Minotaur with enough facial piercings to start his own shop. He was also the most loyal friend I had next to Duff. I didn’t know if Zavak thought his piercings raised his intimidation factor or that he looked sexy with them. Whatever the case, he stared at my knee supports a moment more before turning away to shake his head.

After six years of getting those looks, I couldn’t tell the difference between disgust and pity on his bull-like face. Either way, I refused to dwell on Zavak’s personality nuances.

I cupped my hands around my mouth to yell again. I’m good. Come at me with all you got.

Why was I here facing down a Minotaur who had very real intentions of hurting me? I’d decided that if I had to live as a mortal for the rest of my life, I wanted to be a kick-ass one. At least, I wanted that until I got too old to lift my leg into a round-off high enough to loosen someone’s teeth.

Am I going to damage you? Zavak asked loudly. He stared hard at me while he waited for my answer.

Only in your dreams, I yelled back with a smile. Fake it until you make it was my motto.

His bullish bellow filled the air as he picked up his mace and started toward me. I looked around and realized I’d neglected to choose a weapon. Great. Just great. I clenched my fists and sighed.

Once upon a time in the God Realm, I’d been a powerful goddess. Though I’d never found my goddess specialty, which was a big deal in the God Realm, I developed all the talents I discovered in myself over the centuries. After Zavak trained me to fight, I discovered I excelled at war. Zavak even admitted I was a natural. Unfortunately, no one wanted to hear about how good I was in battle because my father had forbidden me to raise a weapon against anyone.

My name is Atlanta, and I’m a goddess of nothing specific. Or at least, I used to be a goddess.

Every moment I spent living as an aging midlife mortal made it even more unlikely that I would ever figure out the true purpose for which I was born.

There were no grand stories about me in Greek Mythology.

No one would ever read any true stories either, not on papyrus, scroll, or inscribed on a marble column of some majestic Greek temple.

No, but everyone knows my powerful twin—Athena, Goddess of War. Athena got to stand proudly in the Greek spotlight and I didn’t because I was one child too many.

To this very day, Athena denies both my existence and being my twin. We’re only semi-identical, but the resemblance is there despite any glamour Athena uses on herself. Even knowing how she felt, I couldn’t hate my sister.

My adopted mother said Zeus spelled Athena to forget me after our birth. Sometime over the many centuries of our existence, my twin shook off that magical constriction. Meeting me in person didn’t change us being strangers to each other though. Despite how it works with mortals, Goddesses can’t miss a twin they never knew about.

I detested my father. Not just for Athena either.

Shortly after my birth, my father killed my birth mother. The way my adopted mother explained it, he almost killed me too. Zeus didn’t need or want two firstborn progeny. Since Athena emerged a few seconds before I did, Zeus kept my sister and made her his champion.

Me, though? Zeus sent me to live with Mnemosyne, the Goddess of Memory, who at the time was the size of the entire island of Santorini because she was carrying his next nine daughters—the famous Muses.

Growing up too quickly—literally in a few months—I soon discovered my father had knocked up a lot of Goddesses who were back then milling about in both the God Realm and the Mortal Realm.

Despite my fast physical acceleration to near adulthood, mentally I’d still only understood what an older teenager would about life at the time. An adopted mother who controlled memories came with disadvantages too. Some of those upset me even now when they surface.

The worst part of my abbreviated youth was that my adopted mother always did what Zeus told her to do concerning me. Controlling my growth, learning, and personality seemed to stay at the top of my mother’s to-do list, even after her nine natural daughters were born. Keeping me in line remained her primary focus, or that’s how it felt.

You came here to fight, Atlanta. You always say you’re not a Muse, so stop musing and pay attention to me, Zavak roared.

Zavak was right. I hadn’t been paying attention, but no way was I admitting that to His Snorting Grumpiness today. How can I not pay attention to you, Zavak? You snort like a bull and are as big as one.

His mace swung at me and I adeptly dodged the first swipe. Muscle memory was a wonderful thing. The second swing got closer, but I luckily missed connecting with that one as well.

Unfortunately, a painful twinge in my right knee caught my attention as I landed wrong on it, so I wasn’t as lucky with the third swipe. The pointy head of Zavak’s mace hit me in the stomach and sent me flying as my scream of surprise filled the air.

Fortunately, I didn’t end up going into some other demigod’s territory. After launching several of his pupils out of sight with a direct hit, Zavak paid a coven of witches to ward the boundary of his training area to keep his victims—I mean, pupils—from escaping. Unfortunately, I hit Zavak’s warded wall, bounced off, and then fell face-down into the dirt.

Several minutes ticked by until I could bring myself to even roll over and groan. I’d used my waning goddess power to do some magical chores for my Leprechaun roommate yesterday, and now I was paying for that decision. With my body aching and my breath ragged, I felt more mortal than I should have given how conservative I’d been with my power. My mortal destiny seemed to be catching up.

