by Emilia Rose
Ares growled lowly when I threw the blankets off us. “We run at dawn.”
“It is dawn.”
Smirking against my mark, he crawled between my legs, hooked two fingers around my underwear strings, and pulled them off me. “We have time.”
“Ares,” I said, brows furrowed together, “we …”
He pressed his lips to my core and stared up at me with sinful gold eyes. “We what?” he asked, tongue moving in small, rhythmic circles around my clit.
I swallowed hard, heat warming my core. “We have to—”
He pushed a finger inside of me, slowly pumping it in and out of me. “We have to what?”
My fingers curled into the sheets, and I arched my back. “Ares, we can’t.”
Pulling my legs onto his shoulders, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pinned my hips to the mattress, so I couldn’t squirm out of his hold. “I’m alpha. I say what we can and can’t do, Kitten.”
My breathing hitched, and I moaned his name. Heat warmed my core and flared out until my entire body was aching for a release. “Ares …” I closed my eyes, never before having felt such satisfaction from his lips.
“You’re mine.”
The pressure built higher and higher in my core until I could barely hold myself together.
“Mine to take whenever I want.” He continued to massage circles around my clit with his tongue. “Mine to pleasure every morning.”
I clenched around his fingers.
“Mine to make feel good.”
Someone banged on the door, and Liam cleared his throat. “Ares, the warriors are ready.”
“I’ll be out in a minute, Liam.”
I stared down at him with wide eyes and took a deep breath. Moments … I was mere moments away from …
“How long?”
Ares growled, his eyes turning a darker color gold. “When I’m finished fucking my mate.”
Ares thrust two fingers deeper into my pussy, pumping them hard and fast into me. I grasped the sheets, the tension too much, and squirmed up the bed.
Pinning me to the bed, Ares didn’t stop finger-fucking me until I slapped a hand over my mouth and was coming all over his fingers. Waves of ecstasy rolled through me, and my entire body relaxed against the bed.
When he pulled his fingers out of me, he stuck them into his mouth and sucked off the juices. His eyes softened, and he grabbed my hand, tugging me off of the bed. “Come on. We have to go.”
After we threw on some decent clothes for the meeting with my mother, Ares took my hand again and led me to the backyard, where thirty of his best warriors were gathered. They were the same group of blood-loving, slaughtering warriors that Ares took on every raid.
Charolette and Marcel stood near the front of the group, glaring at each other and … fighting? Charolette had her arms crossed over her chest and was quietly yelling something at him.
What the hell had happened? Last night, they had been all lovey-dovey, and now …
When Marcel saw us, he walked up to Ares and grabbed his shoulder. “I don’t care what you fucking say. I’m not watching Charolette today. I’m going with you. I’m the best fucking fighter you have. I’m not babysitting.”
Charolette’s cheeks flushed, and she glared harder at him. “I’m not a baby. You’re just too fucking annoying to—”
“You’re staying here with her,” Ares said to Marcel.
“You should stay with Charolette,” Liam said, curling an arm around Charolette’s petite waist and pissing off Marcel even more. “Like you said, you’re the best fighter here. You can protect—”
“Don’t give me that fucking bullshit, Liam. You fucking stay back and protect her then.” Marcel stormed toward the other warriors, his silver locks covering his face. “If you fucking love her so much, you’d do that for your pretty fucking princess.”
Though I was secretly rooting for Marcel and Charolette—even though he was a complete ass sometimes—I glanced between Liam and Charolette. “Liam should stay,” I said. “If things go bad at my mom’s pack, we’ll need Marcel.”
And if Tony somehow escaped from our grip today—which he wouldn’t—I wouldn’t put it past him to try to take Charolette. She needed to stay here, not come with us.
Charolette peeked over at Marcel, who was talking—flirting—with one of the prettier warriors. Charolette pressed her glossy lips together, clenched her jaw, and looked at the ground, pulling her arms even tighter around herself, as if she was guilty of something.
