by Emilia Rose
After letting out my last few tears, I grabbed the stone, feeling its power swell in my hand, and stood on shaky legs. Instead of taking the stone back to the pack house to keep as a memory of Jeremy, I placed it at Ares’s feet, unable to look him in his eyes.
When I turned around to get Jeremy, Ares shifted behind me. “Aurora, let me help you,” Ares said.
“No.” I scooped Jeremy’s dead body into my arms, held him tightly to my chest, and walked through my pack members to Elijah and his pack, who waited on the outskirts of the forest to show their respect. Tears still streamed down my face, but I bit back my cries.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Elijah, handing him Jeremy. “He was hurting. He couldn’t go on any longer.” My lips trembled. “Please don’t hate me like my family does. I’m sorry, Elijah.”
Elijah took Jeremy in his arms, a tear falling down his cheek, but he quickly pushed it away. He took a deep breath, inhaling Jeremy’s unfamiliar scent, and closed his eyes. “I could never hate you, Aurora.”
My chest tightened. At least someone I had known before this whole mess didn’t hate me for everything I wasn’t … or was.
I grasped Elijah’s elbow in my hand and leaned my forehead against his shoulder, staring down at Jeremy. “Please,” I said quietly, “when you’re finished mourning, take him to my father. He deserves to see Jeremy one last time.”
I couldn’t face Dad right now. It was too painful to even think about him. Last night, I’d told him that Jeremy was alive, but now, he was dead, and I had been the one to kill him.
Without looking back at the pack, I walked through the eerie forest to the pack house. Everything was silent, not even the birds chirped in the trees above. I wiped some tears from my face, walked into the house, and collapsed in bed with Ruffles. She walked around on my stomach for a few moments and then settled on my chest, rubbing her face against my cheek.
All I felt was pain. What had I done? Why had I done it? Dad was right. Maybe Ares had changed me into a cold-blooded monster. Was this who I had always been? Had I just really killed my brother?
The front door opened, and Ares shuffled through the house. He didn’t call my name. He didn’t make much noise. And he didn’t barge into the room like I’d thought he would.
Instead, he knocked quietly on the door and said, “Aurora, can I come in?”
I pet Ruffles and gave my weakest, “Mmhmm,” as a response.
The door opened, and Ares walked into the room with that stupid stone in his hand. Eyes an unusual delicate brown, he crouched by the bed. I sat up and kicked my feet over the edge.
Instead of meowing at me like she usually did, Ruffles hopped off me and lay by my side, her tail brushing against my back.
Ares took my hands and placed the stone in them. “This is yours,” he said.
I shook my head and pushed it back to him. “No, it’s Charolette’s. Give it to her.”
He unfolded my fingers and laid the stone on my palm. “If you want her to have it, you give it to her,” he said with such finality. There was no room for argument in his voice or on his face. This wasn’t a rash decision he had made … he meant this.
The stone emitted a slight white glow, its power radiating through me. I wanted to be able to shift more than anything, but I wanted Ares to be happy, and I wanted Charolette to have a chance at a long life.
My fingers curled around the stone, and eventually, I placed it on the nightstand. Ares squeezed my knees lightly and brushed his fingers across my lower lip. I stared down at him, wanting to feel something other than this pain, so I grasped his face in my hands and pressed my lips to his.
Ares tensed and pulled away. “Aurora,” he said breathlessly before I kissed him again. All I wanted was to feel like myself, to be happy and to feel good. He pushed me away. “Stop, Aurora. You’re hurting.”
“Please, Ares …”
Desperate. I was desperate to feel good, to feel something.
When he didn’t say anything, I pushed my lips back against his. The pain didn’t subside like I’d hoped it would, but Ares dulled it. I pulled him onto the bed with me and wrapped my legs around his waist, tugging his hips closer to mine. He was sweaty and bloody and dirty, but I didn’t care.
After one long kiss, he pulled away from me again. “Aurora, let me hold you.”
“I don’t want to be held.” I grasped his hand and held it against my core. “I want to forget.”
Forget about everything that had happened in my family.
He closed his eyes, blowing out a low, steady breath. “Kitten …”
“Please, Ares.”
After sighing one more time, he laid light yet passionate kisses down my neck, his mouth lingering by his mark. Then, his lips traveled lower and lower, down my chest and abdomen, up my thighs, right to my core.
My body stayed tense the entire time as I tried to keep everything bottled up inside of me. I clutched on to the yellow bed sheets and let my tears fall when he kissed my folds. I bit my lip to hold back the cries, knowing that if I even let out one whimper, he’d stop.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out in pain. I wanted Jeremy back.
Ares maneuvered himself between my legs, letting my thighs rest on his shoulders. He peeled my folds apart with his fingers, his tongue moving back and forth against my clit. I let out another breath, this time a shaky one.
All I had left was Ares. Dad would hate me. Elijah would go back to his pack. Ares was my only family left, and he accepted me … he always did, even when I thought I was weak. More tears slid down my cheeks, and I sucked in a breath, trying so hard not to make a sound.
When my abdomen tightened and I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I let out a quiet whimper. Ares gazed up at me, but I gripped his hair to hold him down.
