A.N.: I was voted off of JustALittleInfinity's writing contest on wattpad before the finale, so this is my proper ending to Kim Hellfire's story. Enjoy!

POV Kim

As I caress my seven-month pregnant belly, I gently stir a steaming pot of chicken soup. With a clean spoon, I taste the hot liquid. Needs more seasoning. I add tarragon, white pepper and some rosemary, stir one last time and turn the heat down.

"Okay, soup's ready. Do you want some, Marcus?" I ask over my shoulder. At the small, round, wooden kitchen table behind me sits a five-year-old boy with half-long brown hair. He looks up from his drawing of a Pegasus and gazes at me with piercing green eyes.

"No, thanks, Mommy," he shakes his head. "I'm not hungry yet."

"That's okay, honey. You go back to drawing your Pegasus then," I ruffle his flowing brown locks before he looks down and focuses on his coloring again. When he's this concentrated, he always reminds me of my husband. It's uncanny how much he looks like him. That's not surprising, though: all my children look like their father, even Cole…

Thinking of Cole brings back memories from half a lifetime ago, when I was young and a pacifist, but had to sacrifice everything I believed in to survive. Fifteen years ago, I was chosen for a quest with 23 other demigods to prove whether Camp Half-Blood, or Camp Jupiter was best, and in the end, I was the only one to make it to Jupiter's throne on Olympus.

However, it was a bittersweet victory: although my boyfriend, Adonis, died during the quest, he lived long enough to conceive a child with me. My first pregnancy enraged the gods because a Greco-Roman hybrid baby meant no one had won the quest, as the Oracle had clearly stated: All but one will perish.

Yet I kept a sword of Damocles dangling over the gods' heads. Right before the end, I had cast the spell of the elements to vanquish the wind demon Itzal, but out of revenge I also sent tidal waves to flood Camp Half-Blood, an earthquake to demolish Camp Jupiter, fire to scorch the Empire State Building and twisters to blast Olympus. If the gods wanted any of their offspring to survive the day, they had to listen to me. And they did.

My demand was simple: peace, peace between both camps to end the feud. The gods complied, but warned me that the camps themselves wouldn't accept this outcome. Still in control of the elements, I travelled back to Camp Half-Blood and forced a peace treaty out of Charissa and Toni.

How did I manage that, you ask? Well, I let a wave swallow the Hermes Cabin whole and threatened Charissa and Toni to repeat it for the following 24 hours. "That's plenty of cabins," I called to them while they were huddled on top of Half-Blood Hill with the other campers.

Charissa surrendered first, but Toni stared at me with a face as hard as concrete. If looks could kill… Before my threat, I had confessed my pregnancy to Camp Half-Blood too and Toni, secretly in love with me, couldn't accept that a guy who met me only two weeks earlier had wooed me so easily, whereas he didn't even have the guts to ask me out after our one-year friendship.

Luckily, a plea from Charissa made him agree to the peace anyway. Relieved, exhausted, and aching, I then collapsed into a puddle of my own blood since I was still bleeding from my back, arms, nose and ears. Once my sisters reversed the spell of the elements, the bleeding stopped as did the natural disasters attacking both camps and Olympus.

A sudden bang retreats me from my memories; it's our front door falling shut. I turn to the kitchen doorway to see two brown-haired girls rushing towards me.

"MOMMY!" they shriek excitedly. I hold on to the kitchen table for support as they cling to my legs and caress my daughters' hair while their big green eyes absorb my every move.

"I missed you, Mommy," my oldest daughter, Quinn, giggles. At age ten, Quinn – short for Tarquinnia – is a beautiful little lady with flowing brown hair that almost reaches past her shoulders.

"I missed you too, Mommy," my seven-year-old Lucy whispers. Her brown bangs touch the rim of her purple glasses.

"Me too," a man's warm voice chuckles. Leaning in the kitchen doorway, my husband of twelve years studies me top to toe with his piercing green eyes. He has crossed his muscular arms and a smirk plays on his handsome lips. As he steps forward to embrace me, our daughters release my legs.

My husband puts his large hands on my waist and pulls me into his hug. I run my right hand – a gorgeous sapphire wedding ring on its ring finger – through his short, dark brown hair before I reach up to kiss him. He then carefully cups my pregnant belly, squats and kisses it.

