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In the world that came to be known as Hellas, it wasn't always so quiet on the peaks of Olympus. Long ago, when the gods still walked the earth and didn't sit on cloud thrones, the world didn't belong to them. It belonged to the Beast.
Werewolves—Theriomorphs, as the first humans called them—were older than the Titans and the Olympians. They were the earth itself, its primordial power, clothed in hide. Their nature was dual: within each beat two hearts—a human heart, endowed with reason, will, and the ability to create, and a bestial heart, connected to ancient instincts, the cycle of nature, and pure, uncontrollable power.
For centuries, they lived by the Law of the Pack.
Pure-blooded clans, such as Poseidon's Water Wolves or Hera's Moon Peacocks, maintained balance. They were not the pets of the gods, as poets would later lie. They were allies. The gods, young and ambitious, sought their favor. Poseidon's wolves helped control storms when Kronos still ruled the sky. Hera's peacocks, with their tails studded with "eyes," could see the boundary between worlds and calm even madness.
People revered them. People built altars to them next to those of the gods. The werewolves didn't demand sacrifices; they demanded only one thing—freedom.
But the world was sick. And the illness that came had no name.
Some said it was the curse of the dying Titans. Others said it was the price the werewolves paid for becoming too close to humans, diluting the purity of their blood. But the truth was terrible: the Beast within began to devour Man. The mind mutated, turning into an endless hunger. The packs, renowned for their discipline for centuries, tore themselves apart.
And then the gods, seeing this as a threat to their dominion, gathered a council.
——————
Poseidon, leader of the Water Wolves, stood on a cliff, overlooking the bay his pack had guarded for a thousand years. His fur was the color of deep water, his eyes like a stormy sky. His she-wolf sat next to him, her shoulder pressed against his—quiet, wise, carrying their first pup in her womb.
"The gods are coming," she said, sniffing the wind.
"I heard," Poseidon's voice, low and growling, was calm. "Hera warned us. They say we're sick."
"We're not sick," the she-wolf nuzzled his neck. "We're just scared. But they don't know the difference."
Poseidon knew that Hera, leader of the Peacock flock, was trying to reason. Her husband, a handsome and proud peacock with emerald plumage, went to the gods as a messenger. He believed he could convince Zeus that the disease struck only apostates, only those who lived close to humans.
But a wolf can smell a lie a mile away.
The gods arrived at sunset. They didn't come to heal. They came to burn.
Zeus, not yet the supreme god, but already the most powerful of the kings, brought down lightning bolts from the heavens, turning sand into glass. Athena, whose spear never missed, led a phalanx of heroes enchanted to slay the beast.
Poseidon's pack did not rage. They met death in human form, trying to protect their cubs, and then in wolf form, trying to break through the encirclement.
Poseidon fought. He tore at heroes, dodged lightning bolts, but when he reached his lair, he saw her.
His she-wolf lay on her side. Athena's golden spear had pierced her heart, pinning her to the stone. Her wide eyes were frozen in incomprehension.
She wasn't sick. She was pregnant. She was dying not from illness, but from human cruelty, clothed in divine metal.
And the world ceased to exist for Poseidon.
The beast within, the very one the gods feared, awoke.
Water gushed from the sky. The earth trembled. Poseidon, the leader, had become something more than a werewolf—a natural disaster. He began to rage as no one infected with the disease had ever raged. He devoured heroes, he lashed out at the gods, and even Zeus's thunderbolts couldn't stop him—they only fueled his rage.
——————
Hera watched this from the top of the hill.
Beside her lay her husband. A beautiful peacock, proud and noble. His tail, studded with a hundred eyes, was spread across the grass, but those eyes were glass. Zeus's thunderbolt, intended for Poseidon, struck him as he tried to stop the battle with a word. He burned alive, defending the idea that werewolves and gods can live together.
Hera didn't cry. Peacocks don't cry, they spread their tails.
She looked at Poseidon. At her brother. At the last person she couldn't afford to lose. If she lost him, the werewolf race would cease to exist. Only legends of rabid dogs purged by the gods would remain.
