by Emilia Rose
Ares scarfed down another bite of the pancake. “Are you saying I’m—”
“Don’t even start.” I paced in front of him, thinking that the hounds would have killed her by now. Even with her wild self, she never left without warning me. Not once. I rubbed my sweaty palms together. “Do you think she got far? Will she be back? She doesn’t just leave without telling me.”
Placing his plate on the mattress—on the damn mattress, where it could tip over and spill easily—Ares looked under the bed, where she usually kept her blue hat. “Looks like she was off on a mission. Put her hat on by herself and left.”
Though my lips curled into a half-smile, I shoved his shoulder. “This is not the time for your jokes. That’s Mars’s job. You should be angry that she left and help me go find her.”
Ares arched a thick brown brow. “I can be lighthearted. I have to be the big, bad alpha for you all the fuckin’ time?” The words came out harsh, but then he smirked at me and shrugged his shoulders. “Remember how you want me to act, Kitten. I’ll do nothing less.”
I rolled my eyes and took a deep breath, calming slightly. At least, Ruffles had had a plan when she left. She wouldn’t go anywhere that she hadn’t been before or anywhere that she considered dangerous. Hell, she’d warned us away from the cave.
Ares rested his chin on my shoulder and clutched me tightly, claws digging into my flesh. “If she’s not back by tonight, we can go look for her. But … everyone in our pack already knows who she is. They’ll return her if they think she’s lost.”
“Everyone already knows who Ruffles is … but not me?” I asked, crossing my arms and tapping my foot.
Ares and Ruffles went out so much together that it was, as if Ruffles was his damn mate sometimes.
“Of course they know who you are. The Luna Ceremony is to introduce you officially.” He roughly grasped my jaw in his hand and pulled me closer to him. “There are far too many warriors in this pack who’d die to take you away from me. When they see my mark on your neck during the Luna Ceremony, they’ll know not to even think about touching what’s mine. And if they do, my teeth will be in their fucking necks as I rip out their throats.”
Pressing my thighs together, I sucked in a deep breath and tried to calm my wolf.
Exhibit A as to why Ares was the biggest tease.
After a few moments, he shrugged. “Ruffles, on the other hand, can be a ho.”
I nearly snorted and handed him back his pancakes, so they wouldn’t tip over on the bed if he decided to push me onto it and break his promise of waiting until the Luna Ceremony to fuck me again. “If she’s not back by five, then we’re going to go look for her. But now”—I placed my hands on his sweaty chest and pushed him out of the room—“we have an alpha meeting to attend.”
Unable to defeat thousands upon thousands of hounds ourselves, Ares had called a meeting with fourteen of the strongest packs in the region. It had definitely been short notice, but this issue was bigger than us. We needed other warriors and packs on our side for this problem. Hell, we probably needed a god or two on our side to conquer those soulless monstrosities.
After we dressed, I walked downstairs to the meeting room and hopped into one of the oh-so-comfy black office chairs, spinning from side to side.
“You’re wearing my shirt in the meeting?” Ares asked me, eyeing The Flaming Chariot shirt.
“Would you rather I take it off and be naked?” I asked, knowing that it would get on his nerves. For good measure, I added, “In front of all the other alphas?”
A guttural growl rumbled from his throat. He clenched his jaw, eyes intensifying into golden suns. The aggressive and quick-tempered Ares was back—my favorite parts of him. They might not be the most attractive features to the average person, but they made Ares himself.
“Don’t push me, Aurora,” he said through elongated canines.
I sauntered around the empty meeting room, drawing my finger down the brown table and then across Ares’s shoulders. “And if I do?” I asked, trailing my fingers down the center of his chest, down his abdomen, down the front of his pants before grabbing his cock inside his jeans. “What’s the big, bad alpha going to do to me?”
From the meeting room, I listened to the rustling down the hall. Knowing that I only had a couple moments before the other alphas came into the room, I stroked his hardening cock and smirked against his neck. Ares definitely wouldn’t be able to last until the Luna Ceremony.
