by Emilia Rose
Marcel hit the brakes, and the car screeched against the pavement. Everyone in the forest looked over at it, except me. I hopped right off of the ground, dusted myself off like it was nobody’s business, and stormed to Ares, who still had that sinister look in his eyes.
“Put him down!” I shouted, my whole body trembling in both rage and heartache.
If Jeremy were alive … Jeremy wasn’t alive, so I had to keep Elijah safe or at least look out for him.
Elijah was more than just an alpha. He led a pack with intelligence instead of violence, had the best doctors and smartest wolves in the entire world, and had found love with my brother. They’d spent hours together every single night, and he was the first person I had seen Jeremy truly happy with. He was family even if Mom didn’t approve of him.
Ares’s large hands were around Elijah’s neck, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until Elijah’s cheeks turned purple. Elijah—already broken in three places and bruised all over the left side of his face—lay helplessly in his arms. I needed to protect him. Not only because he had made Jeremy happy, not only because he’d saved me, but also because it was the right thing to do.
I dug my claws into Ares’s forearms and pulled with all of my might. “Let go of him now, Ares!” I screamed, except he didn’t budge.
I didn’t think that he even knew I was there. His eyes were pure gold calamity, focused on his prey with vengeance and valor, arrogance and superiority.
“Ares. Now,” I commanded in my alpha tone.
Ares spared me a single glance, pressed his lips together, and growled viciously. “What the hell are you doing here, Aurora? You’re supposed to be with Marcel. Somewhere safe.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to be killing Elijah. Now, are you?” I gave him a pointed stare and yanked on his arms one more time. “Think for one fucking second. You need him. You need Elijah because he’s the only person who knows how to surgically place the stone into someone’s body. If you want all the fucking power in the world, you need him.”
I grasped on to anything to buy Elijah a few more moments. I wouldn’t let him die, but I needed time. Time to get us all back to Ares’s pack house, so I could say good-bye to Ruffles forever.
Simmering, Ares threw Elijah to his warriors, as if he were throwing a spear into someone’s heart. “Take him back home. Lock him in the prison. Capture any of his warriors who try to protest.” Then, he stormed through the forest, heading back toward Hound Territory.
But I wouldn’t let him get away with hurting someone I loved. I rushed after him, running as fast as I could to catch him before he shifted, and snatched his arm. “So, what? You’re just going to throw him in a cage and torture him until he gives you an answer?”
“If that’s what I have to do, Aurora, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
I clenched my jaw, angry yet terrified. “Well … what if he gives you an answer that you don’t like? What if he tells you where the stone is … but you don’t … accept it?”
He let out a long and tense sigh and dragged me back to the road by my wrist, where Marcel waited in the car. “Let’s be clear, Kitten. There will be no answer that I won’t accept. I will have that stone even if it kills me. I will trek to the ends of the earth, walk through fucking hell to get it. Hurt anyone and everyone I need for it to be mine.”
Every word tore into me like claws, digging deeper and deeper until my heart nearly stopped.
I wanted to ask him again if he’d hurt me, but I was afraid of the answer. Ares looked ready to kill me now for jumping out of the car and onto his battlefield. Before, Ares had been calm when I asked him; now, he was the man the rumors loved.
Marcel tapped his foot on the ground, arms crossed over his chest.
Ares thrust me to him, and I hit his hard chest. “I told you to watch her.”
“You didn’t tell me that she would jump out of the fucking car.” Marcel shoved me into the backseat, where Charolette now sat.
Instead of protesting, I wrapped my arms around myself and refused to look at Charolette, or I would cry.
Ares … Ares was … more frightening than anyone gave him credit for.
Ares slammed the door in my face, and I stared at the seat in front of me. He was either going to kill Elijah or he was going to kill me. It wasn’t in my blood to have someone hurt for my shortcomings. I was a damn alpha.
An alpha who couldn’t shift when she needed to. An alpha who couldn’t protect the people she loved. An alpha whose mate wouldn’t want her after he found out her secret—that she was useless, just like her mother thought.