She stepped into the eye of the storm.
"Poseidon!" Her cry wasn't a human voice, it was the call of a leader, the one impossible to ignore.
She felt her flesh begin to change. Her human features faded, giving way to a graceful yet deadly bird. A gigantic tail unfurled over the battlefield. It glowed blue, green, gold. Each "eye" on its feathers lit up with an inner light.
Pollen fell from her feathers—fine, golden, smelling of rain and silence. This was the ancient magic of her kind. Not the magic of domination. The magic of peace.
The pollen settled on the enraged water, on the hot earth, on Poseidon's fur. The wolf, whose mouth was bloody, whose eyes burned with hellish fire
He froze. He bared his teeth at her. The pollen penetrated his lungs, his blood, the very center of the madness he'd let in.
"I know," Hera whispered, standing in her peacock form, enormous, beautiful, and infinitely alone. "I know. I watched him die. But I won't let them take you too."
Poseidon stepped forward. His face twisted. The human and the beast warred within him.
"You..." His voice was hoarse, full of tears and anger. "Are you taking my vengeance?"
"I give you life," Hera replied. "Because if we both die, the truth dies with us. They will call us rabid beasts. And our love, our flocks, our..." Her voice wavered, "our husbands and wives... they will become mere 'collateral damage.'" Do you want Manfo to go down in history as a rabid bitch who had to be shot?
The pollen had done its job. The rage receded, leaving in its place a hatred as cold as the depths of the ocean. Poseidon, breathing heavily, shifted back into human form. He knelt in the ashes of his home, clutching his head.
Zeus, having sunk to the ground, looked at them. Athena was wiping her spear.
"Hera," Zeus's voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "He was raging. You saw that. We were right about the illness."
Hera, slowly regaining her human form, looked up at him. Her golden eyes, with vertical pupils, had not yet fully returned to their human form.
"You killed my husband, Zeus."
Zeus shrugged, surveying the scorched valley.
"An accident." He threw himself into the lightning. But I see that you are... strong. And you know how to pacify. The world needs people like you. People like him—a nod to Poseidon—if he can control himself.
It was an offer. Not a plea for forgiveness, not an admission of guilt. It was an assignment.
The gods exterminated the werewolf race, but they decided to integrate the two survivors—the strongest, the most important—into the system. To make them part of the system. So that no one would ask questions. So that history would be rewritten.
——————
Centuries passed.
On Olympus, they don't speak of werewolves. It's a forbidden subject, a taboo sealed by an oath on the waters of the Styx. In the official version, the "Theriomorphs" were wild beasts who attacked the gods and were exterminated during the great war for order.
Hera, the goddess of marriage, who became Zeus's sister, wears a diadem with peacock feathers. It is said to be her sacred bird. No one knows that every night, when Zeus departs for another mortal, Hera spreads her tail before the silver mirror in her chambers and gazes with hundreds of eyes at her reflection, trying not to forget her husband's face.
Her pollen is now simply part of the myth of her beauty. No one realizes that it is with this pollen that she lulls every night the part of herself that longs to rip out the throats of everyone sitting at the banquet table.
Poseidon, god of the seas, rarely appears on Olympus. He prefers the depths. There, in the darkest depths, where even the rays of Helios cannot reach, he built an underwater palace. And in this palace, made of coral and pearls, stands a statue of a she-wolf with a golden spear in her chest.
Every year, on the night of the death of his pack, Poseidon retreats into the depths and howls. He howls so loudly that storms rise on the surface, smashing ships to pieces. The gods consider this the lord of the seas' bad temper. Humans make sacrifices to appease him.
No one knows that he doesn't howl out of anger. He howls so that the pack the gods slew will hear him from Elysium and know that his heart is still wolfish.
——————
Their bond is a secret, guarded more fiercely than any marriage vow.
Once a century, when an hour arrives on earth that belongs neither to gods nor to men (the hour when the stars align as they did on the day of their death), Hera descends from Olympus, and Poseidon emerges from the sea.
They meet in the ruins of what was once their homeland. Now there's a city there, noisy, crowded, remembering nothing of blood.
