by Emilia Rose
Mars stayed quiet, watching me strip my pants. My breathing hitched, and I willed myself to gather all the strength I had. Fear ran through my veins.
“We are going to run in our wolves,” I said.
Eyes widening and flashing gold, Ares was slowly awakening. “No, Aurora … we can’t.”
“Don’t you want to see my wolf?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Goddess, more than anything.”
“Then, I will shift.”
He clenched his jaw and growled. “Aurora, it will hurt you. I hurt you too much last night. I don’t want you to go through any more discomfort for me. Hell, you don’t ever have to shift again, if you don’t want to.” He tugged on my wrist. “Let’s continue running. There is a waterfall about a mile further into the forest.”
I pulled my hand away from his and rested it on his chest. “I have to show you this, Ares,” I said, hoping that if I said his name, he would awaken fully and take control. “I need you to see me for who I am.”
The moonlight bounced off the lake and onto his golden eyes. After searching my face for any hint of regret or resistance, he furrowed his brows. “Okay,” he said. “But if you need or want to stop, stop”—he grasped my hand so tightly—“please.”
I slid my bra straps down my shoulders and stared right at him. “You have to promise me that you’ll stay here and watch the whole time. Don’t leave me here. Don’t look away. Promise me you will stay, no matter how long it takes, no matter how loud I scream, no matter how much pain I am in.”
Again, he nodded. “I’m never going to leave you.”
After placing my clothes in a pile near Mars, I called my wolf, dropped down onto all four, and took a deep breath. Dear Moon Goddess, please make this quick. Please don’t make this hurt as much as it did last time because my mate won’t be able to handle it.
Won’t work. Can’t shift. Mate … My wolf gazed at a patient-looking Mars. Mate won’t love us once he sees.
She howled inside of me, cramps erupting all over my body. I clenched my jaw. We hadn’t even started, yet it was like I could already feel the pain creeping into my veins, pumping through my entire being.
It had been exactly fifty-four days since we last shifted. My wolf had always been terrified but not like this. Not only did we have to worry about the shift itself, but this time, we also had the added pressure of feeling our mate’s distress while it happened.
Mate will hate us.
“We don’t know unless we try,” I whispered to myself.
Mom hates us.
I frowned, tears filling my eyes from all of her harsh words. I remembered the first time I’d tried shifting after the attack and the look of pure disgust on Mom’s face—that you’re not my daughter, this isn’t my daughter look.
Mom hates us so much for it. We are nothing to her. She traded us to have a prosperous pack. Ares will try to trade us back. He will call us cripple, worthless, incompetent too.
“Please,” I whispered again.
If he rejects us—she paused for a long time—don’t blame me. I tried to warn you.
A sharp ache split through my side, and I dug my fingers into the dirt. I clenched my jaw to try to keep my whimpers to myself. My skin suddenly stretched further than it should have. Instead of turning into fur, it continued to stretch, and so did my muscles. I could hear my bones snapping and joining back together in a terrorizing symphony.
Time passed, and I stopped counting the minutes until I shifted. Instead, I thought about each bone in my spine morphing into one of a wolf, breaking and bending at familiar angles. I needed to get through this.
My thoracic spine cracked, and I let out a piercing scream, feeling nothing but debilitating throbbing.
“Aurora”—Mars knelt down in front of me, placing his hands on the ground and scooting down to my level—“you don’t have to do this.”
I growled at him and then cried out to the Moon Goddess. Larger than human canines ripped through my gums, making them bleed. The blood slowly dripped out of my mouth, rolled down my neck, and fell on the dirt beneath me.
My lumbar spine cracked next, contorting into a shape that I hadn’t felt in a couple of months. The snap was worse than my thoracic, but the worst was when my cervical spine cracked, right above the stone.
Sweat dripped down my neck, and I tried so hard to shift. I tried so fucking hard. But the tenderness at my joints was unbearable. My bones continued to crack, every muscle in my spine seemed to be reverberating, tears streamed down my cheeks, and I couldn’t even quiet my cries.
We can’t. We can’t do it. Too much pain.
I furrowed my brows together and wildly shook my head back and forth. We had to.
We can’t.
My body suddenly felt weak, and my head was cloudy, the soreness so raw. I couldn’t do this. My wolf was right. All we were was weak. I slouched forward, trying to take some pressure off of my back. The stone was burning into my muscles and vertebrae so intensely that I felt like I was in flames.
Mars approached me, and I was about to scream at him to leave me alone. But then I saw his wolf standing over me.
He shoved his face into the crook of my neck and licked his mark. “You can do it, Kitten. You can do it.”
My heart clenched, and I used all the strength I had left. I pushed through all the hurt that I had ever felt. And I let the last part of my body—the vertebrae right near the stone—crack, so I could shift.
Chapter 29
Mars
I had absolutely no words for it.
Aurora had gone through hell, had been screaming, crying, and hurting for nearly ten minutes before she completed her shift while Ares and I looked on helplessly. And it was all to show us who she was, but it wasn’t what either of us had expected.
I’d watched her spine bend at three different angles and her bones break and fuse so many times that I lost count. My entire body ached, just from seeing it. I couldn’t even process how much pain and suffering she must have felt every time she shifted.