"How are my beautiful wife and my unborn son doing today?" he grins at me playfully.

"We're doing fine, thank you. Your beautiful wife is just a bit anxious about Cole…"

He sighs. "The boy's fifteen, babe. He's old, strong and smart enough to fetch for himself. No need for his mommy to worry. He does this every year, remember?"

"He's still my baby boy, Toni."

"What about my baby boys?" Antonius Katicus, my husband and former praetor, demands in a suddenly frosty voice.

POV Toni

I observe my wife's reaction and notice her stunning greyish green eyes go sad. No, not sad; she's disappointed. She's disappointed in me because I'll never forget that Cole is another man's son, even though I raised him as if he were my own and I love him to death.

She brushes my hands off her pregnant belly and sits down beside Marcus, our youngest, at the kitchen table. While our kids go about their business, Kim gives me the cold shoulder. I stand up, walk to the back of her chair, lean down and fold my arms across her chest.

"I'm sorry, babe," I whisper into her ear. "That was unfair."

"And uncalled for," she mutters. I feel her chest heave under my arms and I strangely get turned on. Seven months into her pregnancy, her breasts have doubled in size and I can't resist touching them when I'm around her. Maybe that's why we're expecting our fourth kid…

"I know, babe," I nuzzle my face into her gorgeous, long, brown hair, "It was the Mars part of me that said that."

She rubs my hands and sighs. "I know. You're an incredible husband and an even better father, even to Cole. Not all men would do that."

There was a time when I didn't either: right after Kim won the quest, raining fire and brimstone on both camps, and forced peace upon us. My broken heart and damaged pride blinded me from seeing the truth behind her motives. While she was recovering in the Hades Cabin of Camp Half-Blood under the watchful eyes of her three sisters, I went out of my way to avoid her influence.

That was easier said than done, though. All around me, both Greek and Roman campers were working together to rebuild Camp Half-Blood after Kim's massive flood. Even though the peace was established by force, it seemed to pay off, which only sent my anger into a downward spiral. After two days, however, I decided to confront my demons, or rather she-demon, and marched to the Hades Cabin.

I caught Kim and her sisters when they were about to leave for the ceremony of the shrouds, which commemorated the fallen demigods. Kim looked ravishing, which made it difficult for me to decide whether to scold or kiss her, and smiled in a friendly way, unaware of my smoldering anger.

I asked to speak to her in private and after her sisters left, I demanded to know why she slept with that Hephaestus boy. She immediately froze up and we got into a huge fight, but eventually she gave in and tore out the remainder of my heart from my chest.

"Because I couldn't refuse," she had croaked. "I loved him and I couldn't refuse him, not even if I had wanted too. We had just lost Ace, and Kyle had left to catch geese. Ace's loss had struck Adonis hard and he didn't want to be in the quest anymore. He didn't want to kill, fight or run anymore. He wanted to live, in every way imaginable.

So when he asked me, I couldn't refuse. I couldn't refuse his wish to live, to feel alive. To be honest, I think I wanted it too. To feel alive, that is. I just wanted to connect with someone and there he was, my Adonis. He didn't want to die a virgin and I couldn't refuse…I couldn't refuse, Toni. I couldn't."

Tears were streaming down her face, but her stunning greyish green eyes never broke contact with mine. Then she lifted the seam of her robes off the ground and brushed past me as if I were a whiff of air. I first spoke to her again nine months later.

I was helping a construction crew rebuild one of the temples on Temple Hill when Kim had one of her faithful lapdogs fetch me. Months earlier, Kim's earthquake had left Camp Jupiter and New Rome in ruins, so in an effort to avoid her, I offered to help with the restoration. Yet on that sunny afternoon, it was impossible to avoid Kim any longer: she was about to give birth to Adonis' son.

Reluctantly, I went to the infirmary, where I found Kim in a hospital bed sweating, groaning and in a great deal of pain. At the time, I actually had trouble not smirking at her inconvenience. Next to her, Kelly, her oldest sister, was holding her left hand while a midwife monitored her condition.