My heart ached for her. I didn’t know what had happened, but I knew she was hurting.
“Liam, stay here. We don’t need you bringing Charolette today, like Marcel usually does. This isn’t a raid. Just”—he glanced at his sister and frowned—“watch her.”
Charolette’s blonde hair blew in the breeze. “You shouldn’t even be going, Ares. How many times do I have to tell you that the stone isn’t going to fix me? Nothing will.”
Ares growled, and Charolette huffed at him and stomped into the pack house, slamming the door behind her. My wolf pulled me toward her, but I held myself back. If I didn’t go with Ares, Tony would taunt him until all hell broke loose.
After Liam exchanged a few words with Ares, he followed Charolette inside the house. Ares addressed the warriors briefly and then watched them run in the direction of my mother’s pack.
Instead of running with them, he led me to one of the pack’s cars out front and told me to get in. “If we’re bringing Tony back, I’m not letting him run with us. We need a car,” he said, but I knew that it was secretly because of my shifting abilities.
And for the first time, I didn’t mind it. I didn’t mind him going out of the way to make sure I was comfortable. Sure, many people in Mom’s pack had done it before I met him … but Ares just … he made me feel like a person and not someone that needed to be taken care of.
It took a good few hours to drive to Mom’s pack. Thick fog lay heavily through the eerie forest. I stared out the window and looked through my text messages to Mom last night about visiting her with Ares today. I had sent three of them, and unlike the other messages I’d sent her, none of these ones had been delivered yet.
My heart ached. She’d blocked me. My own damn mother had blocked me.
Dad hadn’t, but he hadn’t responded.
When the fog cleared slightly, I finally started to recognize Mom’s property. I smiled at all the little hideouts where Jeremy and I used to go after sneaking out at night. But … that was all gone. All the past.
Ares parked the car in front of Mom’s pack house, and I sucked in a breath. His warriors were already scattered throughout the forest in case something went wrong. A handful of Mom’s warriors were in the backyard to the pack house, trying to gather as quickly as possible.
I hopped out of the car, followed Ares to the backyard, and prayed to the Goddess that everything went smoothly. All we wanted to do was talk, and she would’ve known that if she hadn’t blocked my number.
Tony, Mom, and some of her strongest warriors stood, guarded and ready for us.
“What is the meaning of this, Ares?” Mom asked, giving him that goddess-awful glare and refusing to even look at me. “You’ve broken our agreement.”
He stepped forward, his gaze fixed on Tony, who stared at me, not caring for a single moment that Ares was about to pounce on him if he wasn’t careful.
“Agreement is off,” Ares said through clenched teeth.
“Are you bringing her back?” Tony asked, finally looking at him. “Because I’d be happy to take her.”
Face contorted into one of pride, Tony pissed me the fuck off. This was all because of him. He had to be the alpha. He’d had to hide the stone from me. He’d had to talk to hounds behind my pack’s back.
I seized Ares’s wrist, stopping him from leaping at the stupid idiot who I’d once called lover.
Tony smiled at me and held out his hand. “Come on, Aurora. You don’t need to spend another day w
ith an alpha who slaughters people for fun.”
Ares growled again, his canines lengthening. My heart pounded in my chest, and I grasped harder on to him, digging my heels into the dirt and hoping I was strong enough to stop him from shifting.
Knowing that he was getting Ares angry, Tony smirked and stepped toward me. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, Kitten.”
Before I could stop him, Ares lunged at Tony, wrapped his entire hand around Tony’s neck, and lifted him off the ground as if he weighed nothing. Tony grabbed his wrist, trying to pull his arm away but not trying as hard as I knew he could. Something about him seemed off. He was acting too arrogant in front of Ares, especially after what Ares had done to him last time.
“Mars,” I said softly, grabbing Ares’s hand. “Think about Mars, Ares. Think about what we talked about. You can’t kill him. We need him.”
