by Emilia Rose
“Second-chance mates?” I asked through the mind link to Ares.
Ares eyed them, leaned back in his seat, and relaxed for the first time tonight. “Goddess, I hope so. Get two guys off your tits. I don’t have to go after them.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and slapped him on the chest. “Stop it.”
He gave me a big lopsided smile and pulled me into his hard chest. “You know how crazy I am about you, Kitten.”
“More like psychotic.”
Elijah stuffed his hands into his pockets and sat in the booth, right beside Adrian. Adrian fumbled to scoot over and give the alpha some room. My lips curled into an even wider smile as I watched them. Goddess, if they weren’t second-chance mates, I would shed a damn tear. They looked so cute together already.
“Didn’t expect to see you two here,” Elijah said, wiping his palms on his black jeans. He glanced over at Adrian and offered him the same smile he used to give my brother. “I’m Alpha Elijah.”
Adrian swallowed hard, cheeks turning the lightest shade of pink. “Adrian.”
Unable to hold back my excitement, I smacked Ares on the thigh and grinned. Goddess, I loved love and fated mates, destinies that were bound to collide. My stomach fluttered with butterflies. Ares side-eyed me and rested his hand on my thigh, squeezing lightly.
After a few moments of staring at each other, Elijah tore his gaze away and gave me that don’t even think about it look. I had nagged him for years to find another man or woman who could make him happy. Maybe he’d finally found him.
“So,” Elijah started, “we’re preparing to dissect the hound tomorrow.”
“Already?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to run tests on him?”
“We ran some tests on him today. Everything came back normal, but there was something off about his blood. I haven’t been informed on what exactly it was, and my doctor hasn’t figured out much either. As soon as we do, I’ll let you know.”
I paused for a moment. “Have you … done any research on Jeremy?”
He tensed and looked at his hands. “I want him to rest in peace, Aurora. He deserves it.”
“You know he’d have wanted you to study him,” I said.
It was wrong to want to study my brother, but I needed to figure out how they’d brought him back to life. When the hounds had attacked, he had been ripped piece by piece. Even with necromancy, it would be a struggle to raise him from the dead. Sure, the stone might’ve played a part, but something else must’ve helped him too—the same things that’d helped all those other undead hounds.
“Let me study this hound first. I’ll see what information I get. If my doctor and researchers can’t find anything, I will consider it. But I’m not making any promises. He went through so much. I want him to run in peace with the wolves above.”
I nodded. If worse came to worst, we would need to use Jeremy to understand the hounds and give us some insight into this divine revenge because nobody understood it, especially me. But by the way that hound had watched me so intently earlier, I had a bad feeling this retribution had to do with me.
Chapter 9
Ares
Thank the fucking Goddess that Elijah and Adrian seemed to be mates because I’d loathed seeing Adrian with Aurora last night. I’d wanted to kill the bastard for even walking her home, never mind inviting her out tonight.
“Elijah”—I cleared my throat—“I need to speak with you.”
Elijah paused and glanced from Aurora to me, breathing hitched. The last time I’d talked with him alone, I’d beaten his ass for keeping the Malavite Stone a secret from me. Now, I needed to chat with him about something twice as important.
“Now.”
Aurora looked at me oddly but scooted out of the booth. I walked to the other side of the Pink Moon Tavern, near a group of rowdy wolves drinking to the new moon, so Aurora wouldn’t hear.
Elijah stopped a few feet away, pushing his hands into his jean pockets. “What do you want to talk about?”
“My sister doesn’t want the stone. I’ve asked her a hundred times over. I’ve had everyone ask her …” I started, my chest tightening. I’d searched long and far for that stone, so I could heal Charolette, and she refused to take it. “And if she doesn’t want it, I can’t force her.”
Elijah raised a dark brow. “You could force her. You’re Ares.”
“I’m not the man people think I am.”