After Kim had breathed her way through an agonizing contraction, she smiled faintly and offered the seat by her right hand. She told me how happy she was I came and I replied with a nod. She babbled on about how she had missed me and that she felt relieved with her best friend back at her side, but I simply nodded.

As much as I wanted to leave, I felt scrutinized by Kim's henchmen of peace and decided not to be a dick. However, as her contractions followed closer together, Kim started to depend more and more on me. She squeezed my hand harder than Kelly's and talked only to me whenever the midwife or her sisters weren't checking up on her.

By the time she started pushing, I had unconsciously put my left arm around her shoulders and told her to squeeze my hand as hard as she could if she felt any pain. When she pushed and screamed as if she was being torn apart, which to be fair was sort of happening, I urged her to breathe and encouraged her by saying "You're doing great, Kim" or "Just a little more" or "You can do it. I believe in you".

Meanwhile, something incredible happened outside, because, all of a sudden, everything was cloaked in darkness. Astrid and Natalie, Kim's other sisters, ran inside and told us an eclipse was obscuring the sun. I took a minute to process that: I stared at the young woman giving birth beside me, swallowed, blinked a couple of times and peered outside to the moon shifting in front of the sun and blackening a bright day in spring.

In that moment, I realized that Adonis and Kim's son was special in more ways than just being a Greco-Roman hybrid. The gods had plans for this twice-blessed child, I was sure of it. When the powerful first cry of a newborn baby coincided with the exact second the eclipse ended, my realization was confirmed.

The midwife handed the young mother her wailing baby boy as Kim wept tears of joy and her sisters welcomed their nephew into the world. I gazed from the tiny, bloodied infant to his exhausted mother, who was crying happy tears, and I knew I would spend the rest of my life loving and protecting this family…my family.

POV Kim

On the docks of Camp Jupiter, I'm holding Toni's hand as we wait for the inevitable. We're standing next to a frigate from Camp Half-Blood while Quinn, Lucy and Marcus are cavorting about. The large wooden ship has unfurled its orange sails and seems ready to depart any moment now, but it won't until a certain passenger has boarded.

"Where is he? He didn't run away, did he?" I ask my husband nervously. "Or maybe he got injured during training?"

"Babe, calm down," Toni soothes me. "He was probably just held up somewhere. He'll be here soon. Besides, it's not like the ship's going anywhere without him."

"Yeah, of course. You're right," I sigh. Toni kisses me on my forehead, tells me to relax and gently squeezes my hand. I just can't help but imagine the worst case scenario when it comes to Cole, named after his deceased father's last name. Every year, Cole travels to Camp Half-Blood for five months to learn his Hephaestus heritage, and the seven other months of the year he stays with us in New Rome and trains at Camp Jupiter.

"Did I miss it?" I hear a familiar woman's voice call from behind us. Toni and I turn to face my older sister Kelly sprinting across the docks' creaking floorboards. When she reaches us, she leans against the hull of the frigate and pants.

"Well…did I?" she wheezes. Toni grins at me and I roll my eyes.

"No, he's not here yet. He's probably held up somewhere," I answer. Kelly stands up straight, eyes me and then puts both her hands on my pregnant belly.

"So, how's my little baby machine?" she coos as she rubs my baby bump.

"I'm fine. How are you?" I ask as Quinn, Lucy and Marcus charge my sister yelling "Aunt Kelly!" She squats and catches them in her arms.

"Heya kids," she chuckles before answering me, "I'm great! Kicking monster ass is a hoot."

"Language," I caution her. She rolls her eyes, releases my three children and rephrases:

"Magically battling fierce creatures has brought me great joy. Now happy?"

"Better," I nod. "Where are Astrid and Natalie?"

"Astrid has a Mean Girls convention and Natalie is preoccupied with keeping her many boyfriends from finding out she has an entire harem worth of lovers."

Before any of my kids get the chance to ask what a harem is, Toni notices Cole walking up the docks. I peer towards the coast and see my 15-year-old son approaching us beside Charissa. He's still wearing his purple SPQR shirt and is carrying an enormous black backpack. Though, in comparison to his own height, the backpack seems quite appropriate.