Ares’s grip loosened around Tony’s neck, his eyes fading into a lighter shade of gold. When I rubbed my fingers over his back, he tossed Tony to the ground, and I thanked the Goddess that he’d listened to me for once.
“You’ve let him change you, Aurora.” Tony rubbed his neck and shuffled to his feet. “He’s changed you so much. That spark in your eyes is gone. You look … tired even. Tired of keeping up this act of liking a man who could never love you.”
I had spent years trying to understand people, years when Mom wouldn’t let me train with the warriors because of my condition. I should’ve been able to figure out such a simple man … but I couldn’t.
“You should come back,” Tony said. “With your pack.”
“Ares’s pack is my pack,” I said to Tony. “More of a pack than you all ever were.”
“More of a pack …” Tony scoffed, shook his head, and looked around at all of Ares’s warriors surrounding us. Then, he turned to me, and I saw hell itself in his eyes— cruel, dark, and black. “They don’t know, do they?”
I rubbed my neck and swallowed hard, knowing exactly what he was talking about.
He took a threatening step toward me. “You think they’ll treat you the same? You think they’ll still protect you when you can’t even do the same for them? When you can’t even shift into your wolf?”
My heart dropped when he said the words out loud, and murmurs erupted over the thirty warriors behind me. All eyes were on me, and I wanted to deny the fact that I couldn’t shift … but … but it was true, and now, Tony was using it against me.
Ares ripped himself out of my grip and lunged for him again, but I firmly placed both my hands on his chest and pushed him back. My disability couldn’t get in the way anymore.
Tony took another threatening step toward Ares this time. “And you … you know you’re fucking screwing with her head. You’re lying to her too, acting as if nothing is fucking wrong with you, like you won’t crumble when your mother’s secret is out to the world.”
There was a glint of mischief in Tony’s eyes, and I was terrified that he was about to break Ares.
I pleaded with my eyes, begging Tony not to hurt him more. Once the god of war was truly unleashed, I wouldn’t be able to stop him from killing Tony and everyone who tried to talk him down.
“If you keep lying to her, you’re going to drive her fucking insane,” Tony said. “You’re going to find her just like you found your mom. Lying in bed, blood gushing from both of her wrists, sheets stained red.”
Chapter 38
Aurora
Ares growled, the sound rumbling through the forest like thunder on this foggy day. It came out vicious and jarring, but all I heard was the pain and heartbreak behind it. This must’ve been what had stolen that boyish smile from him. His mother must’ve committed suicide, and he must’ve found her.
Before I could settle my racing thoughts, the yard before me turned into a battlefield. Ares’s warriors pounced on Mom’s warriors, all of them clawing at each other’s underbellies, ripping fur from their enemies’ flesh, blood spilling everywhere.
Wolves leaped into the air around me, latching their teeth into each other’s neck. I gazed around at everyone who moved too quickly for me to keep up with and locked eyes with my furious mother. She howled to the dawn sky, her voice cutting through my mind link, like it had done hundreds of times before.
“What have you done?” she asked, shifting into her wolf. “We will die because of you.”
I clenched my jaw. “This isn’t my fault. We came here peacefully.”
She killed one of Ares’s warriors, her canines digging into his flesh. With bloodied teeth, she looked over at me. “You brought him here, knowing he’d kill us.” She turned away from me and ran through the pack, finding other warriors to fight.
But she was wrong.
Since I had been with Ares, he hadn’t killed anyone, except hounds. And I didn’t think he would willingly kill unless provoked so much that his wolf took total control of Ares and Mars.
In the distance, my father howled. Marcel stood over him in his large silver-furred wolf with teeth dripping with blood.
I sprinted as fast as I could and threw my body in front of my father’s, holding out a hand. “No,” I said up at Marcel, feeling his wolf’s thick saliva fall onto my thighs. I pointed at him, hoping to the Moon Goddess that he wouldn’t attack him or me. “Not my father. Anyone but my father.”
Marcel stared at me with rage, and I stared back just as strongly.