So many rumors ran rampant around Sanguine Wilds about me, ones that had terrified my own mate at one point. And because of me and the way I acted sometimes, we were in a dire situation with little to no help from other alphas.
“So?” Elijah asked. “What do you want from me?”
“If she doesn’t accept the stone by the Luna Ceremony, I want you to place it in Aurora.”
Elijah crossed his arms and chuckled. “You want me to put the stone, which you tore every pack to the ground to get for your sister, inside your mate now?”
Growling, I lengthened my nails into claws and dug them into my palms to keep my anger caged. “Listen to me. I know that you and she have talked about it already. I know that you want to give it to her too. Aurora is … getting stronger every day with proper training. With the other half of the stone, she will be stronger and faster than me. She’d be unstoppable, and that’s exactly what we need with these hounds showing up all the time.”
Since she’d left her old pack, she had improved every day with Marcel training her. I found it astonishing that her mother never trained her as hard, especially because she was to be the next alpha. For years, her parents had thought of her as weak, as a burden, not able to be a true alpha because she couldn’t shift.
They were wrong. I had known it from the beginning.
“I can do that,” he said, leaning toward the window. The pink neon lights from the Open sign glimmered against his dark skin. “I told Aurora that I would rather put the stone into her than your sister. As long as she agrees to it, my doctor would be happy to do it.”
“Ares!” Aurora called over the busy tavern. She stood up in the booth, waving me over and tapping her wrist, as if to hurry me up. “We have dinner with your father!”
After I thanked Elijah, we walked back over to the table.
Aurora pushed Elijah into the booth next to Adrian. “Well, we’re off to Ares’s father’s house for dinner. So sorry that we can’t stay longer. Hope you both have a good night.” She winked at them, giggled, and pulled me out of the tavern.
When the door closed, she didn’t head for the woods but peeked in through the tavern window and ogled at Adrian and Elijah. “Oh, they are definitely mates.”
I grasped her arm and pulled her away, shaking my head but feeling warmth on the inside. “Kitten, you can’t peep on people.” I dragged her through the woods and watched her roll those big eyes of hers.
“I wasn’t peeping. I was, uh, fixing up my best friend with a man.”
“You’re a matchmaker now?”
She hummed to herself, a huge smile on her face. “Mayyybe.”
Chuckling to myself, I tightened my grasp on her hips and continued through the woods. No matter what she said about rumors and gossip, she loved it so much. Or maybe she just loved seeing people happy and in love because she hadn’t gotten that affection, growing up.
When we reached Dad’s house, he stood on the front porch, slapped me on the shoulder, and hugged Aurora. “How is my favorite couple doing?” he asked, ushering us into the house.
“Good, Mr. Barrett,” Aurora said.
“Everything okay?” he asked me when Aurora disappeared into the dining room.
“No.”
When Dad had been alpha, he hadn’t had to deal with the hounds. After the War of the Lycans, they had disappeared for hundreds of years. Now, they were back and were building an army for what we thought was to destroy Sanguine Wilds.
Without saying more, I walked into the dining room and saw Charolette and Marcel sitting at the table, tens
ely chatting with each other. I eyed them suspiciously and glanced at Aurora to see her smiling widely again, and then at Marcel.
“What are you doing here?”
Aurora playfully shoved my shoulder and pulled me down next to her. “He’s here to eat,” she said. Then, she took my hand and trailed it all the way up her thigh to her pussy, knowing exactly how to distract me. “Like you should be doing.”
My wolf howled inside of me, barking at me to shove Aurora into the back room and eat her wet little cunt until she couldn’t stand. Even after I’d told her I wanted to wait until the Luna Ceremony so her first time as luna would be relatively special, she continued to push and push and push me about fucking her. She knew that I didn’t have the patience or tolerance for her teasing. And her pussy smelled fucking amazing. I had imagined drawing my tongue up and down those folds so many times today.