They don't speak of revenge. They speak of those they loved.
"My husband was a fool," Hera sometimes says, looking at the stars. "He believed words could stop war."
"Mantho believed in me," Poseidon replies. "I failed her."
"You're alive."
"It's your fault."
They sit side by side. A peacock-werewolf and a wolf-werewolf. The last of the survivors.
Hera extends her hand, and golden pollen flares on her palm.
"If one day," she says quietly, "I notice you losing yourself again... I'll do it again."
Poseidon looks at the pollen that once saved his life, giving him the eternal pain of loss in return.
"It won't have to," he growls. "I keep my rage in check. For her. For them."
He nods toward the city where people live, unaware that the world they inhabit is built on the bones of an ancient race, and two of Olympus' most powerful gods wear masks every day, hiding their claws beneath robes and their melancholy beneath crowns.
And while the gods celebrate, while Zeus hurls lightning bolts, and Athena dictates laws, the two survivors remain silent. But in the depths of the ocean, the wolf bares its teeth, and in the peacock's eyes on the tail of the goddess of marriage, there are always, always those who look upon Olympus with a hatred that no pollen can soothe.
Olympus was bathed in a golden light. Ambrosia flowed like a river, the muses delighted the gods, and the banquet hall shook with laughter and the ringing clatter of goblets on the polished marble tables.
Zeus was in high spirits.
He sat at the head of the table, a wreath of vine leaves on his head, his fingers clutching the cup Hermes was filling for the seventh or eighth time. His thunderous voice echoed throughout the hall, drowning out even the music.
"...And then this mortal, this shepherd, says to me: 'Thunderer, but I never asked you for immortality!'" Zeus burst out laughing, slapping his palm on the table. "And I say to him: 'You didn't ask, but I gave it! Enjoy!'"
The gods laughed. Some sincerely, some out of politeness, some averting their eyes.
Hera sat to his right. A calm, even smile was frozen on her lips—the one she had honed over centuries. Peacock feathers were woven into her hair, and no one noticed that the eyes in those feathers weren't just decoration—they were staring.
Zeus turned to her, drunk and smug, his whole demeanor declaring who was king.
"Why are you silent, my dearest wife?" His voice dripped with feigned tenderness. "Do my jokes not amuse the one who shares my throne?"
Hera slowly turned her head. Her smile didn't waver.
"I'm listening, husband."
"Are you listening?" Zeus leaned closer, his breath reeking of nectar. "Perhaps you're thinking of tormenting the next mortal I show favor to?"
The hall fell silent.
This was no longer a joke. It was a challenge. Zeus, blinded by wine and power, was crossing a line beyond which even the goddess of marriage, whose patience was legendary, might stop smiling.
Hera continued to smile. Her voice remained even.
"I honor our vows, Zeus. As always."
"Vows?" Zeus leaned back in his throne, his eyes flashing with dangerous amusement. "You speak to me of vows, Hera? One whose own family was..." he paused dramatically, "pure-blooded?"
Athena froze, the goblet at her lips. Apollo broke the string. Demeter dropped the pomegranate.
"I have heard," Zeus continued, lowering his voice to an ominous whisper that nevertheless carried throughout the hall, "that peacocks are faithful unto death." Such... loyal little birds. Until they get roasted by lightning, of course.
The hall grew so quiet you could hear the torches crackling.
Hera stopped smiling.
She slowly placed the goblet on the table. Her fingers clutching it were white, but when they released the gold, deep dents remained in the metal.
She turned to Zeus. Her whole body. Slowly. The way predators do when they stop playing at being domesticated.
Her eyes were empty.
Not angry. Not furious. Not full of pain. Empty. Such emptiness only comes from the eyes of someone who has made their decision. Someone who has already made their choice and is now simply giving their opponent one last chance to reconsider.
"One more word," Hera's voice didn't rise. It became quieter. So quiet that the gods involuntarily leaned forward, catching every movement of her lips. "And I swear by the Styx, I'll make you regret everything you've done."
Zeus, still drunk, grinned, opening his mouth to reply.
