The First Huntress to give him her Maidenhood

Breakfast wore on, and it might almost have been any other morning if Matt forgot the part where he'd apparently married a whole camp of immortals before sunrise. Kit talked without stopping. Dara had a burn scar down one arm and cropped grey hair, four hundred years in the Hunt, and never ask her about boats. The two sisters shared a cushion and passed one knife back and forth without looking up. The best shot in camp had joined at fifteen and never once let anyone forget it.

Then Zoë set down her cup.

It was nothing, just clay meeting wood, but it carried. Kit froze mid-word, a piece of bread halfway to her mouth. The woman on Matt's other side quit chewing. One after another the Hunters looked up, until every face in the tent was on Zoë, and Matt's with them, and he got the feeling the meal was over whether or not anyone had finished it.

"The lots," Zoë said.

The Hunters reached into pockets and boot-tops and the folds of their belts and began laying small wooden lots in a line across the boards. No names on them, no markings he could see, only length, and it took Matt until the fifth one to work out that was the point. The lots ranged from a long finger of wood down to a stub, and the women set them down like they were casting votes.

The longest lot sat at the far end, in front of a woman Matt hadn't noticed yet, leaned back against the tent pole with her arms crossed and a black leather jacket hanging open over a white tank. A strap cut across her chest from shoulder to hip, drawing his eye somewhere it maybe shouldn't go. Her hair was black and straight, gone gold at the roots, and a thin white scar split one eyebrow.

When she caught him looking, she held it until he felt it, then smiled, slow, like she'd caught him at something he hadn't meant to give away.

Her head turned, and the light caught her eyes and made them grey. Not the grey of clouds or stone, but the shade every child of Athena wore.

The lot came off the table with a small clack, turned once between her fingers, and vanished into her belt. Then, unhurried, she rose and came around the table toward him.

She stopped close enough to make him look up from his seat, the slow smile lingering until he began to wonder what she was waiting for.

“Morgan,” she offered at last. “Since nobody else has bothered to introduce me.”

“Matt,” he said, because it seemed like the thing to say.

“I know,” she said, tilting her head as her smile took on a teasing edge. “Everyone knows. You’ve been the topic of conversation since sunrise. Bit of a celebrity, aren’t you?”

Before he could think of an answer, she turned towards Kit with a warm smile and moved to her side. Kit still had her bread halfway to her mouth when Morgan slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

“Hey,” Kit said, muffled against Morgan’s shoulder.

Bending close, Morgan murmured something against Kit’s hair, too quietly for Matt to catch. Whatever it was, Kit came away grinning, her cheeks pink.

“Your turn will come,” Morgan told her, tapping beneath her chin with two fingers.

Kit nodded and returned to her bread. A glance towards the tent flap followed, this time meant for Matt, and he got up to follow.

No explanation came as they left the tent and crossed the camp. Past a line of canvas and a rack of drying pelts, Matt had to lengthen his stride to keep up. He followed cautiously, wondering whether she expected him to know where they were going or was still deciding herself.

Several minutes later, an oak at the far edge of the clearing seemed to catch her attention. Thick grass grew beneath it, shaded by the spreading branches, and after a quick look she headed towards the trunk. It looked secluded enough for a conversation while keeping the camp in sight, though Matt still had no idea what she wanted to discuss.

A neatly folded blanket lay at its base, as though someone had left it there for later. Morgan spread it out and sat down.

“Come on.” She patted the space beside her, and Matt settled close enough for their shoulders to brush. With her knees drawn up and her forearms resting across them, she turned towards him.

“So, Camp Half-Blood,” she said, turning her attention fully to him.

“What about it?”

“Anything. What it’s like, what you did there.” Resting her chin on her knee, she watched him as she continued. “I’ve been with the Hunt since I was eleven, so I don’t actually know how the other half lives. Enlighten me.”

Talking about himself came awkwardly at first, as it usually did when someone asked. Unlike Kit, Morgan let the silences last without rushing to fill them, giving him room to finish a thought before asking about it. That made it easier to explain the cabin and its overcrowding, including how he’d learned to sleep through almost anything.

From there, he found himself talking about his traps, how much could be done with cord and branches if you had the patience to wait. He told her about the hill behind the cabins, too, and how far you had to climb before the whole valley opened up below. Throughout it all, she listened, occasionally nodding or asking a question that gave him something else to say.

“You’re a patient one,” she said when he finally ran out. The approval in her voice had an older-sister warmth that made him suspect she’d just decided he was adorable.

Matt rolled his eyes. “I had to be.”

“Most people aren’t, they’d rather chase,” she said, stretching her legs out in front of her with a small, unfairly cute yawn. “I’d rather chase. But I can respect a snare. Set many?”

“Some,” he said.

She glanced at him and let the silence sit.

Matt wasn’t sure how much he was allowed to ask. Details about Kit came easily enough, but Morgan kept her own story folded up tight, and he didn’t want to pull the wrong thread.

“How did you join the Hunt?” he asked.

A low, unhurried chuckle made him wonder what was funny about the question.

“You can guess from the eyes,” she said, tipping her head so the grey caught the light again. “A certain virgin goddess, if you follow. My aunt used to call me a headache.”

Calling the brainchildren a headache was generous, considering the Athena kids Matt had met were insufferable at the best of times, all sharp corners and sharper opinions, and they never shut up about it. Morgan’s questions about camp, though, suggested she’d never actually lived there, perhaps only passing through on Hunt business before moving on.

“My father came over from Wales to visit my aunt,” she continued.

Apparently, joining the Hunt meant starting with how she’d been born. At least Matt knew where Wales was. During geography one year, he’d memorised the countries and their positions by listening, dyslexic and too proud to admit he couldn’t read the map. A month of that had left the shape of the country stuck in his head, which was more than most of the Hermes cabin could say.

