Come Here, Kitten (God of War Book 1)

by Emilia Rose

  “Get back here, Aurora,” Ares said roughly through the mind link, which had formed the second he marked me.

  My heart raced quicker than it ever had. My lungs felt so dry that I could barely breathe. I hid behind a tree, knowing that I could never outrun him like this. And even in dire situations, even when my life depended on it, I couldn’t shift as quickly as I needed to shift.

  I held a hand to my mouth, trying to muffle my ragged breathing and my cries. My mate was going to kill me, just like the hounds had killed my brother. He’d rip me piece by piece by piece until only the stone was left for him to have, like the fucking king he was.

  Twigs snapped around me. The forest was so quiet that the smallest sounds were deafening. Sweat rolled down my chest, and my heart raced so fast that I could hear it in my ears. I curled my arms around my body and willed myself not to make a sound unless I wanted Ares to find me.

  About twenty yards away, I listened to him shift into his human form, his thick bones loudly snapping back into place. He walked around the woods, crunching leaves and breaking twigs. Every step he took closer to me made it harder and harder for me to breathe.

  This couldn’t be happening. Goddess, I should’ve just gone with Tony. Maybe I’d have been able to use him as a human shield or something. Keep Ares distracted instead of focused on killing me. His mate. His only mate.

  I held my knees to my chest and stopped breathing, my body trembling.

  “Come here, Kitten,” he said, his voice low and daunting. Yet I could hear the excitement in it. This wasn’t the Ares that I had lain with earlier, nor the Mars who had promised me that he’d never hurt me.

  This was terror.

  Complete and utter terror.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. I didn’t want my life to end like this. I’d thought I’d die on the battlefield as a respected alpha, not as a fragile young woman.

  One moment passed.

  Two moments.

  Three.

  “If you want to make this a game, I’m happy to play with you.”

  He walked closer to me, and I thought about Ruffles, the only one who had ever loved me. What would he do to her? Would he kill her too? Maybe he’d make me watch him kill her. Or even worse, make me do it. Tears threatened to spill from my eyes. She didn’t deserve to die. And neither did I.

  Another branch broke.

  “Purr for me, Aurora.”

  I held my hand over my mouth.

  This was all a game to him. All a fucking game.

  He dropped down onto all fours and shifted again, his bones cracking. No matter how dirty I was from running in the mud and forest, Ares’s wolf would be able to smell me. I had to run. I had no other choice.

  Forcing me onto all fours, my wolf wanted me to shift more than anything to get away from the man hunting her, who was really supposed to love her. All my wolf felt was pain and betrayal. She just wanted to be happy with her only mate.

  I let out an ear-splitting scream as my bones broke, yet I didn’t transform into a normal werewolf. Instead, my bones snapped back and forth, my vision intensified and dulled, my jaw lengthened and shortened, all in a painful attempt to shift from human to werewolf. Every part of my body ached, and when I heard Ares growl, my heart broke.

  This was it. This was how my life was going to end.

  I turned onto my back to find Ares’s huge black wolf standing over me. I stared up into his big, vicious eyes and scurried away from him on my hands and heels. Tears streamed down my face. All I could feel was pain.

  “Please don’t kill me, Ares. Please. Please. I’ll do anything,” I pleaded.

  I backed up until I hit a tree. I parted my lips, a frail cry escaping them. This was who I was. An embarrassing alpha. A weak alpha. A powerless woman who was about to be killed by her mate.

  He stalked forward with his head held low and his eyes fixed on me. My fingers trembled so hard that I had to dig my claws into my palms to stop them from shaking.

  I parted my lips, feeling my salty tears on them, pulled my hair behind my shoulders, and bared my neck to him. “Please, if you’re going to kill me, make it easy. The stone is in my spine, at the base of my neck. C7.”

  Stepping closer to me, he pushed his snout against my neck and let his teeth graze against the back of it. I curled my arms around my body, sticking my face into my knees and shielding myself from him, waiting for my mate to kill me.

