by Emilia Rose
“Aurora,” he growled low, warning me not to test him.
But I wanted to test him all day because I could handle everything he gave me. He just wouldn’t be able to handle himself—before becoming a wreck in his pants.
I stared up at him and pushed a finger into my wet pussy, moaning softly. “All you have to do is shove your big cock into me …” I drove in another finger and clenched. “Thrust me hard against the headboard.” I thrust my free hand into his hair and forced him to watch my fingers as I pleasured myself. “Pump all your cum into me until I’m full with your pups.”
When all he could do was tense, I smirked and pulled my fingers out of my pussy, shoving them into his mouth. “Here’s a taste.”
After I pulled out my fingers, I pressed my legs together and rolled away from him and off the bed. “But if you don’t want it, I can go play with myself in the other room, let you listen to my moans all night long, let you stroke your cock to me, wondering how good you’d feel in—”
Before I could continue, he seized my hips, tossed me onto the bed so I landed on my stomach, and climbed on top of me from behind. A rush of heat warmed my core. Alpha Ares was exactly how I wanted him—on the verge of losing complete control.
He thrust my legs apart and ground his hard cock against me from through his pants. “Is this what you want, Kitten?” he asked into my ear, grabbing my hand and forcing me to grope him.
My pussy clenched, and I nodded my head. “Don’t you want to please your luna?”
After swiftly pushing down his pants, he rested the head of his cock against my entrance and pressed me hard against the mattress, leaning over me and curling a hand around the front of my neck, his lips by my ear. “You want me to lose all fucking control? Is that what you fucking want?”
Instead of giving me time to answer, he shoved himself into me until his hips met mine. I clenched around him and whimpered, my pussy full with his huge, veiny cock.
He growled into my ear, “Fucking answer me.”
“Yes,” I breathed out. “I want to see you lose control.”
He slowly pulled himself out, and then pushed himself back into me in one long stroke. After curling his hand around my thigh, he rolled us over, so my back rested against his chest. He held my legs open wide and slammed himself deep inside of me, my pussy clenching.
“Harder, please,” I moaned out, pleasure pumping through me.
When he brushed his callous fingers against my swollen clit, I moaned. Wave after wave of pleasure pumped out of me, yet he continued to tease my clit, holding my legs far apart and peering over my shoulder to watch my pussy quiver.
“Mine,” he said into my ear.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yours.”
He picked up his pace, thrusting faster inside of me, and snaked a hand around my throat. “You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
He slapped my clit, and I released on him again and nodded my head.
“Yes,” I cried out. “Yes, I love it. Fuck me harder. I want to feel your cum. All of it.”
He groaned against me and pounded harder inside of me. He growled into my ear and sucked harshly on the bare side of my neck, right where Mars would put his mark soon. “I promised Mars that I wouldn’t mark you, that I’d leave this side of your neck bare.”
I leaned my neck away, his canines pricking my skin. He let out a guttural growl.
“I won’t sink my canines into it and claim it as my own”—Ares strummed his fingers against his mark on my neck—“like I did here.” He sucked harsher on the skin, definitely leaving love marks. “But tomorrow, Mars will see that every part of you belongs to me; even his mark will lay atop the skin that I had in my mouth, skin that you want me to mark.” He lifted his nose and parted his lips right by my ear, stilling inside of me. “Fuck, Kitten.”
Shifting his hips so he pushed more of himself up into me, he rolled us onto our sides.
“You can take it out,” I said, wiggling in his hold. “You came, didn’t you?”
He wrapped his arm around me, cupping my pussy in his large hand. “This is my pussy, Kitten. You told me if I fucked you, I could do what I wanted with it,” he said, smirking against my neck. “So, I’m going to keep it inside of you, making sure all my cum stays inside of your tight cunt for as long as I want.”
My entire body tingled, and I clenched on him again, trying to stop my racing thoughts. I rested my head on the pillow and closed my eyes, breath hitched, wolf pleased, and thoroughly fucked.
He was right. He could do whatever he wanted with me tonight, and I’d let him.
Chapter 13
Mars
With my white Flaming Chariot T-shirt hanging off her body in shreds, Aurora struggled to squirm away from the hound bastard at the foot of the bed. He snatched her ankle and yanked her to the edge of the mattress, forcing himself between her legs and fondling her in places only I should touch.
“Stop!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face. Blood dripped down her throat from the large claw marks in her neck and pooled by her collarbone, her skin paling. “Please, stop! Don’t touch me!”
I roared at Mom’s rapist and tried so hard to move, but I felt glued to the spot near the door. With heavy legs and a racing heart, I clutched my chest. Aurora … he couldn’t take Aurora from me.