He loved savage, rough fucking.
Wrapping a large, callous hand around my throat, he pulled me closer until our lips nearly touched. “You don’t want to know how I’d wreck your little pussy, Kitten.” He growled again, this time lower, “I’ll leave you a sopping mess under the table if you try anything during this meeting.”
Just before the other alphas came into the room, Ares pushed me away and smoothed out his jeans, which had the biggest damn imprint of his cock. I swallowed hard, sat, and pressed my thighs together, hoping to hide my arousal from the other men and women as they piled into the room.
Alpha Vulcan and Alpha Minerva from nearby packs walked into the room, followed by their betas and strongest warriors. Skilled in the craft of weapon creation, Vulcan stood stoically, nearly six feet tall with dark red hair and bronze skin. By his side, Minerva—one of the few female alphas in Sanguine Wilds—pursed her lips and softened her brown eyes at me.
They smiled at me—the lovely mate of the most ruthless man in all of Sanguine Wilds—which earned them a growl from Ares. I smiled back just to be nice, and Ares cut his eyes to me, large canines dripping with saliva emerging from under his lips.
“I decided to go braless today,” I teased through the mind link and winked at him. I hopped up from my seat, let Ares watch my nipples harden against my shirt, and squeezed his shoulder. “I’m going to go see where Elijah is.”
After walking into the hallway, I passed three more alphas and hurried to the front door to scan the woods for Elijah. I expected more alphas to come but didn’t see any in the woods. Not even five minutes after the meeting began. It looked like five alphas were the only ones to respond—or the only ones to take this threat seriously.
Ten minutes later, with disheveled hair and tired eyes, Elijah ran to me from deep in the woods. He shifted from a dark brown, almost-black wolf into his human. “Sorry I’m late. I was up all night.” He ran a hand across his face and stepped in through the back door. “I haven’t been able to sleep.”
I handed him clothes and glanced out the door. “Did you see anyone else on your way here?”
“No. Why?”
“Not even half the alphas we’d invited showed up.”
Elijah pressed his lips together. “That’s what happens when you tear up the entire world to find the stone. Nobody trusts Ares not to hurt them. Maybe at one point, they would’ve shown up to show their support. Not now.”
I groaned internally at Ares’s past. I had a mess to clean up, and I needed to restore peace quickly because these hounds weren’t a joke. A war was approaching faster than I’d originally thought it would.
Before Elijah could walk toward the meeting room, I caught his slender wrist. “Before we go in”—I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and teetered from foot to foot—“I want to talk about the stone. You’ll still put it in Charolette, right?”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I heard that she didn’t want it.”
“She doesn’t, yet.” I had tried all week to get her to agree to the surgery. Even after everything that Ares had done to find the stone for her, she didn’t want it. I swallowed hard, knowing that the worst was coming for her. “I’ll convince her. I just want to be sure that you can.”
“You know …” He lowered his voice, the hallway light glimmering off his sweaty, dark skin. “You know that you can always use the stone. Nobody will judge you for wanting to use the stone that kept your brother alive, so you can shift easily. If you do, you’ll always have a part of him with you.”
&n
bsp; The thought had crossed my mind more than once this past week. A piece of Jeremy … it was the only thing I had left of him. But I couldn’t accept it. I wanted it more than anything, but I had survived as a cripple for over a decade; I could survive longer. But without the stone, Charolette wouldn’t survive the next few years, never mind the rest of her life.
“No. I can’t do that to Ares. He hurts too much already.”
“Look, all I’m saying is that if you use that stone, you’ll be stronger than Ares. This war with the hounds means life or death for so many of us, and you might be the only one who can stop it. Jeremy said they’re after you for divine revenge. You shouldn’t go into battle without being as strong as you can be, especially if they want to kill you. With the stone, you’d be smarter and stronger—a deadly combination.”
At the thought, I sucked in a breath. Me? Stopping a war this huge? No way. I just couldn’t.