The ground shook as Zavak jogged over to me with his mace still in his hand. My blurring eyes traveled up a set of extremely manly and muscular legs. Unfortunately, they cleared enough for me to get a full view of what the Minotaur hid under the sparring kilt covering the bottom half of his body. Enormous man parts dangling above my still spinning head had me crawling away and scrambling against dizziness to get back on my feet.

This is exactly what happened last time, he bellowed.

I groaned as I got up on all fours. Somehow, I managed to get to my knees, even with everything still spinning. Pride filled me to have survived as well as I had and made me smile at Zavak after he came into focus.

Once a warrior goddess, always a warrior goddess.

When I was mostly certain I wouldn’t pass out, I held up both hands. See? I’m fine, Zavak. Just give me a minute. I overused my power yesterday. That’s all.

His bullish snorts were loud as he shook his big head. No. That’s it, Atlanta. No more training. I refuse to be the cause of your death. I will not bring you here again until you get your power back. Contact me when you are less mortal.

But we have to keep training. I don’t want to lose my skills. What if I don’t ever get all my power back? You know my mortal situation may not be fixable, I reminded him with a frown.

"Then may the Fates be kind enough to let someone kill you quickly. Someone other than me," Zavak declared loudly as he scooped up my damaged body and tossed me.

No, Zavak, please don’t send me back… But it was already too late for pleading.

I shot out of the portal and landed as hard on the floor of my office as I had against Zavak’s warded wall. Groaning again, I rolled to the side and pushed myself up as best I could. Seconds later, my workout bag shot out of the portal and hit me in the back of the head.

If Zavak broke my reading glasses, I would kick some serious Minotaur butt next time I saw him. Or at least I’d try really, really hard. Those were my favorite pair of glasses, and I’d lost all my others. I could still see across a room, but I couldn’t work on my computer tablet without wearing a pair.

After I climbed all the way to my feet, which wasn’t easy, I dug into my exercise bag for aspirin and a bottled water. I popped a handful and drank the whole bottle of water before stumbling to my desk to fall into the expensive, but incredibly comfortable executive chair that had been worth every penny I’d spent on it.

As I sat there sulking over what happened, I tried not to dwell too hard on whether Zavak got lucky, or if his fears about accidentally killing me were justified.

A knock on my office door interrupted my pity party, and then Clio’s head appeared through a crack. Clio was the Muse of History.

I heard a thump, Atlanta. Are you okay?

Yes. I was working out and… fell.

Are you alright?

I nodded. Fine. I’m fine. I took some aspirin for the pain.

Oh. Okay, Clio said with a smile. See you at the meeting shortly. I brought cookies today. They’re the kind you like.

Cookies.

My sister’s thoughtfulness had me sighing in gratitude. Thanks, Clio. You made my morning.

Working with my nine half-sisters was a pain sometimes, but other times they brought my favorite cookies. It was sad, and a bit pathetic, how even the thought of cookies made me so happy today.

Some tough goddess I was. No wonder Zavak managed to kick my butt. I’d turned into a wuss.

The real truth was that I worked with the nine Muses because I loved them. My adopted siblings and their memory-controlling mother were the only family I’d ever really known. Over the years, they’d also become the only family I wanted to know among my father’s gazillion offspring. What was left of my actual birth family—Zeus and Athena—remained on my avoidance list.

I’d interacted with my birth sister very little. I’d probably seen Athena about the same number of times I’d seen my birth father, which was only eight times total spanning a lot of centuries back in the God Realm.

After many failed attempts to get to know my famous father and my full twin sister, the Fates had cautioned me away from going near any of the others who’d been born close to the same time. Zeus’s offspring included legitimate ones like his precious son Ares, born of the Goddess Hera, and too many illegitimate siblings to keep track of without a legendary historian like my Muse sister, Clio, getting involved.

They also included a bunch of demigods, who were half-mortal and half-god. I didn’t consider myself even related to them all, which was odd but a very immortal thing to do. Most of the demigods lived in the Mortal Realm all the time. Zavak wasn’t related. Maybe that was why he got to stay.

I followed the Fates edict to ignore my familial urge to connect, but one day several centuries ago, the resentment I felt toward Zeus and Athena caught up with me. Or maybe it was all the wars going on in the world and all the chances for glory I felt I was missing because of them.

I forgot what I was thinking at the time, but I did something that the Fates specifically warned me not to do. The Fates served as crazy maiden aunts to all of Zeus’s progeny, even though in reality they were only related to Athena and me through our birth mother.

Or at least that was the story I was told.

Both mortals and immortals were typically afraid of the Fates, and with good reason, but long-felt resentment can destroy any god’s or goddess’s common sense. That’s the conclusion I eventually came to.