“He met my mother, and they got along, though I’m not sure to what degree.” Catching Matt’s disbelieving look, Morgan explained, “My father was in a car crash the day before I was delivered to him, so I grew up without him. My aunt could never square how I’d been conceived and born inside the eight weeks her brother was in the country.”

Matt knew enough about Athena’s children to understand how eight weeks could be possible, but he could picture her aunt going over the dates, trying to fit nine months between her brother’s arrival in the country and a baby being delivered to her doorstep. The poor woman would have spent years holding a calendar up against a miracle and losing.

He could picture her counting backwards to her brother’s visit and coming up short every time. Some stranger of an aunt holding a calendar up against a miracle and losing.

"I've beenin the hunt for over half a century, i joined when I was six havign run away from home, I ended up meeetign up with the Hutners and Lady artemis, who took me in, as I didn't know where else to go," Mogan told him.

That made her one of the more modern Hunters, then, though Matt wasn’t sure whether that made any of this easier to understand.

“What do you think of all this?” he asked, taking care with the words that followed. “Artemis making you adults, saying you have to fall in love with the first man you see, and then it turns out to be me.”

Even saying it aloud sounded ridiculous, but nobody at breakfast had treated it that way. Dozens of immortal women had woken up as adults instead of girls, and then after their goddess made a declaration wanting him and were now calling him their husband, while he was still trying to understand what he’d done. Matt kept that part to himself, since his own words had come first, spoken without any idea that reality might oblige, and the resemblance between what he’d said and what had happened was too close for comfort. Until he knew how much those words had caused, he had to be careful about what else he let out of his mouth.

Morgan went quiet, and for a second Matt thought he'd overstepped. Then she leaned in and kissed him.

It wasn't like Phoebe's, all grip and grind, or Zoë's, curious and shaking. Morgan kissed him like she'd already decided, one hand coming up to his jaw to hold him there, unhurried, and she took her time about it until he'd stopped thinking about anything else. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were bright and steady on his.

"There's a lot I could say to that," she murmured, still close enough that he felt it. "About the goddess, and the timing, and all of it. But I'll say it with three."

She kissed him again, brief, a full stop.

"I love you."

Then she settled back against the trunk as if she'd said nothing out of the ordinary, watching him with that slow smile, and while he was still working out how to answer, her hand found his thigh, slid inward, and closed over him through the cloth, unhurried, like she'd been planning it the whole time.

"Time I tasted the thing that's been denied," she said.

She didn't wait for an answer, moving her hand from his thigh to his belt and having it open before he'd finished processing the sentence. When she tugged at his trousers, he lifted his hips to help. The air hit him and left him feeling stupidly exposed, though Morgan looked her fill without any pretense of politeness.

"Been a while for you too, I take it," she said, and he didn't bother denying it.

Standing, she unbuttoned her shorts and stepped out of them while Matt forgot how to do anything but watch. Her thighs were long and strong, and above them she was all lean muscle and soft skin, the scrap of fabric she still wore hiding nothing.

She came back down over him, one knee on either side of his hips, and settled just above him without quite touching. Hovering there, watching his face, she rolled her hips down just enough for the tip of him to catch at her entrance, slick and warm, and stopped, drawing a sound from him that wasn't a word.

"Easy," she murmured, smiling, and did it again, dragging herself along the head of him and back, so that he could feel how tight she was, how she opened the smallest fraction each time she pressed down and closed again when she lifted.

"You're teasing," he managed.

"I'm deciding," she said, and then she did, lowering herself slowly until the head of him pushed into her. Matt felt her stretch around him, hot and close, and heard her breath catch. She sank an inch and stopped to adjust, then took another, until she'd swallowed all of him and sat flush against his hips, trembling.

"Gods," she said, and the word came out thin.

Matt couldn't answer, because she was everywhere around him, gripping and warm, and every smallest shift sent a fresh wave through him, until he understood why men wrote poetry and started wars.

Then she began to move, slowly at first, rising until he almost slipped free and sinking back until she sat flush against him again. She did it over and over with a patience that left Matt gripping the blanket on either side of his hips, and every time she came down, something bright pulled low through his middle and drove the air out of him.

Inexperienced as she was, nothing in the way she moved gave it away. Perhaps the decades of watching had taught her the shape of it, or her goddess had quietly gifted her the instinct, because she found a rhythm as though she had done this a hundred times, while Matt, who had done it never, had nothing to fall back on.

He gave up trying to match her and let her set the pace, which she did without hurry, testing what made him tense and what made him groan and returning to each one. When she found an angle that pleased her, her breath caught and she chased it, and her rhythm turned hungrier until the world narrowed to the place where they joined.

The end built long before Matt understood it, a tightening low in his gut that grew with every downward press, until he managed her name as a warning.

"Morgan."

"I know," she said, breathless, and rode him harder.

She was close too, and he could tell by the way her rhythm broke and her thighs tightened around him, by the way she chased something she had clearly never caught before. When she caught it, she bent over him and pressed her mouth to his, muffling a sound against his lips, while she clenched around him and shuddered through it.

Swallowing the last of her cry, Matt broke under her, spilling into her as she held him there, and neither of them moved.

She stayed where she was, mouth close to his, breathing hard, and Matt lay still until the clarity caught up with him. It arrived with the thought he had been outrunning.

If his words had done this, if telling the Hunters they were his had somehow rewritten a goddess, then another careless sentence might change things again. Marrying an entire camp by accident had seemed impossible too, until this morning.

Morgan lifted her head, flushed and pleased. “Do you think we pleased my lady? Will she be delighted with this?”

“Yes,” he answered after swallowing, afraid of what a longer answer might do.