"You're not my husband," Hera's words struck like whips, each one precise, deadly, inexorable. "My husband never cheated on me. My husband was more handsome than you. My husband..." her voice wavered for the first time, and in that tremor was all the pain of centuries, "died from your lightning bolt."
The gods froze.
No one breathed.
"And my husband," Hera finished, looking Zeus straight in the eyes with a depth he, the drunken king of the gods, could only dream of, "was many times better than you."
No sound was heard in the hall. Even the torches seemed to have fallen silent. Apollo froze, his fingers on the strings, afraid to move. Ares, who usually greeted any confrontation with delight, now sat as pale as a sheet.
Hera stood.
And with her, something else stood.
No one saw the moment of transition. One moment she was a woman in a golden peplos, with a perfect hairstyle and a cold face. The next, her pupils stretched into vertical lines. But that wasn't what was scary.
Behind her, blooming like a flower of death, a tail unfurled.
It was enormous. It eclipsed the torchlight. Hundreds of eyes—gold, blue, emerald—looked at the gods. But not at all. All those eyes, every feather, every pattern, were directed at only one being in this hall.
To Zeus.
And those eyes didn't ask. Didn't plead. Didn't reproach. They promised.
At that moment, a wave swept through the hall. The flowers—those that adorned the tables, those woven into garlands on the columns, those growing in the garden, whose arches were visible through the open doors—all withered in a single breath. Petals fell to gray ash. Roses turned black. Laurels curled. Even the immortal plants of Olympus, nourished by ichor and light, could not withstand the presence of the true wrath that now emanated from the goddess of marriage.
"And one more word," Hera's voice sounded different now. It held more than just a threat. It held an archaic quality, the same ancient quality that predated the gods. The voice of a leader whose pack is dead, but whose will lives. "And I will no longer restrain my brother's beast."
A stifled sigh rolled through the hall.
Olympus was bathed in a golden light. Ambrosia flowed like a river, the muses delighted the gods, and the banquet hall shook with laughter and the ringing clatter of goblets on the polished marble tables.
Zeus was in high spirits.
He sat at the head of the table, a wreath of vine leaves on his head, his fingers clutching the cup Hermes was filling for the seventh or eighth time. His thunderous voice echoed throughout the hall, drowning out even the music.
"...And then this mortal, this shepherd, says to me: 'Thunderer, but I never asked you for immortality!'" Zeus burst out laughing, slapping his palm on the table. "And I say to him: 'You didn't ask, but I gave it! Enjoy!'"
The gods laughed. Some sincerely, some out of politeness, some averting their eyes.
Hera sat to his right. A calm, even smile was frozen on her lips—the one she had honed over centuries. Peacock feathers were woven into her hair, and no one noticed that the eyes in those feathers weren't just decoration—they were staring.
Zeus turned to her, drunk and smug, his whole demeanor declaring who was king.
"Why are you silent, my dearest wife?" His voice dripped with feigned tenderness. "Do my jokes not amuse the one who shares my throne?"
Hera slowly turned her head. Her smile didn't waver.
"I'm listening, husband."
"Are you listening?" Zeus leaned closer, his breath reeking of nectar. "Perhaps you're thinking of tormenting the next mortal I show favor to?"
The hall fell silent.
This was no longer a joke. It was a challenge. Zeus, blinded by wine and power, was crossing a line beyond which even the goddess of marriage, whose patience was legendary, might stop smiling.
Hera continued to smile. Her voice remained even.
"I honor our vows, Zeus. As always."
"Vows?" Zeus leaned back in his throne, his eyes flashing with dangerous amusement. "You speak to me of vows, Hera? One whose own family was..." he paused dramatically, "pure-blooded?"
Athena froze, the goblet at her lips. Apollo broke the string. Demeter dropped the pomegranate.
"I have heard," Zeus continued, lowering his voice to an ominous whisper that nevertheless carried throughout the hall, "that peacocks are faithful unto death." Such... loyal little birds. Until they get roasted by lightning, of course.
The hall grew so quiet you could hear the torches crackling.