  “Pl-please don’t tear me limb from limb. I don’t want to end up like Jeremy.”

  Chapter 25

  Ares

  “If you care about me … if you even”—she hiccuped—“respected me at all, please don’t tear me to pieces.” She cowered under me, shielding her face from me, hiding her mark, showing me the back of her neck and nothing else.

  Mate is upset.

  My mate was hurt. Aurora was hurt. I had hurt her.

  I could feel every ounce of her pain, could feel how much it hurt her to think that I—her own mate—would be the one to kill her. She was terrified of me, of Ares and Mars. We had become one monster to her, and that hurt us too.

  After staring down at our mate for another moment, I lay on my stomach and just watched her body heave up and down. We both wanted to soothe her but knew that we had broken her trust. She would run away from us for good.

  We would lose her, like we would lose Charolette soon.

  Her breathing was jagged and uneven. Her heart was racing. She gazed up at me through terrified, teary eyes without raising her head. I waved my tail back and forth, hoping that it’d soother her enough so she’d show me her face, her beautiful face.

  Instead of looking back up, she sat there and held herself, as if she’d fall apart if she didn’t. A light breeze blew, making her soft brown hair drift against her moonlit face.

  Mate is hurting because of us.

  I closed my eyes, trying to calm down my wolf.

  The strangled sound of hounds howling deep in the forest echoed through the woods, and Aurora tensed. We were close to Hound Territory, which meant I needed to calm Aurora down enough to get us to safety before they could smell us.

  Standing on all four legs, I stepped closer to her. She pulled her legs to her body, curling herself into a ball and tensing even more from me than she had from the hounds. My heart shattered into a million pieces as I watched my mate—the strong alpha woman I had brought home—look so broken because of me. It had never been my intention …

  But the stone.

  Why did she have the stone? She wasn’t using it for power; she was fierce enough. She wasn’t using it for wealth; all she needed was Ruffles to keep her happy. She wasn’t using it for her health … she seemed perfectly healthy.

  “Aurora,” I said through the mind link, hoping that she’d answer.

  Complete silence.

  I stepped toward her again. “Aurora … Kitten.”

  She turned away from me at the sound of my nickname for her, and I frowned. She didn’t want to be called Kitten anymore? Or maybe she just didn’t like the way that I had said it.

  Mate doesn’t want us. Mate doesn’t like our nickname anymore. Mate wants to reject us, leave us. But we don’t want her to leave. We love her.

  As my wolf spoke to me, I stopped walking toward her and rested my snout at her feet. She raised her head to gaze at me and frowned. Tears slid down her cheeks, and all I wanted to do was brush them away and hold her to my chest. But … she wouldn’t want that.

  All of the cries she tried to suppress finally slipped out of her mouth. She sobbed loudly, her howls echoing through the silent forest. Pain. So much pain. Her body shook back and forth, and she tried so hard to hush herself, but she couldn’t.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.

  But it only made her cry more.

  Mate is crying. Help her. We need to help her.

  “I …” Her voice was quiet. “I’m so weak, Ares. Just take the stone out of me. El
ijah’s doctors can do it for you. You don’t want someone like me. An alpha who can’t even …” she whimpered. “Who can’t even …”

  My heart clenched, chest tightening. Just hearing her degrading words made me shift into my human and grabbed her hand. “Aurora, I would never leave you. Don’t think that for even a second.”

  She gazed up at me. “Mars might not, but … Ares will.”

  Every single part of my body hurt. “I would not do that. I would never think about leaving you, whether you have the stone or not. I love you so fucking much.” I paused for a moment. “But … why do you have the stone? What do you need it for?”

  “I can’t shift,” she whispered, the words so soft that I almost couldn’t hear them. She tried to pull her hand away, to shield her tears from me, but I held it tighter. “Without it … I wouldn’t be able to move.”

