Chapter 5 Ares and Athena

Chapter 5: Ares and Athena

By his calculations, his new fiancée would arrive by high noon. To pass the time, Ares had gathered a handful of his demigod and Titan followers for a morning hunt in the sprawling, untamed forests of Olympus. He fully intended to catch a fitting welcome gift for the Princess of Sparta.

He carried his favorite spear and a heavy, custom-forged titanium shield. Every piece of his hunting gear had been masterfully crafted by his brother, Hephaestus. But thousands of years had passed since the blacksmith had last been willing to forge a single blade for him. Their relationship had completely shattered the day Helios, the Sun God, had caught Ares tangled in the sheets with Aphrodite.

Consumed by a bitter rage, Hephaestus had successfully humiliated them both, ensnaring Ares and the Goddess of Beauty in a complex, mechanical net rigged directly to their golden bed.

The scandalous affair had sent Zeus into a hypocritical fury, resulting in Ares’s banishment from Olympus for several decades. Ares still couldn't wrap his head around the sheer audacity of it. Didn’t Zeus himself, as his father, practically write the manual on divine infidelity? There wasn't a number high enough to count the mortal women who had fallen victim to the King of the Gods' insatiable lust.

Hera—Ares’s biological mother and the fiercely proud Goddess of Marriage—was utterly powerless to leash her husband's wandering eye. Instead, she channeled her venom into ruthlessly persecuting Zeus’s lovers and his illegitimate bastards, like Hercules.

But Ares hadn’t learned a damn thing, and he had absolutely no intention of ending his affair with Aphrodite. Because of his stubbornness, securing new weaponry had become a nightmare. Swords and spears forged by lesser blacksmiths constantly shattered under his brutal strength; nothing could ever match the lethal perfection of Hephaestus’s work.

“Ares!” a female demigod shouted through the trees, signaling that she had finally tracked down their target.

The Lord of Battle and his hunting party immediately surged toward the call. Breaking through the tree line, they found it: a monstrous, three-horned bull, easily twice the size of a normal beast. Despite its terrifying, spiked appearance, the creature was currently grazing peacefully in the sun-drenched clearing.

“What do you think?” one of the Titans murmured.

“The meat is utterly useless—far too tough to chew,” Ares noted, his dark eyes fixed on the prey. “But it’s a magnificent, formidable beast. I’ll sever its head and present it as a gift to the Princess of Sparta.”

“Are you serious?” A red-haired demigod balked, giving Ares a look of pure bewilderment. “Giving a mortal woman a bloody, severed head? Don’t women usually prefer, I don't know, jewelry and gold?”

“I am the God of War and Destruction. Handing out delicate trinkets isn’t exactly my aesthetic,” Ares countered stubbornly. “Though, obviously, I still shower my lovers with ridiculous amounts of gems and sapphires.”

Without waiting for further debate, the God of War readied his spear. He moved with lethal, predatory grace, his massive frame completely silent as he stalked the oblivious monster.

Closing the distance, Ares launched himself into the air and drove his spear violently into the thick column of the bull’s neck.

A deafening, agonized bellow ripped through the clearing. The beast staggered backward, thrashing wildly in a desperate bid to stay alive. But the strike was flawless—Ares’s spear had severed the main artery. Thick, dark blood erupted from the wound, painting the vibrant green grass a slick, shining crimson.

Snorting blood, the monster gathered its final ounce of strength and tried to bolt, the heavy spear still lodged deep in its flesh. Unfazed, Ares lunged directly into its path and delivered a bone-crushing punch straight to the beast's snout, halting it in its tracks.

The massive bull collapsed to the dirt with a ground-shaking thud. Wrapping a heavily muscled arm around its horns, Ares viciously yanked the creature's neck back and ripped his spear free, accelerating the blood loss. With a final, rattling exhale, the monster finally succumbed without putting up any further resistance.

“Look at that. The mighty God of War, slaughtering a grazing bull all by himself. Truly groundbreaking.” A slow, drippingly sarcastic round of applause echoed from the edge of the clearing.

It was Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and Strategic Warfare. She was Ares’s eternal, bitter rival—the only other Olympian to hold absolute dominion over the mortal battlefields.

When humans faced the horrors of combat, they prayed to Ares for brute strength and raw courage. But they prayed to Athena for victory.

“This forest isn’t your territory, sister. What the hell are you doing here?” Ares snapped, his jaw ticking with irritation.

Like the rest of the pantheon, Athena was devastatingly beautiful. She possessed sharp, calculating features, flawless pale skin, and tight reddish curls. But unlike the other goddesses who draped themselves in luxurious silk gowns, Athena wore gleaming armor and a half-face war helmet. She looked every inch a lethal, untouchable Amazonian warrior.

“If it were me, I would have simply used a poison-tipped arrow and let the beast die a quiet, slow death,” Athena remarked, inspecting her immaculate fingernails.