It took thirty minutes to get back to Ares’s pack house, and the whole car ride, Charolette tried to soothe me, but there was no soothing something so deep, something that would ruin everything, something that would shatter her brother, who would then shatter me into a hundred thousand little pieces.
When we reached the pack house, Marcel escorted me up the stairs to the yellow-curtained bedroom and stood outside the door, guarding me from leaving. After hugging Ruffles to my chest and telling her that she was the only one I’d ever loved—dramatic much, but she deserved all the dramatics—I threw open the window and climbed out of it, hitting the ground with a thud.
I followed Elijah’s trail of blood to the prison. There were seven guards in the front of the main and only entrance. They all tried to stop me, but I did whatever I had to do to get past each one—punching, kicking, biting.
Elijah would not die.
When I made it inside, I shut and locked the door, taking out the key from the knob and putting it into my pocket. This way, nobody would be able to get in to stop me from doing whatever I had to do to get Elijah out of the dungeon.
I walked down the cold stone steps and into the dimly lit, rusty cells. It reeked of blood and rotting corpses and—I scrunched up my nose—shit. And while the smell was overwhelming, I followed Elijah’s scent.
In the back of the prison, Ares stood menacingly over Elijah’s body, blood dripping from his fingers. When I saw the silver chains clasped around Elijah’s wrist and neck, both of his eyes swollen shut, blood spewing from open wounds on his abdomen, I screamed for my life, for Elijah, for Jeremy.
Ares didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t even react to my shouting, so I tried to find the one person who would.
“Mars,” I whispered.
Ares gazed at me, eyes widening in fury, and tried to grab my wrist, but I pushed him away and collapsed onto the ground with Elijah.
“What—what did you do to him?” I took Elijah’s head in my lap, brushing the hair out of his face. I could barely recognize him. “Wh—”
“Mars is gone, Kitten.” He grabbed my wrist and pulled me off the ground, holding me there like he was about to clasp a silver chain on me too.
I tried not to be intimidated by him. Mars was in there somewhere. He needed to be. He needed to see me, to see how much of a mess I was, to love me for my secret.
“You will stop this now, Mars,” I said. “Let me clean Elijah up. I can talk to him about the stone. I can see if he knows where it is.”
“No.” Ares curled a hand around my throat and forced me to look up at him. “Why do you want to protect him? What is your fascination with a man who isn’t your mate?”
“Ares …” I gently grasped his wrist, hoping that it would calm him down.
When I told him about the stone, I didn’t want him to be angry. Maybe I could talk some sense into him and convince him not to hurt me. His mate. His only mate.
“Answer me, Aurora!” He seethed, eyes blazing gold.
“He-he—”
“Do you like him?” he asked. “Does my mate like another wolf and not me?”
“Ares, what are you—”
“It’s a simple yes or no answer. Don’t complicate it.”
“Don’t talk down to me,” I said, pushing him away.
He stumbled back for the briefest moment, and I took the chance to fall back onto
the ground with Elijah and cradle him in my arms. No, I didn’t like Elijah or Tony or any other guy for that matter.
For some stupid, crazy reason, I liked Ares and Mars … but … they wouldn’t like me.
Ares growled, gazing down at Elijah’s head in my lap, and yanked me up again. This time, harder. He wrapped a hand around my throat and pushed me all the way to the cold cement wall. “You’re mine, Aurora.”
I squirmed against him, trying to push him away, but he held me tighter to him, his hand closing around my throat.
“Only mine,” he said with more authority.
My heart raced in my chest as I watched his canines lengthen from under his lips.
“And you’ll always be mine.”
Then, he pushed my head to the side and sank his canines deep into my neck.
Chapter 23
Aurora
My whole body shook with pleasure, my eyes rolling back in my head. I could feel his canines inside of me, sliding deeper and deeper into my flesh as he claimed me as his mate. My wolf let out a lascivious purr, and I dug my fingers into his shoulders.