  I parted my lips to say something, but nothing would come out, except, “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t understand it. My mate couldn’t shift? She couldn’t shift into her wolf? We wouldn’t be able to run together through the woods. I would never get to see her wolf in all of her glory, couldn’t play with her, couldn’t run with her, couldn’t be with her. Ever.

  “On a bad day, it takes ten minutes for me to shift to minimize the pain. It hurts so bad every single time.” She shook her head, brushing some tears away. “You should reject me. You deserve a strong luna who can lead with you. You need someone who can run in the forest with you and someone you can be happy with and someone—”

  I grasped her face in my hands and kissed her hard on the lips. Nothing she said or could say would ever make me want to reject her. She was a force despite all of this. My mate couldn’t shift, but she had killed two rogues in her human form, she had stopped me from shamelessly killing and torturing another alpha, and she had survived the harsh words of countless people who had put her down for this … this disability.

  It was me who was fucking weak. The alpha who terrorized every other pack just to find the stone so he could save his sister. The alpha who couldn’t control himself. The alpha who hid behind the horrendous rumors so he wouldn’t be seen as a soft man—because soft men always got hurt in the end.

  All I wanted to do was lay her on the ground and worship every inch of her body until she knew that I wasn’t going anywhere, but she let go of my hand and shoved it away.

  I pushed away her tears with my thumbs. “Aurora, I don’t want the stone for power. I never wanted that stone for power.”

  She hiccuped against my chest, her body jerking in my arms. “Yes, you do.” She stood up and stepped away from me. “All it seems you want is power. You nearly killed Elijah for it. You nearly killed him, Ares.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you had, I would’ve never forgiven you.”

  Never would’ve forgiven me …

  The words sank deep. If I had killed him, Aurora would’ve left me.

  In that moment, I made a promise to myself not to ever kill Elijah or anyone Aurora cared about.

  I stood up next to her and pleaded, “Don’t leave me, Aurora.”

  I loved her with everything I’d ever had. She was one of the only people Mars felt comfortable around anymore, and she was the only damn person who could calm me down.

  “Please, stay.”

  After giving me a long, bruising glance, she walked away from the conversation and toward my property. I stood there and stared at her departing figure with a frown. I had so much shit to make up for, so many truths to tell her. I didn’t know where to start or if she’d believe me, but … I needed her to stay with me.

  I’d do anything for her to stay.

  Hell, I’d do anything to make her fucking happy.

  Chapter 26

  Aurora

  “Aurora,” Ares shouted as he jogged after me.

  I hurried through the dark woods, not because I was angry, not because I was childish, but because I was … unsure of his motives and confused about my feelings toward him.

  So many rumors that ex-pack members had beaten into my head about him all seemed to be damn paradoxes. He’d sprinted after me in a rage, like I was his sworn enemy and he was a war god. Yet he hadn’t touched me and hadn’t hurt me, and I would go so far as to say that he wanted me for what I was—weak.

  I just didn’t know if this was all to fuck with my head or if he was being truthful.

  Did he truly want me? Would he really pick me over the stone, or was this all some elaborate scheme to get me to trust him, so he could slowly kill me? The god of war always had something up his sleeve. But the Moon Goddess wouldn’t have chosen him as my mate if the mate bond didn’t mean something to both of us.

  Maybe it was because of his mark on my neck, or maybe it was because I had seen another side of him these past couple of days, but I wanted to trust him so badly. I wanted to be his. I wanted to be wanted for once.

  Continuing to walk through the forest, I tried to ignore the growls from hounds in the distance. We were too close to Hound Territory, but I couldn’t gather enough strength to think clearly. All my mind wanted to think about was my mate.

  “Please, talk to me, Aurora,” Ares begged, taking long strides to keep up with me.

  Never in a million years had I thought that I’d ever hear the feared alpha beg for anything, let alone beg me to not only talk to him, but to also stay.

  “I will do anything to get you to trust me again. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

  When he grabbed my hand, familiar tingles shot up and down my arm and made everything even more difficult for me. I pulled away, not trusting my wolf around him, and a look of deep anguish crossed his face.