“Please, don’t stop, Ares. Please.” There was so much desperation in my voice. Hell, there was so much desperation inside of me. All I wanted to do was feel loved for a few moments. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted this.
“You’re crying, Kitten,” he said, words soft and almost inviting.
“Please …” My voice was quiet, and I stared down at him with tears in my eyes. “Please, Ares. You’re all I want right now.”
He gazed at me, brows furrowed together, and dipped his head between my legs again, reaching up to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I curled my fingers into his hair, unable to stop the cries. “Goddess, I love you, Ares.”
Alpha Ares, the infamous god of war, was the most loving man I had ever known. From standing over Jeremy and me during the fight to letting me decide what to do with the stone … he was more than those rumors. He was mine, and I was his.
To care for.
To love.
To protect.
Ares kissed back up my body, his lips pressing hard to my skin. When he reached my lips, he placed a lingering kiss on them and then rolled onto his side, cradling my head in his arms and holding my body tightly to him. “Come here, Kitten.”
Chapter 50
Aurora
One week had passed since I’d killed Jeremy. There hadn’t been another hound attack, and the Malavite Stone had stayed where I put it—locked in my nightstand. Everything had returned back to as normal as it could get.
But I needed to do a couple things, including talk to Dad, before I could say anything was normal. To say that I was nervous to see him was the understatement of the damn century. Nightmares filled with Jeremy’s dull and dead eyes had haunted my dreams and kept me up every night.
And since last night hadn’t been any different, I hopped out of bed at five a.m., kissed Ares on the forehead, and decided that I would get it out of the way and talk to Dad. He hadn’t asked to see me or to be let out of the cage either. But Ares went down there every day to make sure he was being fed well and had everything he needed.
When I reached the prison doors, the guards nodded to me and parted. I took a deep breath, walked do
wn the creaky wooden stairs, and watched sunlight flood in from above.
Dad slept against the stone wall instead of on the mattress I’d made some of the guards bring down earlier this week. I stood there for a good ten minutes, just staring at him and wondering what the hell I was going to say to my father.
“Dad,” I whispered, stepping away from the silver bars.
He grumbled to himself and moved around to get into a more comfortable position.
“Dad, it’s me, Aurora.”
After blinking his eyes open, he clenched his jaw. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you,” I said.
“After a week, you finally want to see me?” He leaned against the wall and shook his head at me. “You should’ve come see me right after you killed your brother.” His words sounded so vile, so hateful, so full of grief.
I pressed my lips together. I had taken everything away from him … his mate and his son.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said, trying so hard to keep my voice steady. “He’d begged me to do it, so the hounds couldn’t.”
“Elijah had the damn courage to come down here, and you didn’t.” His jaw twitched. “And that, Aurora, is the reason your mother didn’t want you to be alpha. You don’t have the strength to deal with half the shit it takes to lead a pack.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the tears well up in my eyes. Had I done this to him? Had I made him so hateful and so angry with me that he thought I didn’t deserve to lead?
He stood to his feet and snatched some fresh bread from the only table inside the cell with him. “At first, I thought that Ares wasn’t a good fit for you. But now, I see that you two are perfect for each other. You don’t care who you hurt or what you take from people. You just do it without a single care in the world.”
Something inside of me snapped. He could talk about me all he wanted, but he couldn’t continue to disrespect Ares when he didn’t have the first clue as to who he truly was.
I stepped closer to the silver bars, jaw clenched. “You want to know what?”
Dad looked over, surprised I had raised my voice to him, but I didn’t care anymore.
My whole life, I had grown up in fear of Ares’s pack and of Ares himself … but I shouldn’t have been. I should’ve been afraid of believing in these lies that people made up to make me fear him. I should’ve been terrified of Mom and Dad for believing them too.
“I’m done with everyone judging Ares based on those rumors. The whole fucking time I’ve been here, the only people he has killed were hounds because they attacked us,” I said, feeling the anger pump through my veins. “Yes, we went to Elijah’s. And, yes, Ares hurt him … but he didn’t kill any wolves. Not until Tony hurt him.”
“He’s ruthless,” Dad said, taking a threatening step toward me.
“Did you ever think that the rumors were just rumors because people have seen him fight in battle, because he’s relentless and he stops at nothing to make sure his pack is happy and healthy and protected?”
Dad suddenly became quiet, turned back around, and picked at the bread again. Dull light shone in through one of the small windows up above, hitting the dirty concrete below his feet.
I took a deep breath, hoping to calm myself down before I broke even more. “I’m the monster, not him. If you’re going to blame anyone for all your misery, blame me because he doesn’t deserve it, and I’m not going to let him feel any more hurt.” The world had been too harsh to him already. “I’m the one who brought Ares and a few of his warriors to your pack, but all I wanted was to try to do some good. Hell, all I ever wanted was to help people, and that’s why I wanted to be alpha.”
“And who the fuck were you helping when you brought them to slaughter everyone in your mother’s pack?” Dad asked, knocking the bread off the table and glaring over his shoulder at me. “Were you helping yourself?”