He had marked me. My mate had just marked me.
Though my wolf loved every single second of it, I didn’t. Mars wasn’t the one to mark me like he’d wanted to, like he had told me the other night. Ares had marked me out of pure possessiveness and jealousy. Taking everything away from Mars.
I slammed my hands into his chest, but my fingers curled into his muscles instead of pushing him away from me. He relaxed under my touch, his whole body slouching forward. A satisfied moan escaped his mouth, his breath warming my neck.
When he pulled his teeth out of me, he was back as Mars. Not angry Ares. Not that terrifying god of war. Just plain old Mars. My Mars.
He gazed longingly at me and then at my neck, and his eyes widened. “Oh my Goddess.” He gently held my face, staring at my mark as if he had no recollection of actually doing it. “You’re marked. I … Ares marked you.”
Just like that, Ares was gone. But I knew that with one wrong move, Ares would appear again, and this time, since he had claimed me, he’d think that I would willingly submit to him.
Mars’s lips quivered, and I swore that if he wasn’t holding my face, he would’ve fallen to the ground. “I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said as if he was lost for words.
He searched my face for something, and I tried to hold back the tears.
Tears that Ares had taken my moment from me. Tears that Ares was going to kill me.
Elijah grunted and turned onto his side on the cold cement.
Mars’s eyes flashed gold. “I’m so s-s—” He grasped my face harder, shaking his head and trying to stay in control of Ares. “I didn’t me-me-mean to,” he stuttered.
Though he had just marked me, my heart hurt for him. Mars was fighting that innate evil inside of him. He was fighting a demon that he would lose against time and time again. He was fighting Ares—the man who never apologized, the man who didn’t give in until he finished the job.
He shook his head again, his eyes glowing brown for a long time, and then squeezed his eyes closed. “I-I—” he said. His eyes snapped open. That lovely, luscious brown had turned into a burning gold.
Mars was gone.
My mark tingled, and my wolf purred at the mere sight of Ares.
“We’re not sorry,” Ares said, moving closer to me.
I stepped back, heart pounding wildly again.
“We should complete our bond, thrust you against the wall in front of Elijah, take you so you know never to think of another man again.”
Elijah grunted once more, and Ares snapped his head in his direction.
“But I haven’t been this close to the stone ever, and I’m going to find it.” Ares stormed back to Elijah and snatched him by the neck, his claws sinking into his flesh.
“Stop, Ares.” I grabbed his bicep, trying to pull him away from Elijah.
“Aurora, stop,” Elijah said, voice barely audible. Brows furrowed together, eyes barely open, Elijah begged me to leave. “Go before you watch your mate kill me and see the side of him that you don’t ever want to see.”
My fingers were shaking, trembling. All of my fears, all of my insecurities boiled down to this moment, and I didn’t even know if I was strong enough to walk out of this cell and never turn back.
Ares’s mark was burning my skin, searing it, connecting me to him. And I hated it. I wished that he had never done it because now … now, I didn’t want to go. That was exactly what he had wanted too. He didn’t want me to leave him.
“Ares, stop, please.”
Tears welled up in my eyes at the sight of Ares doing this to him, of Ares the monster. He pushed Elijah further against the wall and held him there by the throat. The silver chains dug into his skin, blistering it. Elijah tensed, trying not to cry out and show Ares that this was killing him from the inside out, but Ares didn’t need to hear it to know that Elijah was breaking.
He just didn’t know that I was breaking too.
“I’ll tell you where it is, Ares! I know where the stone is!” I shouted at him.
Ares shifted his head toward me, eyes flickering gold. “You fucking know? Or are you lying to protect him?”
“I know,” I whispered. “I really know.”
Elijah shook his head. “Don’t, Aurora.” He seized the silver chain in his palms, burning the skin right off of them. “Please, don’t. I promised your brother that I would take care of you. I can’t protect you if you tell him.”