  After walking in silence for another five minutes through the eerie forest, Ares suddenly stopped and tensed, his pitiful eyes hardening into an intense, divine gaze. “Aurora, don’t move.”

  I stopped and gazed back at him, listening to the snarling hounds surrounding us. They sprinted through the forest in all directions. Branches snapped, thunder suddenly started rumbling overhead, and lightning flashed through the fog. First, one hound. Then, two more. Then, five more. Until we were surrounded by eight hungry beasts.

  Ares pushed me behind him, shifting into his wolf and preparing to attack. But he couldn’t take on all eight alone and protect me at the same time, like I knew he wanted to.

  He paused, looked around at them, and growled, “Go for the two north. The one with the shorter tail, the other with the one eye. I know that you can hold them off or kill them. And if you can’t, run.”

  He leaped forward into the herd of six hounds, his razor-sharp teeth latching into their fur and his claws tearing through their flesh. I swallowed hard, trying to think of anything that I could use to help me fight them. Every other time I had come across hounds, I’d been armed with the silver dagger that Jeremy had given me. But now, I was defenseless.

  So, I did the only thing that I thought I could do. I sprinted toward the one with a single eye, leaped into the air when he bolted toward me, and landed on his back with a thump, grasping on to his raggedy fur to stay on top of him. Then, in Ruffles’s honor, I dug my claws into his eye so hard until I could feel it pop out of his head and fall into my palm.

  The wolf under me howled to the Moon Goddess and jerked his body side to side, trying to throw me off of him. I clutched on to his fur harder, desperate to stay on his back. The hound with the short tail bared his teeth at me and lowered his head, trying to figure out how to attack me without hurting his comrade.

  I kicked my hound hard in the ass with my heel, making him leap forward and straight into Short Tail. Feeling flesh, No Eyes bit Short Tail’s neck and took a whole chunk of muscle out. My eyes widened, and I took this as an opportunity to hop off of his back and snap the other’s throat.

  No Eyes wandered around aimlessly, growling and baring his teeth. I slammed my foot into his underbelly, snatched his neck, and pushed my thumbs so deep into him until I broke through his sk
in and could tear out his insides.

  Ares had killed four of the six hounds and was working on the last two. While I didn’t have a chance at killing either of them, as they seemed stronger than the last two I’d killed, I would help him as best as I could.

  But just as I was about to jog over, another hound leaped into the air from behind me, knocked me to the ground, and towered over me—one paw on either side of my neck, salivating all over me. I desperately wriggled onto my back and stared up at the deadly beast above me.

  My eyes widened. It wasn’t just any hound. It was the hound who I’d remember forever. Hollow black eyes. Two scars forming an X across his face. The pungent scent of cornfields and better days, staying out late with my only brother, but never getting a chance to spend the rest of my life with him, of happiness that had been torn away, of the hound that had murdered Jeremy.

  Now, he would kill me too.

  Two wolves howled in the distance, and I watched Ares rip their throats right out of their bodies, one by one, with his teeth.

  “Ares!” I screamed.

  He turned his head, eyes a vicious black, and raced in my direction.

  But before he could get the hound off of me, another sprinted out from the woods, latched his teeth into the other hound’s neck, and ripped him off of me. I stared at the two hounds with wide eyes, never having seen two fight against each other before, and the image of Jeremy flashed into my mind.

  Of his last moments breathing—when he had gazed over at me and reached out his hand for me to take but Mom pulled me away too quickly for me to help him, when his lips had curled into the smallest of smiles and he mouthed the words I love you, when his eyes had become two dull and soulless orbs.

  Ares stood in front of me and growled harshly. Jeremy’s killer sprinted into the woods. The other wolf paused for the briefest moment, tilting his head to the side to look at me. I sucked in a sharp breath, recognizing something so eerily familiar about him, and grasped on to Ares’s paw.