“Just think about it,” he said. Then, he walked down the hallway toward the meeting room, leaving me with one notion that even I had considered before …
If I used the stone on myself, I wouldn’t just be stronger. I would be alpha-strong, maybe even as strong as a divine.
“Elijah!” I called before he could disappear into the meeting room. I hurried down the hallway and frowned up at the dark circles under his dull eyes. It broke my heart. “I’m sorry that I didn’t ask you before, but … are you okay?”
Jeremy’s death had broken him the first time, but experiencing it for a second time must’ve been hell. Seeing his fated mate alive after over a decade of believing he had left this world for good, and then, in the same moment, watching him die again … that pain had to be so much worse than how I’d felt about killing my brother. That pain scarred for decades, centuries maybe.
Elijah pressed his lips together in a weak attempt to stay strong, and then his chin quivered. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s just hard sometimes, Roar. Really hard.” He sighed, shoulders slumping forward. “Every time I close my eyes, I see his face. I see every moment we spent together, every time he smiled at me. I think about what our lives could’ve been like if … if he hadn’t died. I wanted to spend every waking moment with him. But that’s just a distant dream now.”
“If you ever need to talk to someone, we can always get smoothies at Pink Moon Tavern, share stories of Jeremy, celebrate his life.” My lips curved down further, and I inhaled deeply. “Don’t be a stranger, Elijah. You know, Jeremy would have appreciated if we celebrated his life rather than grieved over his death.”
After a moment of silence, he nodded. “I would like that. Every Sunday, like we used to.”
Suddenly, the door opened. Ares glared down at us with his jaw tight and his golden eyes fixed on my proximity to Elijah. I ushered Elijah into the room and followed after him, plopping down in the seat across from Ares.
For someone who didn’t want to fuck me, he sure had been tense lately.
“Anyone else?” Ares asked through the mind link.
“No,” I said, the word so utterly heartbreaking as I thought it.
I completely understood the reason the other alphas didn’t attend, but this problem was so much bigger than Ares. Yet if I were an alpha and Ares had invited me over to chat about hounds, I would have declined too. Ares had the worst reputation around Sanguine Wilds. The news and gossip made him out to be a monster.
Sinking in my seat, I listened to the terrible thoughts racing through Ares’s mind. Some were from Ares himself, thinking about how stupid those alphas were for not showing up, but others were from Mars, scolding Ares for losing control on every pack they had fought.
But as if it didn’t affect him, Ares went on with the meeting. He had a bad habit of holding things inside of him until he broke into a thousand tiny silver pieces. I feared that one day, he’d lose his battle to the haunting thoughts and do something unspeakable.
“What about the stone?” Alpha Vulcan asked.
It seemed that the alphas were more interested in the stone than with the hounds.
Elijah and I tensed. While Ares wouldn’t allow anything to happen to me, telling other people that we had the stone was beyond dangerous. Who knew if they would sell us out to the hounds or attempt to steal the stone from me or Charolette?
“You’ve found it, I suppose,” Vulcan continued, strumming his claws on the wooden table. “If you hadn’t, you would still be out there, trying to rip each pack piece to piece.” He stared pointedly at Ares. “So, where is it?”
The words didn’t faze Ares, and this was the first time I’d really seen him doing alpha business. Not tearing apart packs. Not being the violent man everyone thought he was. A calmer, more collected, still don’t give a single fuck Ares.
“Yes, we have it,” Ares said. And then he carried on as if he hadn’t noticed the entire room tense when he admitted to hoarding the divine-like sphere somewhere. “We have bigger problems than the stone. We have undead hounds who are—”
“How do we know you have the stone?” Alpha Minerva asked, drawing her fingertip against her golden ring shaped like an owl. “And how do we know that we can trust you? How are we supposed to trust a man who can’t control his temper in war?”
Ares slammed his palms down on the table and growled, “We are not talking about me.”
From the frustration radiating off of him, I could tell that he was about to break, about to show them that they should be afraid of him and that they shouldn’t trust him so blindly. And I didn’t blame him for becoming irritated either. We had an enormous problem on our hands that nobody seemed to be taking seriously.