She screamed and kicked him, punched as hard as she could. But she wasn’t strong enough to push him off of her. He grabbed her tighter, claws digging into her skin and ripping the rest of her clothes off to leave her bare to him.
Half of the Malavite Stone glowed brightly on our nightstand, and I cursed myself for not giving it to her sooner or forcing her to take it. We had thought Fenris was after the stone, but he had been after her the whole time. He wanted to do to her what he had done to Mom as I watched helplessly from the door.
Fenris flipped her over so she sat on all fours facing me, pushed himself between her legs, and shoved three sharp claws into her. She shrieked and grasped the sheets as droplets of blood spilled down her thighs.
“Please,” she pleaded, hiccuping, “please, stop …”
After thrusting his fingers into her harder, he pulled out and gripped her left shoulder in one hand and dug his claws into the back of her neck with the other, right above the Malavite Stone that helped Aurora live a decent life. She froze—almost instinctively—as if she couldn’t move, as if she was immobilized from the action.
My heart pounded in my chest, and I growled at her to move, to struggle, to do something to get away from him. I didn’t care if he ripped the stone out of her. I didn’t care if she couldn’t walk anymore. I didn’t care if she was paralyzed for the rest of her life. I could make that better for her as best as I could.
But I couldn’t take away the pain I’d see on her face every day if he raped her, the shame, the guilt that she shouldn’t ever have to feel. He couldn’t destroy someone else that I loved just for the hell of it.
“Come here, Kitten,” I begged, my lips trembling. I tried to move but couldn’t. “Please, Kitten.”
She stared at me, her entire body frozen, except her eyes, which looked so helpless and so glossy.
“Don’t stop struggling.”
For a second time, I found myself unable to help the one person I cared about the most. I was weak. Totally and utterly weak. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. I needed to protect my mate. It was what I had been made to do. If I couldn’t do that … I didn’t deserve to fucking walk this earth anymore.
As she knelt, incapacitated and defenselessly with a look of sorrow on her face and trembling lips, he rubbed the head of his dick against her entrance and thrust himself into her. A tear slid down her cheek, yet she still couldn’t move her limbs.
“I-I’m so-so-sorry,” she managed.
“Stay strong, Kitten …” I pushed myself to move. I had to move. I had to help her. “Stay strong for me. Please.” My feet felt like stone, heavy and anchored. “Don�
�t let him win. Don’t let him take you too. You’re so much stronger than you think.”
Aurora’s body jerked back and forth as he raped her. Blood flowed down her thighs and down her back and around her ribcage from his grasp on the Malavite Stone. More tears streamed down her face, staining our bedsheets.
Fear ran through every one of my veins, as I could do nothing but watch. I saw Mom in her eyes, the look of shame she had worn on her face every day, her dead body lying in the bed with a good-bye letter to her children and her mate.
“No,” I whispered, crouching down in the corner and wrapping my arms around myself. “No, Goddess, no.”
Fenris used Aurora to thrust deeper into her, his claws sinking further into her flesh. The life faded from Aurora’s eyes, all that liveliness and hope and happiness completely gone. Just gone. Just like Mom.
After grunting, he pulled out of her and made me watch his cum mix with blood dripping out of her pussy. With his hand lodged in her back, he tossed her around like she was a rag doll.
“Mine,” he said to me, kissing her on the neck but staring at me. “She’s mine. Not even an alpha like you can stop me from taking her. With or without Ares, you’re weak, Mars. I’m coming for her.”
Then, he tore the stone out of her spine and snapped her neck, letting her lifeless body smack against the bedpost with a thump and onto the ground. Blood leaked from her throat, creating a sanguine puddle underneath her.
Fenris disappeared into thin air, and I finally found the strength to move my legs. I doubled over Aurora’s dead body and clutched her to my chest.
“No!” I pressed my hands against the back of her head and her neck to stop the blood, but it kept pouring out of her. “No,” I said softer this time, body trembling back and forth. “Please, Aurora, don’t leave me. You’re the only thing I care about, my only reason for living anymore.”
“Mars,” she said softly. But her eyes weren’t open, and her heart wasn’t beating.
“Someone, help me,” I screamed. But I was all alone. “He killed her. He killed my mate.”
“Mars,” she said again.
I squeezed my eyes shut. How was I hearing her? How was I—
Aurora wrapped her arms around me from behind and cradled my head. “Mars, stop. It’s just a bad dream,” Aurora said into my ear, pulling the hair off my sweaty forehead. She rocked us back and forth in our bed. “I’m here.”
Blinking my eyes open, I looked at the foot of the bed.
No body. No blood. No dead Aurora.
Realizing that I’d had the worst nightmare of my life, I squeezed her hand tightly, as if she would disappear if I didn’t. Her heart beat evenly against my back, her sweet scent drifting into my nostrils. She continued to rock us until I could finally breathe again.