Hera stopped smiling.
She slowly placed the goblet on the table. Her fingers clutching it were white, but when they released the gold, deep dents remained in the metal.
She turned to Zeus. Her whole body. Slowly. The way predators do when they stop playing at being domesticated.
Her eyes were empty.
Not angry. Not furious. Not full of pain. Empty. Such emptiness only comes from the eyes of someone who has made their decision. Someone who has already made their choice and is now simply giving their opponent one last chance to reconsider.
"One more word," Hera's voice didn't rise. It became quieter. So quiet that the gods involuntarily leaned forward, catching every movement of her lips. "And I swear by the Styx, I'll make you regret everything you've done."
Zeus, still drunk, grinned, opening his mouth to reply.
"You're not my husband," Hera's words struck like whips, each one precise, deadly, inexorable. "My husband never cheated on me. My husband was more handsome than you. My husband..." her voice wavered for the first time, and in that tremor was all the pain of centuries, "died from your lightning bolt."
The gods froze.
No one breathed.
"And my husband," Hera finished, looking Zeus straight in the eyes with a depth he, the drunken king of the gods, could only dream of, "was many times better than you."
No sound was heard in the hall. Even the torches seemed to have fallen silent. Apollo froze, his fingers on the strings, afraid to move. Ares, who usually greeted any confrontation with delight, now sat as pale as a sheet.
Hera stood.
And with her, something else stood.
No one saw the moment of transition. One moment she was a woman in a golden peplos, with a perfect hairstyle and a cold face. The next, her pupils stretched into vertical lines. But that wasn't what was scary.
Behind her, blooming like a flower of death, a tail unfurled.
It was enormous. It eclipsed the torchlight. Hundreds of eyes—gold, blue, emerald—looked at the gods. But not at all. All those eyes, every feather, every pattern, were directed at only one being in this hall.
To Zeus.
And those eyes didn't ask. Didn't plead. Didn't reproach. They promised.
At that moment, a wave swept through the hall. The flowers—those that adorned the tables, those woven into garlands on the columns, those growing in the garden, whose arches were visible through the open doors—all withered in a single breath. Petals fell to gray ash. Roses turned black. Laurels curled. Even the immortal plants of Olympus, nourished by ichor and light, could not withstand the presence of the true wrath that now emanated from the goddess of marriage.
"And one more word," Hera's voice sounded different now. It held more than just a threat. It held an archaic quality, the same ancient quality that predated the gods. The voice of a leader whose pack is dead, but whose will lives. "And I will no longer restrain my brother's beast."
A stifled sigh rolled through the hall.
Athena, the goddess of paradise, turned pale. She remembered. She remembered the day her spear pierced the she-wolf's body. She remembered what happened next. She remembered Poseidon in his fury. She remembered how the waters rose to the sky, how the earth opened up, how even her father, Zeus himself, could not approach the maddened wolf.
And she remembered what had stopped him then.
Pollen. Only Hera's pollen.
If Hera stops giving it...
"You..." Zeus's voice lost all its humor. He looked at the tail, at the hundreds of eyes watching him, and for the first time in centuries, something very much like fear stirred in his chest. "You wouldn't dare, Hera. An oath..."
"An oath?" Hera took a step forward. Her tail flicked, and pollen—golden, deadly, calming—began to fall from her feathers, coating the floor between them with a thin, glittering layer. The gods recoiled in horror from this gold, for they knew that if this pollen touched them, it would calm them forever. Make them submissive. Make them domestic. "Do you wish to speak of oaths, Zeus?"
She stepped closer to him. Zeus, the Thunderer, the King of the Gods, instinctively recoiled from his throne. His fingers tightened around the lightning bolt, but he did not hurl it. Because in the hundred eyes looking at him, he saw something that made him freeze.
Death. Not his—not physical. The death of everything he loved.
"One more word," Hera repeated, and now her voice was a whisper, but that whisper was heard even in the farthest corners of the hall. "And I, Zeus, will make it so that your children..." She turned her gaze to Athena, who flinched as if struck, "your beautiful mortal beauties... everything yours... I will take."