Nearly as big as us, she stood in her brown wolf with those piercing blue eyes. The mere size of her wolf made the shift almost unbearable for her, and I just knew that a shift like this would have killed her if she hadn’t had the stone.
My gaze slowly traveled down her body as I tried to remember every inch of her like this because I didn’t know when I would see something so beautiful again.
“Ares,” she said through the mind link, calling out to us.
While it usually bothered me when she called me that name, I didn’t mind right now. We were both here with her, and she needed the reassurance that Ares wouldn’t hurt her after what he had done earlier.
I wanted Aurora to be able to shift with ease. I didn’t like that she was in pain. She said that only half the stone was inside her, which meant the other half was still out there, carrying powerful healing properties. I wanted to find it for her, but I needed it for Charolette, so she could get better. Charolette might’ve hated Ares for half the stuff he did for her, but if we didn’t get it for her so she could live, we would regret it every single fucking day. Just like how I regretted not doing as much as I could for Mom before she died.
Aurora gazed at me, the moonlight bouncing off her fur. “Say something, please,” she said, voice so fragile and so desperate in my mind.
All I wanted was to kill everyone who had made her feel as if she wasn’t enough because of this disability.
I walked over and brushed my snout against hers. I never expected that this would be the first moment that I saw her wolf, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. My mate was strong.
When I curled my neck around hers and licked her mark, she relaxed. She lifted her snout to the moon and let out a harmonic howl, one that I already loved.
Then, she turned to me and … smiled. “Run with me, Alpha.”
She turned on her heel and started through the forest, her tail swaying back and forth. Pushing hers
elf hard, she disappeared behind the trees. I lifted my nose to the air, howling deep into the night, and followed her lemony scent through the forest.
Aurora was mine, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
“So, Aurora can outrun the great and powerful Alpha Ares?” she taunted through our mind link. She knew that name both infuriated me and awoken the beast, yet she called for him anyway.
I couldn’t see her, but her perfume was smothering me. Ares stirred inside me, wanting to run faster, to chase our mate, to put her in her place—right by our side. But … I hadn’t given him complete control since he ran after her.
After he had marked her in the prison and chased her, I’d reined him in. Never letting him control me like that again—at least, not around Aurora. He wanted her so bad, it hurt, but when she finally found out what he was truly capable of … I didn’t know if she would run away from us for good.
The rumors that he’d killed entire packs, burned anything to the ground, slaughtered for power were all true, and those tales didn’t even do him justice. Everyone feared Ares, but they didn’t know that his want for power was because he never wanted me to feel helpless again.
I pushed myself harder, seeing her tail wagging only a few yards ahead of me. Her scent intensified, and her kittenish threats were riling Ares up.
“Alpha Ares,” she said. “So strong, so powerful, so slow.”
He growled inside of me and made me run faster toward our mate. I caught her tail between my teeth, tugged on it ever so gently, and leaped on her. We tumbled on the ground, somersaulting a few times over the pine-covered forest floor.
She struggled under me, playfully swatting me with her paw. I pinned her to the ground, her body easy to control … but I knew she wanted it that way. If she were really fighting back, I was sure she’d have had me on my ass by now.
I stuck my nose into the crook of her neck—right where Ares’s mark was—and brushed my canines against the spot, pressing them into her, just not enough to break through her flesh. For a moment, she tensed and then shuddered in delight. She stopped struggling under me and sighed deeply through her nose. Her eyes glistened under the moonlight, like two stars under a new moon.
Gazing down at Ares’s mark, I saw that while she had been terrified of Ares earlier, she wasn’t afraid anymore. She trusted us not to hurt her, and we would never hurt her again. I would make sure of it.
She howled to the sky, and I smiled down at my mate. This was the moment I had dreamed of since I was a child. All I wanted was my mate, to play with her, to laugh with her, to tease her … but I didn’t know when I would ever get to experience this again.
Earlier today, she had bared her entire soul to me, shown me all of her insecurities, let me feel how she did during her shifts so I could understand her. And now, it had to be my turn. I had to show her mine.
Sooner or later, she’d find out about all of the secrets that I had been hiding from the world. Secrets about Mom. Secrets about Charolette. Secrets about—I gazed down at my scarred front legs—myself.
All I wanted was to be enough for her before I told her. I wanted to make sure she knew how much she really meant to me. I hoped that I could show her that because … I didn’t want this feeling to ever go away. I felt like I was walking on the clouds with the Moon Goddess herself, staring down at utter perfection.
She caught me in a moment of adoration and turned us over, pinning me to the ground. She stared down at my neck, her hungry eyes taking in the spot that she would mark.
I turned my head to the side, giving her permission. “Do it, Aurora.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. I wanted to be hers.
White teeth glistening, she drew her tongue against them. All I could imagine was her claiming me, reassuring me that I would never be alone, that she would never leave me, that I was hers and only hers.
One second passed, then two, and then her teeth were brushing against my neck.
Goddess, I was ready to be hers.
