Wolf Meets Nightshade

Chapter 12

Percy, being blinded by all of the light and tired from his fight with the goddess, didn't have time to doge so when Apollo shot two of his arrows at his shoulders he got pinned to a tree, howling from all of the pain that was coursing through his body. He tried pulling the arrows, but they were stuck firmly inside the tree and with so little energy he couldn't pull hard enough.

Artemis saw that Apollo was going for the killing blow, so she threw one of her hunting knives, that appeared out of thin, and went straight towards Apollo's bow which thankfully knocked the arrow off its course and stuck it's self next to Percy's head. She hurriedly got up to check up on him and found him unresponsive but wasn't dead, just unconscious. With the help of her godly strength, she pulled out the arrows from Percy's shoulders and told two of her hunters to carry him back to the infirmary tent.

As Percy was being taken care of, Artemis turned facing Apollo and honestly he was frightened with the glare that she was sending his way. "Apollo, why did you do that?" she asked in a too calm voice that scared him enough to back up a few steps back. "W-well the b-boy hurt you so I d-decided to step in and h-help you?" he managed to stammer out and it came out as a question rather than the statement Apollo wanted to say.

"Did I look in any need of help?" she asked, again in that calm, frightening voice. Apollo gulped and thought back. When he came down, she looked happily laughing while shaking the boy's hand and she didn't seem that hurt, as if she had ambrosia since she looked pretty tired. Apollo sighed and shook his head, staring at the ground in shame that he had probably killed the only male that she tolerated since she was laughing with and not at him and he shook her hand without dying so he must have earned her and her hunters respect, since none of them attacked him when he touched their mistress, even if it was just her hand.

When Artemis had gotten her answer she spun around and headed in the infirmary to check up on Percy. When she went inside, she saw all of her hunters gathered around Percy, who was lying shirtless on the bed. Some had tears in their eyes though refusing to make them drop while the newest were full out crying. She was confused since the last time she'd seen them like this was when she showed the torture that Percy had to endure in his childhood.

Pushing herself to the front to figure out what her hunters were looking at that made them act like this. Artemis, as soon as she saw Percy's body, too had to fight her tears to fall for this man in front of her. His body was littered with scars and burns that look like that they hadn't fully healed; some patches of skin was even missing, and it didn't look as if they would heal anytime soon. The worst of them was the two words carved into his skin, going up of his left arm, stopping at his shoulder. It read 'My Puppet'. The hunters and their patron understood this, he was a torture tool for Lycaon, his gunny pig for testing new weapons and poison and would do anything that he would ask them to do, or else a whole day of torture.

They knew this information because when they hunted Lycaon he left behind a trail of bodies all of them marked the same way and one was still breathing so they extracted most from the information from him and over the years they got the full meaning of those two words.

Apollo was deciding if he goes to apologize to his twin sister and the boy or not. The sentimental part of him won so he went in the infirmary tent to find a sight so shocking he nearly passed out. The hunters and Artemis, the biggest man haters in the whole universe, were crying over the boy he had just shot, which he immediately felt guilty about. He was about to go and apologize to his sister very carefully, seeing the state she was in, but promptly stopped at the sight of the scared teenager in front of him.

His doctor side took over and started healing the teen as best as he could which was a lot considering he was the god of healing. The burn marks had disappeared thanks to his healing and the teen's enhanced healing, only leaving a small scar in their place. When knew that that was all he could do, he bandaged the teenager up and went next to his sister, who glared at his as he wrapped his hands around her but did nothing to push them away. Instead, she cried in his shoulder while Apollo was saying comforting words to Artemis and just loud enough for the hunters to hear.

Five minutes later they heard a groan escape Percy's lip, followed by shuffling on the infirmary bed that he was in. Percy stood up in a sitting position "Well that hurt." he said, chuckling before looking around the infirmary to find all the hunters and the two gods staring at him. "What?" he asked before he felt a body crash into his.