It was almost the twenty-first century at the time. Amazons had all but disappeared from history, most people thinking us nothing more than legend, made up. Wasn’t it time for us to give up the old ways we still clung to? To blend with humans rather than live on the outskirts, stealing and cheating while telling ourselves it was okay because we were superior-descended from gods?

I’d told everyone my plan, knowing it would be rough at first, but trusting that the women around me would understand, that those I’d grown up with, especially, would support me. I’d been wrong.

And then the unthinkable had happened. An otherwise problem-free pregnancy had ended-but my child didn’t survive. I didn’t even get to hold him. His body was carted off while I was still passed out, buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the northern Illinois woods.

Amazons were strong. They didn’t die in childbirth, and neither did their children.

Try as they might, no one could convince me my child had been the first. I even knew who had been responsible, but no one wanted to listen. The loss of a son? Not worth stirring up trouble in the tribe-if my accusations were true, the Amazon in question had just done what she thought was right. And as current high priestess of the safe camp, she’d had that right.

I had taken my daughter and left.

Bubbe and Mother had followed. They had never asked forgiveness for not standing by my side, but they had left the tribe, and that was huge. For Harmony’s sake, I’d found it within myself to forgive them, but not the rest. Nothing in the world could make me forgive them-just like nothing in the world could make me encourage Harmony to become one of them.

Lost in unpleasant thoughts of the past, I walked over to spot Mother as she slid under a barbell loaded with weights.

She pushed the heavy load up and held it for a count of ten before lowering it again to her chest. She completed eight more reps before continuing.

“You need to let it go.”

“What happened? Where are they?” I couldn’t help but ask, my anger melting into something close to melancholy. I’d wanted to keep my child so badly; how had Bubbe turned her back on not one son, but three?

My mother jumped up, took two more ten-pound weights from the nearby rack, and slid one on each end of the bar. “I don’t know. It was long before me. She gave them away. You know that.”

Something flickered in Mother’s eyes, making me wonder if there was more she didn’t want to tell me-didn’t want to risk opening my only partially closed wounds even further. Or maybe she actually experienced regret for not knowing her brothers.

I picked up the towel Mother had dropped and ran the rough material through my hands.

“You think they’re still alive?” I asked, my gaze drifting to the corner of the room. Somehow I couldn’t bear to look at Mother when she answered.

“Who?” Mother had slid back under the bar.

I let my gaze flit back. She knew what I was talking about-it was just her way of telling me she’d had enough. Well, I hadn’t.

“Your brothers,” I replied.

Hands tight around the bar, she stared up at me. “Half brothers.”

I made a whatever motion with my hand. To ensure secrecy and survival, Amazons didn’t go for long-term relationships. Most likely all of Bubbe’s children were from different fathers.

Mother huffed out an impatient breath. “Alive? I doubt it. Men can’t be Amazons. They would have had mortal life spans.”

I hadn’t thought of that. It made it all sadder somehow. “How about their kids?” I asked.

“More like great-great-grandkids, if anything. Too many greats to matter.” She started to lift the bar but stopped, letting it settle back onto the stand. “You’re forgetting the point. Bubbe never went along with tradition for tradition’s sake and she never sanctioned harming a living creature without cause. You need to trust her-trust us. Trust that being an Amazon is a good thing-something you should share with Harmony.”

Like that was ever going to happen, especially now, when my suspicions were growing that the person who had deposited the dead teens on my doorstep was an Amazon sending me some ugly message. Disgusted with the whole topic, I dropped the towel onto her bare midriff and turned to leave.

“Melanippe,” she called after me. I was tempted to keep walking, but catching a glimpse of her expression, I waited. The flicker I’d noticed earlier was back in her eyes. “The people you can count on most are those like you-start trusting them.”

Then she plopped back down on her back, gritted her teeth, and bench-pressed more weight than a pair of NFL linebackers hyped up on two thousand dollars’ worth of illegal steroids could.

I shook my head. People like me? If they were out there, they weren’t Amazons. That I knew for sure.

Swallowing the dry lump in my throat, I left.

I took the front steps, the ones that led to the main entrance of the school and a small landing, then continued on to the first floor and my shop. Mandy had left the doors open, and a crisp fall breeze tossed a few early leaves onto the parquet.

My chat with Mother had left me disturbed, again. It added to the angst I’d been barely keeping reined in since discovering the first dead teen and being forced to get back in touch with my Amazon skills.

I had spent the last ten years trying not to think about the whole Amazon thing. And although living with Mother and Bubbe had made that difficult, if I tried really hard, I could go weeks, months, without dwelling on what the Amazons took from me-how my life would be different if I had been born something other than an Amazon.

Thinking about Bubbe’s sons out there, somewhere-or at least their descendents-brought it all screaming back at me. What an insane tradition. Cutting off half the population, your own sons, brothers, and fathers, because they were male. Not that humans hadn’t done it too, didn’t still do it some places. The irony being they tended to dispose of their females, leave them out in the cold or drop them down a well. However, human wrongdoings didn’t lessen those of the Amazons.

And…I paused on the landing and placed a shaking hand against the wall…I wasn’t guilt-free. The realization rocked me to my core. I couldn’t do something as simple as hire a man to work for me.

How could I expect to get past what had happened to me and to raise Harmony as a modern, accepting human when I refused to even consider a highly qualified male as a tattoo artist? I was a total hypocrite.

The realization lowered my already dipping self-image to something barely above complete waste of water and carbon.

I leaned my forehead against the cool plaster and closed my eyes. I’d spent the last ten years feeling all high and mighty, superior for lowering myself to mingle with humans, but when you boiled it down, I was as biased as any Amazon.

The only thing I had done differently since my son had died was hide-from other Amazons, our past, and the truth of who I was.

I lifted my forehead and stared out into the front yard at the crumbling base of the old flagpole and the sign propped against it stating our hours.

I might not be able to undo thousands of years of wrongs. I might not even be able to lead the dead teens’ souls to their loved ones, at least right now, but I could change a few hard-held prejudices. I thumped my fist against my chest.

I turned and ran up the steps to my office and my phone.

My unpleasant self-realization and my decision to break the chain of old prejudices made me feel better for the rest of my workday. But as I puttered around, getting ready for bed, the glow wore off and the faces of the two dead teens floated back to the forefront of my brain. I brushed my teeth seeing their images instead of my own in the bathroom mirror. After forcing myself to return to my room and bed, I managed to get to sleep, but awakened less than an hour later, still thinking of them. I waited another hour to do something about it.