Suddenly, she pulled away from me, blue and gold specks shimmering in her eyes, and stood up. After a bit of watching her fight with her wolf, she turned back to me, lifted her snout to the moon, and said, “Shift,” through our mind link.
It wasn’t a question. It was a command. Her alpha command.
I shifted into my human form and watched as she struggled to shift back into hers. It didn’t look as painful as the shift to werewolf, but she still endured it for several minutes. I leaned back against my forearms and watched her.
Though I was disappointed that she hadn’t marked me, I knew that she was still wary and needed to keep her guard up. She wanted to be certain.
When she shifted completely, I went to stand, but she just pushed me onto my back, in the middle of the forest, and crawled on top of me. Cracking a smile, she straddled my waist and let me feel her wet pussy glide against my cock. “You’ve had your fun with me.” She grabbed my cock in her hand and rubbed my head against her wetness. “Now, it’s my turn.”
Curling her fingers into my chest, she let the head of my cock slip into her sopping wet pussy and then sat all the way down on it. She stared down at me with that same look she had given me the first night I met her—the look of passion and need for me.
I rested my hands on her hips.
She was a goddess. She was my goddess.
Chapter 30
Aurora
Every part of my body tingled. I couldn’t get enough of him.
Standing by my side. Urging me to shift. Believing in me.
It was enough to prove to me that Ares and Mars wanted me and that they loved me. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who didn’t see a man’s effort until he was on his knees, begging.
Ares might’ve screwed up, but if he hadn’t, I might not have told him yet. I would’ve put it off, drowning in all of my fears that he would reject me, that he would call me names, and that he would ultimately kill me.
But here I was, in this forest with him. Naked, weak, and so damn turned on by his loyalty. Maybe it was the mark on my neck talking, but I really wanted to mark him. I wanted to complete our bond, for him to be mine.
By the way his eyes tinted the lightest shade of gold and his grasp tightened on my hips, I could tell that Mars was gone, and Ares was back, ready to prove that he would stay through anything with me. He slowly moved his hips up and down to thrust into me.
I peeled his hands away from me, pinned them beside his head, and leaned over him. “I said, no. Now, it’s my turn to have you.”
After placing my hands on his taut abdomen, I moved my hips up and down on his cock—slowly, so he could feel me squeeze every inch of him. Then, when I couldn’t handle it any longer, I moved my hips faster and faster, the tension rising in my core. His gaze traveled from my eyes to my lips to my tits as they bounced softly.
“Touch me, Ares,” I said.
He drew his fingers over my nipples and groped my breasts.
I curled my fingers into his chest and arched my back. “Harder.”
He pinched my nipples between his fingers and tugged on them. The pressure rose in my core, shooting through me so intensely that I was about to orgasm already. I rode him for a few more minutes until I came and my pussy was aching.
I rested my chest against his, trailed my lips up the side of his neck, and smirked against his jaw. “Are you hungry, Alpha?”
After growling into my ear, he rolled us over and pulled himself out of me. His eyes became golden suns, and he kissed all the way down my body to my pussy. I rested my thighs on his shoulders and let him bury his face deep between my legs. My fingers snaked into his thick brown hair, and I pulled his lips against my pussy and held him there.
He smirked against my folds, his tongue slowly massaging my clit. “Your pussy is so wet for me, Kitten,” he murmured.
I clenched, my core warming. He pushed two fingers between my folds and continued to play with my clit with his tongue until my legs trembled.
/> I didn’t care that we were so deep on Ares’s territory that everyone around could hear us. I didn’t care that there were guards out here, protecting the borders. I moaned his name so loudly, letting it roll off of my tongue like it was meant to be there.
“Louder,” he mumbled against me. “Say my name louder.”
I thrust my hand into his hair and held him closer to me, the pleasure shooting through my entire body. His fingers continued to move in and out in a rough, quick rhythm as my pussy pulsed on him.
“Ares,” I whispered. “Ares … oh Goddess … I’m going to …”
Just as I was about to come, he pulled his fingers out of me and stopped. My body teetered on the edge as I waited for him to thrust them back into me and help me feel good. But instead, he chuckled against me and let his fingers linger millimeters away.
I squirmed under him and lifted my hips, trying to get him to touch me again. “Ares, let me come.”
He glanced up at me and smirked devilishly. “You’re not going to come unless it’s on my cock, Aurora,” he said.
I grasped his hair tighter, trying so desperately to pull him back onto me, but he pinned my wrist to the ground beside me, knelt between my legs, and brushed his thumb across my lower lip.
“Oh, Aurora … you’re so precious.” He dragged his thumb down the center of my body to my clit and rubbed small circles around it. “Trying to dominate me like this. It’s … cute.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, the tension starting to build up again.
“Tugging on my hair, squirming under me”—he pushed a single finger inside of me, and I clenched—“it only turns me on more, Kitten.”
Moaning softly, I tried to control my trembling legs. My pussy was tight around him as he pumped his fingers in and out of me, bringing me so close to the edge again.
“Do you want me to fill your tight little cunt up like I did the other night?” he asked, eyes a deathly gold. I tensed hard around his fingers, my heart racing, and he gazed down at my pussy, cracking another smirk. “Feels like you do.”