Walking into the room with four boxes of pizza, Dad sat at the head of the table and across from us. Cheeks flushing, Aurora quickly pushed my hand away from her pussy, thinking that she was only going to give me a tease.
But I wanted more.
I always wanted more of her.
I slid my hand up her thigh, gently rubbed her pussy through her thin leggings, and drew my fingernails right down where her folds were. When she gushed through her panties and leggings, I slipped my fingers into her pants and nearly groaned at the way her juices coated her soft pussy lips.
“I heard the hounds attacked,” Dad said, grabbing a piece of pizza from the box.
“One hound. Northern borders,” I said.
Aurora stayed quiet next to me and pressed her lips into a tight line. I cupped her pussy in my palm and pushed my middle finger into her hole.
“Aurora killed him.”
Dad turned to Aurora with wide eyes.
She dug her claws into my wrist—a weak attempt to make me stop—and nodded. “Yes, I-I did.”
Wanting to ruin her in front of my family, I sank two more fingers into her pussy. “What’s wrong, Kitten?” I asked through the mind link, rubbing my thumb over her swelling clit.
She squeezed her thighs together, but I forced her legs apart to give myself even more access.
“Spread your legs and keep them spread. Be a good pup for your alpha.”
Aurora spread her legs for me without making it obvious to everyone else. As her pussy tightened around my fingers and her legs started to tremble, my cock twitched in my pants. I imagined slipping into her pussy right here and right now, taking her so ruthlessly. I’d had to stop myself so many fucking times lately. I had even jerked off and taken a cold shower this morning before she woke up.
I stared at the bare side of her neck, where Mars would mark her one day. I hoped it was fucking soon because part of me wanted to do it again and feel that rush of adrenaline pump through my veins. Though I respected Mars, I was a greedy bastard and still wanted to keep Aurora as mine.
Quickening my pace, I pumped my fingers in and out of her until she scooted to the edge of her seat and was trembling. “Is my Kitten going to come for me at my father’s dinner table?”
“Ares …”
“Alpha,” I corrected.
She glanced over at me, cheeks flushing. She parted her lips to say something, but when I curled my fingers around her G-spot, she pressed them back together to hold back a moan and stared down at her lap.
“Ask me for permission to come,” I said.
She shut her eyes tightly, her heart thumping so loud that I could hear it. My dick felt so fucking hard in my jeans, pressing against the restrictive material. I wanted Aurora to touch it, suck on it, slide onto it until my load pumped into her cunt.
“Please, Alpha, can I come?”
“Come for me.”
Pussy pulsing on my fingers, she started to tremble. I decided to toy with her a bit and draw all the attention to us. She had teased me one too many times.
Still playing with my mate’s pussy, I turned to Dad. “There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
Dad wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “What is it?”
Aurora squeezed my wrist and growled through the mind link at me for drawing attention to her, but I loved seeing her embarrassed and panting for me. I continued to move my fingers in and out of her, letting her ride out her orgasm.
“When Aurora and I went to the cave, they were trying to revive Mom,” I said, pulling my fingers out of her pussy and shamelessly sucking them into my mouth to calm myself. “Why do you think that hound wants Mom back?”
The thought of seeing Mom as nothing but bones had been haunting me for the past few days. All I wanted to do was go retrieve her bones, so she could rest in peace. But our pack wasn’t prepared to face that kind of challenge. We needed more information on the hounds and to build a larger army. I hoped that the necromancer in the south could help us in some way.
“Son,” Dad said, glancing nervously at Charolette. When he returned his gaze to me, I saw fear in his eyes. “There is something that I’ve never told you about your mother.” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. “I loved your mother more than anything else in this entire world, but I was your mother’s second-chance mate. And—”
Unable to hold my wolf back, I growled and ripped my claws into Dad’s wooden dining room table. I had a bad fucking feeling about what he was about to say next, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the truth.
“Don’t say it,” I said through clenched teeth. I ripped a chunk of the table off and crumbled it into dust in my fist. “Don’t fucking tell me that the bastard hound was her original mate. I’ll fucking lose it.”