I stood up from my seat and grazed my fingers across his shoulder. It was dangerous to say and dangerous to do, but if I wanted everyone to trust what Ares said, I had to tell them everything. We had a forest, a pack, and a species to protect from this divine war.
“I have the stone,” I admitted.
Everyone quieted down. The alphas’ eyes glazed over to chat to their betas through their own personal mind links. Elijah’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, telling me to be quiet. But I couldn’t.
This needed to be done to save the entire fucking world from these monsters.
“I have the stone, and I have patience,” I said, trying hard to get everyone to trust me.
If they couldn’t trust the rageful Ares, maybe they could trust his nearly crippled mate.
“I will not let Ares blindly destroy anymore. I am only interested in annihilating the hounds. Now, if you don’t like that, you can leave and have your entire pack slaughtered by hounds like mine was, or you can stay and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do to defeat them.”
After shifting my gaze to each alpha and beta in the room, I waited for them to react. And when they nodded their heads, I sat back down to give my full attention to my mate. That misunderstood man deserved it.
“You said that they are raising wolves from the dead?” Alpha Vulcan said, disrupting the silence. When Ares nodded, Vulcan scratched his claw so hard against the wooden table that the paint came up. “There is a necromancer that I’m aware of about five hundred miles south, whose family specializes in raising people from the dead.”
Eyes widening slightly, I glanced at Ares. I hadn’t even thought necromancy was real, but I couldn’t unsee what I had seen in that cave. It was more than real. If we found a necromancer who could help us understand how it was done or how to reverse it, we could be one step closer to stopping the hounds from destroying the world.
“Get me more information,” Ares said to Vulcan. Then, he looked at Elijah. “We also held off on killing a hound this morning. He’s locked in our prison. Take it back to your pack and study it.”
Elijah perked up, his eyes actually glowing for the first time since he had seen Jeremy alive. Excited, he quickly nodded in acceptance. Though he was an alpha, he and his pack specialized in the sciences, and he was the biggest dork for anyth
ing medical-related. He’d been obsessed—hard-core obsessed—over the stone and begged the doctor to let him into the room during my first surgery.
As the alphas fell back into a discussion about how we’d tackle the hounds, one thing was clear to me. We might’ve made some progress today, but it wasn’t enough. We needed to work faster before the undead beasts started to wreak havoc across the lands.
I feared that once they did … nobody would be able to stop them.
Chapter 5
Aurora
“Ruffles!” I shouted when I got home. I hurried to her yellow-accented bedroom with the cracked window, empty bed, and her blue hat missing. She hadn’t made it home yet, which made me even more nervous.
With autumn sweeping across Sanguine Wilds, the sky became darker earlier in the day. I didn’t want Ruffles to get lost somewhere in the woods, not knowing how to get home. She’d be an easy prey for a hungry hound.
After grabbing a light-purple jacket, I rushed down the stairs and mind linked Ares—who was still meeting with the other alphas—that I wasn’t waiting any longer. I needed to make sure Ruffles was safe. If I lost her, I would lose it. She had been with me since Jeremy died the first time.
Stomach in tight knots, I rushed down the asphalt streets toward town. Ruffles never stayed out this late. If she left, it was only for an hour or so … not for the entire day. Some wolves ran past me, bowing their heads toward me in respect. Feeling weird about asking about my cat, I politely nodded back and continued to peer into the alleyways.
Ruffles was too prim and proper to hang out in back alleys, but she’d stopped in one yesterday after our walk. Maybe she had come back for some ungodly reason. Maybe.
Wind whipped through the town, blowing my hair in all directions and making me feel like the mythical woman Medusa, who had restless snakes for hair. I pulled my hood up to shield my face from the blistering breeze.
Couples walked past me on the sidewalks toward The Flaming Chariot. High schoolers gathered outside of Mad Moon Grocery. I weaved between herds of people to try to find my damn cat. She must’ve really wanted to give me a heart attack or something.