To make a long story short, I blew them off at the time, partly because the Fates hadn’t technically forbidden me to get involved in what was happening in the world. Zeus had done the forbidding thing, but I didn’t care what my absent father ordered me to do or not do.

And I’d been quietly rebelling for years before I snapped. I trained with Zavak and nothing dire came of my actions. Yet each passing year brought me more anger and hurt. My focus had been on revenge back then, and I wasted no time getting it in every way I could.

Young and dumb is a phase that happens to everyone, right? I had my issues. But I swear, every time my twin sister Athena got a new temple, it seemed like the Mortal Realm was rubbing salt in my wounds on purpose.

Back then, I foolishly considered the Muses to be my pseudo-siblings instead of my real ones. It took less than a century of being away from them to change that tune.

Everything I did or didn’t do was because of my father. Being abandoned and shunned by Zeus and Athena hurt me in ways I still can’t fully explain to anyone. All I can say is that my emotional pain over it drove me to act.

I guess with my birth mother dead before I got a chance to know her, maybe I grew up with no sense of self. When you add in the fact that what remained of my birth family wanted nothing to do with me, what you get is one seriously messed up goddess. Someone with my power should never let that happen, but the God Realm doesn’t believe in mental therapy. If you have a problem, you go for the source. You kill it, capture it, or spell it into servitude.

They’re not big on peace either. Peace was for mortals.

Now, don’t get me wrong. My adopted family treated me well, and I loved them. But I never fit in. The Muses spent their time doing crafts and learning to write, sing, or dance. I spent my days practicing with all the swords and weapons I could beg, borrow, or steal from anyone willing to sneak behind Zeus’s back to loan them to me.

Once—in a juvenile fit—I stole my father’s famous thunderbolt. He still doesn’t know I took it because I returned it quickly after he destroyed several Mortal Realm cities looking for it. Zeus had a lot of enemies, and he’d blamed them instead of his own people.

I heard about his reaction through Mother, who hopefully still doesn’t know I was behind that minor rebellion. I learned the hard way to keep the Goddess of Memory out of my head.

Both Athena and Ares got grilled about his missing mega-weapon, but Zeus never once looked in my direction. As far I knew, though, none of my gazillion siblings ever got close to manifesting a power anywhere as volatile and destructive as Zeus’s thunderbolt.

Or at least they never got as close as I did, because they would have bragged about it. While it takes a lot of power to do, I can call down lightning pretty much whenever I want. Or rather, I used to be able to call down lightning. If I tried it today, I’d probably get electrocuted. Zavak’s wish for someone else to kill me would come true.

From what I knew of Zeus’s two favorites, both Athena and Ares would have used that kind of power to make a grab for the Numero Uno God seat. Me, though? I never wanted that kind of responsibility.

No—back then, I only wanted Zeus to admit he’d made a giant mistake about not claiming me as his own. Since that never happened, I kept my abilities to myself.

I didn’t even use it during the Roman years. Well, I didn’t use it much.

Anyway… back to my reasons for wanting revenge.

My adopted mother messed with my memories over the years, but I recall my biggest epiphany happening around the time I realized my crazy aunts, the three Fates, weren’t as crazy as I thought they were.

I still haven’t figured out why the Fates didn’t kill me for messing up their BIG PLANS for the Mortal Realm, which to this very day they continue to remind me that I ruined.

My interference created long-term consequences. After the Romans got conquered, the world got crazier than ever. Wars happened in the Mortal Realm one right after another because they could. Who would stop them? Not anyone in my pantheon because the mortals had forgotten them. Gods and goddesses entertained themselves by torturing each other instead.

Eventually, mortals developed technology, which everyone from the God Realm blames as the beginning of the end. It makes sense when you think about it. What mortal needs a God or goddess when they can find all the help they need on the Internet?

I didn’t know how serious the trouble was until all the Greek gods and goddesses got pushed out of God Realm. Portals opened in front of thousands of us all at once, and then we all got tossed into the Mortal Realm. Gaia’s best people did the work of exiling us. I felt like my sisters and I should have been exempted, but my Gaia-sent tosser informed me that what was happening was my fault as much as anyone’s. Then the big bugger sent me through the portal harder than even Zavak tossed me. I still had my powers then so it hadn’t hurt as much.

After while, my family and I settled into life here. Most of us weren’t harmed much by relocating here and being a god or goddess at first was a distinct advantage. There were far worse destinies in the God Realm so I bowed to our fate.

Anyway, it wasn’t long before I noticed all the gods and goddesses I knew were aging and losing their powers just like I was. I got conservative and stopped using the remaining goddess power I possessed. I saw no point in fighting the inevitable physical changes of mortal life and focused instead on adapting.

And that’s still going on. Each day I struggle with additional physical indignities, but unlike most normal mortal women my age, my concern is not for what the mirror tells me. Beyond wishing my former muscles weren’t softening into extra unwanted pounds so fast, I didn’t care how I looked.