“I didn’t think he’d kill anyone because he hadn’t. Tony provoked him,” I clarified. “We didn’t go there to slaughter anyone … but I was helping Charolette, Ares’s sister. She has cancer. And Tony—the man who betrayed you—knew the hounds had the other half of the stone, which could help her.” I shook my head. “The stone heals people. It healed me. It healed Jeremy.”
If only I could’ve kept him alive …
“Your mother wanted to help her people too,” Dad said. “That’s why she traded you.”
“That’s a fucking excuse, Dad, and you know it,” I snapped. “She’d groomed Tony for years. She thought I was too weak. She gave me book after book after book to get out of her hair.” The pain inside of me festered until I could barely hold myself together. “She wasn’t a good person. She didn’t even try to protect us. Ever.” I took a deep breath and finally came to terms with what had happened all those years ago. “She let Jeremy die.”
Dad stormed up to the silver bars, grabbed them in his hands, and shook them. “Don’t you say that about your mother.”
“All I’m speaking is the truth.” I stepped closer to him and stared him right in the eye to show him that I wasn’t afraid or intimidated by him anymore. “She let him die, and then she did nothing to protect her pack.”
“She made the underground tunnels to save the pups if there ever was another attack, Aurora. Did you forget about that?”
“That was my idea, Dad. While she was recovering from the loss of her son—my brother—I’m the one who came up with that idea. I was the one who assumed the alpha position when she was too overcome with grief. It was never her, no matter what she told everyone else.” My jaw twitched. “I deserved to be alpha more than she did, more than Tony did, more than anyone in that fucking pack did.”
I turned away from him, tears welling up in my eyes again. “And now, I deserve all this pain from seeing my friends and family gone.” It was hard to admit, but I was strong enough to acknowledge my faults, to accept that I wasn’t the best person … but damn, did I try to be.
After taking a deep breath, I decided that I was done talking to him for now. I walked to the stairs. “Don’t think that your mate was an angel because she wasn’t, and neither are you.” And with that, I walked right out of the prison and slammed the door behind me.
I didn’t know what I could’ve done to be a better daughter or a better alpha in their eyes. To them, I had been and I always would be weak. But I knew that I wasn’t weak. I was stronger than they gave me credit for.
And if I hadn’t had Ares, I never would’ve realized it.
Chapter 51
Aurora
Standing at the top of the stairs for me, Mars smiled down at me with two pretzels in his hands. I closed the front door behind me and walked up the stairs, grabbing the saltiest one from him.
“Do you have a minute?” he asked, sucking in his cheek as if he was nervous.
Mars was rarely nervous.
Something must be wrong, and, Goddess, I didn’t know if I was ready for more drama. I already had so much shit to deal with; anything else might tip me right over the edge.
There was a bowl of hot cheese in the center of the table, which Ruffles was staring at from one of the kitchen chairs. Ares opened a bag of Ruffles chips for her and placed a couple at the edge of the table, so she could easily bat them off and munch on them.
He pulled out a chair for me, and I hesitantly sat, my heart racing fast. He sat next to me and stared between the table and the cheese.
“Mars?” I asked softly, needing him to just come out with it. All this silence made me feel uneasy. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s nothing wrong …” He paused for a long time. “I’ve just been thinking.”
I broke the pretzel into two pieces, dipped one into the bowl, and gazed over into his soft brown eyes. “What’ve you been thinking about?”
“About those pups that you rescued from your mother’s pack.” He swallowed hard. “Finding my mom dead in the bed screwed me up, and I don’t want those kids to end up
like me.”
My eyes widened, and I grasped his cheek from across the table, brushing my thumb over his slight stubble. “Mars, you’re not screwed up. Having both you and Ares makes you … you.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “But it took me a long time to accept that Ares and I wouldn’t ever be one again, that I’ll always be like this …” He swallowed hard. “I … didn’t have much of a support system after my mom died. Dad was … off in his own world. The only person I really could rely on was June, a family friend who’s also a therapist in this pack.”
I smiled at him. “You have me now.”
He grasped my wrist and rubbed his thumb in small circles on it. “I know. But those kids don’t know anyone here. I was thinking about having them over once a week to talk about what happened or … to help them adjust to their lives here. Have June come over too. Do you … think that’s a good idea?”
“You want to have a support group for the pups?” I asked, running my fingers over his knuckles. My heart swelled with an abundant amount of love for this man.
The god of war cared, for not only the people he loved, but also for people he barely even knew. Those rumors didn’t do him justice. He commanded the strongest pack, had the most land, and did so many things for himself … but he loved. Hard. And anyone who tried to get to know him would understand that, behind that violent man, there wasn’t only hurt and damage, but also so much love.
Mars scratched the back of his head, the mere idea looking as if it was making him uncomfortable when I had said it out loud. “If you don’t think it’s a good idea, then we don’t have to do it. I just thought—”
I placed my lips on his and pulled him into a kiss. “Of course I think it’s a good idea. It just surprised me, coming from you.” I cupped his chin in my hand and leaned my forehead against his. “And once I see how good you are with the pups”—I bit my lip softly and smiled—“maybe I’ll give you some.”