“An order from your luna.”
After growling under his breath, he ran back through the crowd.
Dad pushed his head against my forehead. “Aurora, you need to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “You need to get out of here. Find somewhere to hide once this is all over. Get the rest of this pack to safety. We will talk when I get back to Ares’s pack.”
“I can’t leave your mother,” he said through the mind link. A flash of lightning cut through the fog. “She’s my mate. I need to protect her with everything I have.”
I frowned at him, my heart hurting. Mom was cruel to me, and he sometimes fought her because of it … but he loved her like all mates did. No matter what, how could I think he’d leave her? But I wanted someone in my family to survive this.
“Just, please, don’t get hurt.”
“Tell Ares to stand down,” he said, brushing his snout into my hair.
The touch was so soft, and I remembered how he used to do that when Jeremy and I were both pups. We’d run around the backyard, and Dad would chase us. We had been happy. So fucking happy.
I pushed my face into his, feeling torn. “I can’t.”
“You’re his mate. You can tame him.”
“I could.” I definitely could. “But I don’t want to.”
The words made Dad recoil and stare at me with such confusion. “Aurora …” His voice sounded so fragile in my mind, like he didn’t recognize the name or who I was anymore. “He’s changing you.”
My chin trembled slightly, and I shook my head. “No, he’s not, Dad. He’s giving me a backbone. He’s making me strong.”
“He’s killing your pack members. He’s turning you against us. For no good reason at all.”
Dad slowly backed away from me, and I reached out to touch his fur one last time. Yet he recoiled again. And I felt that common feeling of loneliness and rejection that I had always felt in this pack … just not ever this much from him.
“Dad, he’s a good man. I promise.”
After staring at me for another few long moments, Dad turned away from me and ran toward Mom. I sat there on my knees and tried hard to hold back my cries. Every single time I was here, I just hurt and hurt and hurt, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
Why had the Moon Goddess given me this life? Why couldn’t my family just love me for me? Was that too much to ask of her?
Ares growled harshly, and I broke my gaze with Dad’s departing figure. The stench of blood was unsettling, and I screamed at the top of my lungs for everyone to stop, but nobody heard me. I hadn’t
wanted this to happen. I hadn’t wanted there to be a fight.
Blood dripped from my mate’s mouth, off of every single tooth. His eyes were so black that I couldn’t see any trace of his browns or golds. Those claws dug viciously into anyone that got in his way. I watched two, three, four of Mom’s warriors die by his hand.
He was darkness. He was war. All he wanted was for everyone to hurt.
My heart clenched, and I stared around at everyone. Everything seemed as if it were moving in slow motion. Men. Women. Wolves. Everyone was fighting, and nobody knew the reasons why. They were fighting to fight. They were fighting because they had been born into war, born with these innate feelings to kill to protect. They were fighting because they didn’t know any better.
And I could do nothing about it.
I reached behind me into my pocket, wanting to grasp my silver knife for protection because I didn’t know if Mom would command her warriors to capture and kill me too. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to break Ares. But when I went to grab for it, it wasn’t there. I must’ve dropped it somewhere.
After scanning the bloody battlefield, the knife shimmered under another flash of lightning just at the edge of the field before the woods. I sprinted to it, weaving through the wolves attacking from every direction. And just as I was about to grab it, someone latched their teeth into my shoulder and shoved me to my back.
Tony landed on top of me, paws on each of my shoulders, his soft eyes staring down. “We have to go.” He looked toward the forest, as if searching for something, and then turned back to me.
I shoved my hands into his chest and pushed him off of me. “What is your fucking problem?” I clutched my shoulder to stop the bleeding. “I’m not going anywhere with you. How do you know so much about Ares? Why have you been meeting with the hounds? What are you planning, you stupid piece of—”
Something growled deep in the woods, and my heart stopped.
Oh Goddess, no. Please don’t let that be what I think that is. Please don’t let it be hounds. Anything but hounds.