Cole is nearly 5ft. 11in. tall (so not yet as tall as Adonis, but definitely getting there) and muscular like an ox, and has a black crescent that encompasses an anvil tattooed on his right arm. Even though I forbade him to get a tattoo, he got one anyway in Camp Half-Blood last year, which just about gave me a heart attack. He also has lightly tanned skin, greyish green eyes and short brown hair.

Most importantly though, he is unbelievably, indisputably and irresistibly handsome. I can't deny that he is the most attractive man I've ever seen and I dare say that even Venus would blush like a young virgin on her wedding night if she saw him. However complex Cole's genetics may be, they at least amalgamated my own and Adonis' good looks into the perfect face.

"COLE!" my three other children holler when they attempt to tackle their older half-brother. He manages to keep his balance though and reaches Kelly, Toni, and I with his siblings dragging behind him. Charissa, who didn't leave his side, greets us first. She shakes Kelly's hand, kisses Toni on the cheek and hugs me firmly.

"Good seeing you again, Kim," she smiles before she looks down at my pregnant belly, "Wow, pregnant again? Sheesh Toni, you can at least give her some time to recover before you knock her up again."

Embarrassed, Toni blushes, but Charissa, Kelly, and I giggle. By the time I notice Cole again, he has put Marcus in his shoulders and is holding Quinn's and Lucy's hands. Toni lifts Marcus off of Cole's shoulders before Kelly says her goodbye and pinches her nephew's cheeks.

"Oh, I'm going to miss that pretty little face of yours," she coos twisting and pulling Cole's face every which way. He eyes me like a scared puppy.

"Mom, make her stop," he mumbles, but his aunt isn't done yet, because she presses his face hard against her bosom, practically suffocating him with her breasts, "Aunt Kelly, please, let go out me. I can't breathe."

Eventually, Kelly relinquishes him and gives him a final peck on the cheek, further embarrassing him. Then it's his siblings' turn: they hug him for almost a minute and whisper things in his ear that they obviously don't want me or Toni to hear. My husband is next to say goodbye:

"I'm going to make this short, kiddo. Listen to Charissa, follow the rules of Camp Half-Blood, try not to start too many fights, unless you know you can win them," a glare from me quickly nullifies that advice, "well, at least not outside of training. Don't get any new tattoos either, or piercings, you hear?"

Don't give him any ideas, honey. The gods only know which shenanigans he plans to surprise me with when he returns. However, the following advice Toni gives him completely knocks my socks off.

"Lastly, try not to drive too many Greek girls crazy, hé hotshot!" he ruffles Cole's short hair innocently, but the grin the two men exchange is far from innocent. Why is my husband cautioning my son about girls? He's only fifteen. They don't like girls yet at that age, right?

Don't be an idiot, Kim, I reprimand myself. Of course, they do. Remember how you were at fifteen: swooning over every boy that smiled at you? But that grin! Does my husband know stuff about my son I don't? I should have seen this! When exactly did my baby become a womanizer?

I was so occupied with my motherly panic attack that I completely forgot that Toni had left Cole and I alone to say goodbye. I blink and see the young man for whom I went through so much trouble to protect. His mesmerizing greyish green eyes that he inherited from me seem so peaceful now. They should stay that way. I would never forgive myself if I let his gentle nature be crushed by violence in the same way I sacrificed my pacifism.

"You know I love you, don't you?" I start weakly.

"Of course I do, Mom. I love you too," he smiles innocently. My maternal heart breaks and tears start to form in my eyes. I pull him closer to me and hug him. The fact that he's significantly taller and broader than me makes for an incredibly awkward moment on Cole's part.

"It's such a shame you'll miss the birth of the baby," I sniff when I let go of him.

"Mom, I've witnessed your pregnancies three times before. I think I know the drill by now," he scoffs. I hug him one last time before leaving him in Charissa's care. They board the frigate, which sets off for open sea as my family and I wave goodbye.

Fifteen years ago, I thought my love for Adonis was the real deal, but later on I realized it was just puppy-love when I found a more lasting and profounder love with Toni, my husband and best friend. However, the love a mother feels for her children runs even deeper than that of boyfriend and girlfriend, or husband and wife. So, although my love for Adonis was merely a whim, my love for Cole, our son, will always burn within me until the day I die because that's what mothers do.