Zeus tried to rise, but his legs refused to obey him. Not because he was held back by force—because the gaze of the peacock's eyes pinned him to the throne.
"I will make entrails out of them," Hera continued, her voice not rising, remaining steady, like the blade of a sword, thrusting in slowly to inflict more pain. "I will make a stuffed animal out of your beloved Athena."
Athena jumped up, her spear flashing in her hand, but Hera didn't even glance at her. Her eyes, real, human, golden with a vertical pupil, looked only at Zeus.
"And you will watch," Hera breathed. "To watch them—one after another—beg you to save them... and you... you won't be able to do anything."
The pollen from her tail fell thicker and thicker. A golden mist filled the hall, and the gods retreated, retreated, because this mist was peace. The peace worse than death. The peace that tame a beast. The peace that reduces a god to nothing.
"After all, I swore an oath by the Styx," Hera's voice wavered for the last time, but not from weakness. From triumph. From that terrible, icy joy that comes when one can finally break the silence. "That I will not overthrow you. Not with the heart of a beast... but with a human heart."
She leaned close to his face. She smelled of withered flowers and an ancient, primordial longing.
"You will still rule as king. But not of the gods." Because..." she straightened, and her tail spread out behind her, blocking out all the light in the hall, leaving Zeus in the shadow of her peacock eyes, "there will be no one to rule."
Zeus looked at her. His hand still hadn't raised the lightning bolt.
"I will keep my oath," Hera finished. Her voice became quiet, almost gentle. "For you will rule. Over the void. Over loneliness. Over your own memory of what you lost. The throne. Will be. The king. Will be. But the gods... will not be."
She took a step back.
Turned.
And walked away.
Her tail, still loose, dragged along the marble floor, leaving a golden trail of pollen behind it. Each step echoed with silence. The gods parted before her like water before a ship, not daring to breathe, not daring to look into the eyes that stared from her feathers.
She walked through withered flowers, through the ashes of petals, through a silence that was louder than any storm.
And as she passed the columns, pollen from her tail rose into the air, swirled, settled on her shoulders, her hair, her face—she tried to calm herself. To calm what had awakened within her. To calm the beast that demanded blood, that demanded justice, that demanded Olympus burn to the ground.
She calmed herself.
As she calmed everyone.
As she had never been able to calm herself.
The doors of her chambers closed behind her with a dull, final sound.
No one spoke in the banquet hall.
Zeus sat on his throne, looking at the empty seat next to him where his wife had sat just a moment ago. His hands trembled. Not from fear, but from understanding.
He suddenly realized that in all this time, he had never seen the real her.
He had seen the goddess of marriage. He had seen a jealous wife. He had seen a queen. He had seen the one who tormented his mistresses and hated his children.
But he had never seen a leader.
And now, looking at the wilted flowers, the golden pollen on the floor, the empty throne beside him, he understood one simple, terrible thing:
She hadn't threatened.
She had warned.
Athena sank into her seat, her spear falling from her weakened fingers. Apollo dropped his lyre. Artemis looked at the withered flower.
She wore a wreath in her hair and couldn't understand why she couldn't bring herself to throw it away.
Ares, the god of war, the one who never knew fear, sat and looked at his hands. They trembled.
Because he knew Poseidon.
Because he remembered that day.
Because if Hera stopped restraining her brother's beast...
He looked at Zeus.
Zeus stared into the void.
And in that void, it seemed, a wolf was already beginning to howl.
---
In the depths of the ocean, in a palace of coral and darkness, Poseidon raised his head.
He felt it.
Not words. Not an oath. Not a threat.
He felt release.
The very thread Hera had held for centuries. It didn't break—it loosened. For one breath. For one heartbeat.
Poseidon smiled.
It wasn't the smile of a sea god who accepts gifts and calms storms.
It was the grin of a wolf who smells blood.
He rose from his throne of black coral, and the waters around him boiled.
"Sister," he whispered, looking up at the glow of Olympus, visible even through the water. "What have you done?"
But there was no reproach in his voice.
There was anticipation in his voice.