Ares shook with anger. “Aurora, I swear to the Moon Goddess that if you don’t tell me where it is, I will snap Elijah’s neck.”
“Please,” Elijah pleaded with me.
I gazed back and forth between the two of them, my chest tightening by the second. It was now or never. Now or fucking never. I parted my lips to say something, to say anything, but my wolf wouldn’t let me speak.
“If you don’t want to fucking tell me …” Ares grabbed my wrist and jerked me toward him. He placed my hand on Elijah’s throat, his hand over my hand, making me grip his neck in my hand. “You’ll fucking do it.”
Though I always thought that Elijah was strong, his throat felt so fragile against my palm. Like … if I squeezed any harder, it’d snap. I would snap it. Jeremy would hate me. I couldn’t form coherent words. Tears streamed down my face. Why was he doing this to me?
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on between you two, but one of you will break and tell me where that fucking stone is,” Ares said.
Moon Goddess, Ares really was crazy. He’d snap my throat in a second … but I would rather be dead than kill the only man who had helped me survive that hound attack.
“Do it,” Elijah said, his face turning a deeper shade of purple. “Do it, so I can see your brother again.”
My heart ached. “Ares, don’t make me, please.”
Don’t make me say it. Don’t make me make you hate me. Don’t make me tell you exactly what you want to hear.
I couldn’t handle this. I felt like I was falling apart. I shouldn’t have kept this secret to myself, but I wanted to tell him when I was ready. Not like this.
He would hate me. Just like Mom. Just like I hated myself.
“Now, Aurora,” he said through clenched teeth. “Every fucking minute that you waste is another minute—”
“Another minute what?” I asked, desperately trying to buy myself time to think of a plan.
“Another minute that your precious Elijah gets tortured by your hand.”
A blood vessel broke in Elijah’s eye, making it red with blood. Another tear slipped down my cheek. He parted his lips to say something else, but Ares just tightened our hands around his throat.
Ten more seconds. He had ten fucking seconds. I could feel it.
When Elijah’s eyes slowly closed, I screamed, “Okay! Okay! Just stop!”
Ares let go of my hand, and Elijah’s body smacked against the concrete floor.
; Elijah rolled onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath. “Aurora … don’t,” he pleaded.
I gazed up at an angry Ares, fear running through my veins.
“Now, Aurora,” he said, “tell me.”
I glanced at the cell door and inched my way closer. Once I told him, I would make a run for it. I wouldn’t get far, but it was my only option. I gulped nervously and faced all of my fears.
“It’s me,” I said quietly. “It’s me. I have the stone.”
Chapter 24
Aurora
As soon as the words left my mouth, I sprinted out of the cell, slammed the silver bars to buy myself some much-needed time, and ran out of the underground prison like my life depended on it … because it did. Ares growled viciously, the sound echoing deep into the night and sending shivers down my spine.
After pushing through all the guards who were rushing down the stairs to help their alpha, I bolted through the woods. Running. Running fast. Running as fast as I could. Needing to get away from him and go somewhere my mate would never find me.
But where could I go?
Mom wouldn’t have me … and even if she would, Ares would rip her to pieces to get to me. Elijah’s pack would be too obvious. Maybe I could go to Hound Territory. After I’d told him I was scared of them, he wouldn’t even think I’d go there.
In the night, the trees looked like soaring soot-colored monsters, looming over me and waiting to attack, their branches jutting out at all different angles like deformed limbs against the moonlight. I blindly rushed forward through the thick fog and prayed to the Moon Goddess to help me move move swiftly.
I must’ve been three miles from Ares’s property when I heard another one of his growls rip through the forest, warning me to keep running. To run faster. Because he was coming. For me. For his mate.
My human legs wouldn’t take me all the way to Hound Territory that quickly. And it would take a good ten minutes to even shift into my wolf, especially since I hadn’t done it for a while. I knew I had to be smart, but so many distracting and vile thoughts rushed through my mind that I couldn’t think straight.