“I’m not a coward who hides in the shadows, Athena,” Ares sneered. “I actually fight on the front lines.”

“You sound so emotional, brother. Are you still nursing a grudge from the Trojan War?” Athena purred, deliberately poking the bear. “Still upset about the time a mere mortal like Diomedes managed to wound you so severely?”

“A wound inflicted through your deceit and cowardly trickery doesn’t make me weak. I slaughtered Diomedes in a fair fight the second I recovered,” Ares fired back, refusing to let her condescension slide.

Thousands of years ago, the legendary war between Troy and Sparta had ripped the mortal world apart—the very same conflict immortalized in the bloody tales of Helen of Troy. In that epic clash, the Lord of Battle had heavily intervened, only to ultimately end up on the losing side, thanks entirely to Athena's meddling.

“What exactly is fair about that?” Athena challenged, a cold, mocking smile playing on her lips. “He was just a fragile human, and you are Ares, the almighty, immortal God of War. Honestly, aren’t you embarrassed?”

Ares inhaled sharply, grinding his teeth. He knew his sister all too well. She was a master manipulator, endlessly skilled at twisting facts and weaponizing logic to instantly sway an audience. No matter what truth he spoke, she would always find a way to make him look like a fool.

“Get out of here. I’m not in the mood to argue, and I don’t give a damn why you’re creeping around my forest. Leave before I make you leave,” Ares warned, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. The two gods had never actually fought each other in a direct, one-on-one duel, yet the entire pantheon quietly considered Athena the superior warrior. It was a simple, infuriating metric: whichever army the Goddess of Wisdom backed almost always won.

“Hermes mentioned that you’re suddenly planning to marry a mortal princess,” Athena said, finally dropping the banter. “And I’ve just learned that this particular girl happens to be a deeply devoted follower of mine. What exactly are you plotting, Ares?”

“None of your damn business,” Ares replied curtly, turning his back on her to watch his followers begin the messy work of beheading the monster bull.

“Are you trying to win Zeus’s favor?” Athena pressed, her eyes narrowing as she analyzed him. “Trying to finally make him like you?”

“Once again, keep out of my affairs, Athena.”

“I won’t let you win, Ares,” Athena promised, her voice dripping with absolute ice. “As long as I draw breath, you will remain the pathetic, brutish outcast that no one wants. And me? Well… you’ve heard the rumors, haven’t you? The people of Athens are currently erecting a statue of me the size of a mountain.”

Refusing to take the bait, Ares remained completely nonchalant. He walked away, not bothering to cast a single glance over his broad shoulder. He’d endured millennia of Athena’s arrogant intimidation tactics. He knew the rules of her game: the more he engaged, the more insufferable she became. The only way to win against the Goddess of Wisdom was to simply walk away.

Meanwhile, from the safety of the treeline, Alastair and I had accidentally witnessed the entire divine family reunion. We had just crossed into Olympus, entering Ares’s heavily guarded domain, when our carriage stumbled right onto the edge of their tense standoff, allowing us to overhear almost everything.

“I definitely didn't expect the legendary, ‘wise’ Athena to be such an absolute mean girl,” I whispered to Alastair, genuinely shocked by the venom I'd just heard.

“Ares and Athena have been bitter rivals since the dawn of time,” Alastair whispered back, his eyes glued to the scene. “She constantly tries to humiliate him and prove her intellectual superiority. Most of the time, Lord Ares simply refuses to play her games.”

I nodded slowly, the pieces clicking into place. I remembered this exact rivalry from the thick mythology scripts back in Hollywood. The ancient poets loved to pit them against each other: Ares, the unhinged villain bursting with wrath and fury, versus Athena, the flawless, wise savior. Ares, the god despised by all of Greece, and Athena, the golden child.

Clearly, the reality was way more complicated than the textbooks claimed. An unexpected, annoying flicker of pity sparked in my chest for the Lord of Battle. He seemed incredibly misunderstood. But I quickly clamped down on that emotion. His messy family drama was definitely not my business. Honestly, as I stared at his impossibly broad shoulders and lethal physique, I was just overwhelmingly grateful that the immortal god I was being forced to marry didn't look like some decrepit, wrinkled old man.

Even though I’d only caught a glimpse of him from behind, the raw, intimidating power radiating off him was undeniable. He was a terrifying, formidable warrior who clearly lived for the fight—but after witnessing him hold his temper against Athena's toxic baiting, I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't the mindless, vicious villain the world made him out to be.

“Let us be on our way again, my lady. The Palace of Ares awaits,” Alastair murmured, motioning for the entourage to quietly resume our journey. We had deliberately halted our carriages in the shadows just to avoid interrupting the volatile clash of the Olympians, but now, it was finally time to meet my new husband face to face.