Despite having to embrace mortality, I felt that a goddess—even an unknown one like me—should be above whining about all the body parts that ache. But truthfully, I hadn’t needed Zavak’s confirmation that I was no longer fit for any physical challenges harder than yoga for seniors. I could see it happening. It was just hard to accept that my hand-to-hand combat days might be over.

The Fates warned me every year on my birthday that time was now passing more quickly for everyone in my pantheon. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it or my destined part in stopping it.

But I was starting to realize that no matter how mad I was at my birth father, blaming Zeus would not save me or the small number of my family I actually cared about from growing old and dying too.

All this was why I was now contemplating the price of never giving in to the destiny I’d been avoiding. Everything in my life was pointing to me finally having to do something about the prophecy.

I just didn’t know what yet.

Chapter

Two

My personal cell phone rang and interrupted my musing.

Getting older in the Mortal Realm had not improved the bad temper I tried to keep hidden. Everyone knew, though, that I hated being bothered when I was musing. It’s how I make a living.

I may not have been born for this kind of work, but money doesn’t grow on trees outside the God Realm. It took a lot of moolah to live well in the Mortal Realm. Every day I shoved my goddess dreams away and spent most of my time matching mortal clients with the perfect Muse.

My sisters and I help mortals become the god-like beings most mortals dream of being. We don’t grant them physical immortality, nor would we even if we could. Immortality is controlled by the Fates, but I’ve heard many stories about my father doling out immortality to his favorite servants. Most of those my father converted to immortals ended up having to be killed for reasons of insanity. Not that the boundaries of morality ever stopped Zeus.

Despite my propensity for fighting to the death on battlegrounds, my body count was still at zero among our clients. All my clever sisters and I did was help mortals become people whom their history would always remember. Like many gods and goddesses, fame was what those in the Mortal Realm sought beyond what was logical.

Rock stars? New York Times Bestselling Authors? Award-winning actors?

Yes, creating them was what we did, but it was a lot harder to accomplish than you might think.

In the Mortal Realm, I called myself Atlanta Spears. I didn’t like my mortal name, but I’d get laughed at for calling myself Goddess Atlanta.

Since it wasn’t the office phone ringing with new business, I ignored my cell when it rang again. A couple of years ago, my powers would have told me who was calling without me having to answer it. But like my once perky breasts that now sagged because of gravity, my goddess power was losing its own battle.

Mortals considered being forty ‘midlife’ because that age represented the average middle of all the years of their brief life. I’d learned for some of them turning forty meant they were headed to their graves. I didn’t feel that way myself, despite the reading glasses I used for reading client contracts. Anyway, the real bane of my mortal existence was that everything wrong was not my fault. No, it was my no-longer-omnipotent father’s fault.

Sure, I may have set the downward spiraling prophecy in motion while I was going through my revenge phase. But hey—newsflash for all realms—I hadn’t been the one who brought the prophecy into being in the first place.

Shortly after my father got the job of being Numero Uno, he screwed up with the Fates and their mother. Or maybe he refused to screw any of them. I never got the full story. If Zeus had refused to bed any female—goddess or mortal—that would have been a unique first for my father because restraining his libido didn’t seem possible for him.

Despite my determination to ignore the caller, my cell continued to ring and ring. Only the adopted mother I loved or the loathsome father I detested dared to torture me with that kind of persistence during business hours.

I finally snatched the phone up to see which annoying parent it was. This better be important, or you’re dead.

Why aren’t you answering your father’s calls, Atlanta? Zeus has been trying to reach you for three days. You asked him to call before he stopped by. What good is setting that parameter if you don’t answer your phone so he can tell you he’s coming?

I frowned at my adopted mother’s chastising tone more than her logic. How old did someone in the Mortal Realm have to be before they stopped getting fussed at by a parent? Surely forty should be a sufficient age for people to leave you alone.

I wish I knew who I could go to for help with these kinds of questions. I didn’t cultivate mortal friends. If I guarded my power wisely, I could live two or three times as long as most mortals did. I’d be forty for at least a decade or two.

No, all I needed was a handbook on mortal traditions. Maybe I’d add that to my next research list.

If Zeus is coming by just to complain about how terrible his life is, I don’t want to hear it. My life’s no picnic either.

Atlanta, you’re forty in mortal years now. Act like a dignified mortal adult instead of a petulant young goddess who’s still mad at her father.

I lifted the hand not holding the phone and shook it in the air, which now vibrated with the power my anger was releasing. Only my parents could make me this mad.

Why do you always defend him, Mother? No man that selfish could be good in bed. Zeus is a horrible, loathsome god. He killed my birth mother and foisted me off on you without a single look back over his shoulder. Am I supposed to cut him slack just because he chose not to kill me when he killed my mother?

"The situation was