Dad cleared his throat. “Fenris was your mother’s first mate.”
My body shook, trembled, twitched. I stared at the wall with fury pumping through my veins and terror running through my mind. I saw red. I saw blood. I saw betrayal. This couldn’t be fucking happening. It fucking couldn’t.
Charolette gasped. “Oh my Goddess …”
Aurora placed her hand on my shoulder, rubbing gently. “Calm down.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I seethed at him and postured over him, my own father. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me about that hound sooner. If I had known that they were second-chance mates before, I would’ve … I would’ve … I didn’t know what the fuck I would’ve done.
“I only ever heard stories of Fenris,” Dad said. “And I wanted you to see your mother and me differently. Second-chance mates or not, there was nothing but love between us. I wanted to show you strong love.”
“You knew the whole time who the fuck he was?” I shouted. “You knew?! I’ve been trying to figure it out for fucking years. Why didn’t you fucking tell me? Save me some time, so I could kill his fucking ass.”
Charolette kicked her leg under the table and slammed it into my shin. I growled at her, baring my canines, and shook my head in disbelief. Yet she didn’t back down and almost looked … offended about what I had said.
“Ares, please, relax,” Aurora said. “You’ve been looking for this man for years. Knowing his name wouldn’t have done you any good. He’s a hound. They come and go as they please. Don’t blame your father for this.”
“And he’s dangerous,” Dad added, motioning for me to sit back down. “More dangerous than anything this pack is ready for. Not even you. You don’t know what that man is capable of.”
Filled with rage, I ripped the tablecloth from the table, the boxes flying off the table and pizza spilling everywhere. “Don’t tell me what I’m ready for. I have an alpha mate. She has the stone. We will defeat them whether or not it kills me. And if it does, then she’s strong enough to lead our pack to victory.”
Aurora widened her eyes and sucked in a breath. “Ares,” she whispered softly, tugging on my hand. “Please, listen to what your father is saying. I can’t lose you. I won’t let you fight blindly anymore.”
“I’ll kill the fucking bastard with my own two ha
nds,” I said.
Charolette growled loudly, eyes glowing a fiery gold and fingers trembling in anger. “Stop it, Ares. Just drop it,” she said, voice sharp.
“If it wasn’t for him raping our mother, she’d still be alive.”
“He’s my father!”
I balled my hands into fists and glared at my sister. Charolette pushed her chair out, the legs screeching against the hardwood, and ran down the hall and up the stairs. Marcel watched her disappear and clenched his jaw, staring back and forth between me and the staircase.
Aurora stood up and walked to the hallway. “I’m going to see if she’s okay.”
Chapter 10
Aurora
“Charolette,” I called, walking down the wide hall and gazing at family pictures in wooden-carved frames.
After knocking on her door, I stared in awe at a picture of Mars with his mom, his arms wrapped around her thigh and him grinning from ear to ear, his front two teeth gone but his canines poking out through his gums. My lips curled into a frown as I listened to Ares scream at his father downstairs about keeping this secret from him for years.
While part of me wished Mars could be that happy again, I had little control over that man, and I didn’t blame him for blowing up at his father. I had always been fond of Mr. Barrett, but knowing that his son would become the alpha … he had to have expected Ares would find out sooner or later.
I knocked twice and placed my ear against the door. “Charolette, can I come in?”
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she opened the door. Almost instantly, she enveloped me into a huge hug, rested her head on my shoulder, and tugged me into the room. “I miss her. I miss my mom.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, staining my clothes but I didn’t care. “I hate when they talk about her because it makes me so sad.”
Not knowing what to do, I wrapped my arms around her and gently stroked her hair. I wasn’t going to tell her that it was okay because what had happened to her was devastating and losing a loved one was hard. Goddess, I didn’t know how many times I’d cried over Jeremy.