“I’m here,” she whispered, kissing my neck. “I’ll always be here for you.”
I turned in her hold, cupped her jaw, and stroked my thumb against her cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said, so desperate to hear her forgiveness. It had just been a dream, but it’d felt too real, too damn real.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” She stood, pulled me to my feet, and walked us to the bathroom. “A warm bath always calms you down. We can talk about your dream, if you want.” She turned on the water and stopped it when the tub filled halfway. “Come on.”
Seconds away from a panic attack, I stood by the bathroom door with trembling fingers and a racing heart. I swallowed hard, stared between her and the bath, and pressed my lips together. I wanted to protect her from the truth—that Fenris was coming for her—but I needed to tell her everything.
I wasn’t strong enough to face this alone. Neither was Ares.
Aurora walked toward me in her Flaming Chariot nightshirt and grasped the waistband of my shorts to pull them down. She crouched down to the floor and grabbed for my sock. “Let me take these off you,” she said, stripping them off when I lifted my foot. After she removed both socks, she grasped my shaky hand and led me to the bath. “Get in.”
“You first.”
She glanced at me for a few moments and then stripped off her shirt and sat in the bath, scooching forward so I could sit behind her. For the briefest moment, I imagined her sitting in a tub of her blood similar to the pool of blood where she’d lain lifelessly inside my dream. I closed my eyes, shook my head, and sat behind her in the sudsy water.
Wrapping one arm around her waist, I took the soapy loofah from her and drew it across every inch of her bare chest. She leaned back, rested her head on my collarbone, and stared up at me, the ends of her brown hair wetting in the water.
After a moment, she frowned. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Trailing the loofah across her neck, I imagined scrubbing the blood off it and reminded myself it had been a nightmare and nothing more. It wasn’t real life, but it could be. It damn well could be one of these days.
Releasing the loofah from my grasp, I let it float in the tub and gently caressed Aurora’s skin. This woman was my mate. She was the only thing that mattered to me. I couldn’t let her continue to walk about the pack and through the forest without thinking about her safety.
She needed the stone. She’d be strong with the stone.
“Fenris is coming for you, Aurora,” I whispered.
A lump formed in my throat. The monsters that my therapist, Denise, had called anxiety and panic slithered up my spine like unwanted serpents. They weren’t so much monsters to me than they were part of my damn soul. I couldn’t remember a day in my life I had gone without them. It was almost as if they had been ingrained in me since the beginning of time, even before this lifetime.
She turned in the water and straddled my waist, tucking some hair behind my ear. “What do you mean?”
“My father told me at dinner. Our pack is cursed. Fenris is coming to take you away from me, and I can’t protect you.” I licked my dry lips and looked between us, ashamed that I couldn’t save her in my dream. “Just like I couldn’t save my mother from his wrath.”
“He wants the stone,” she said. “He doesn’t want me.”
I pressed my lips together, so they wouldn’t tremble. I couldn’t stand losing this woman. She was everything to me. She gave me so much strength to get through the days. If I lost her, I’d fail at being a mate, a wolf, and an alpha.
Somehow, someway, I felt like I’d had these thoughts before. Something inside of me knew and understood how much heartbreak the loss of Aurora would bring us, like we had lost her before in a past life.
“He wants you, Aurora,” I whispered, holding her tightly. “We have to be careful. Please, be careful for me whenever you’re out. And … I need you to think about using the other half of the stone for your own safety. Charolette won’t take it, so you have to.”
“But, Mars …”
“Just think about it, please.”
She nodded in agreement. “Okay.”
“You know that I would do anything for you, right?” I asked, placing my lips against her knuckles and offering her my best smile. “Anything I have to do to protect you, even sacrifice my—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Don’t even finish that sentence.”
“I’m speaking the truth,” I said, wanting her to be ready for when the time came. I’d fight like hell before I let anyone kill me, but I’d fight even harder to make sure what had happened in my nightmare would never happen in real life.
Aurora was a queen, a damn goddess.
I glanced down to the unmarked side of her neck and let my canines lengthen under my lips. Ares had claimed her so viciously and violently, but now, it was my turn. I didn’t know when I’d have another chance like this. Forever wasn’t promised.
I’d thought I’d have eternity with Mom, but she was gone in the blink of an eye.
“Let me mark you,” I said quietly, pushing some hair behind her shoulder.
“You want to mark me?” She stared up at me with wide eyes. “I thought you wanted to
wait until the Luna Ceremony.”
I inched closer to her and pushed more hair behind her shoulder, giving me a clear view of her beautiful, bare neck. Ares had kissed her there so many times last night, had left a red hickey right where we wanted to mark her.
“I don’t want to wait anymore.”
She brushed her fingers against my forearm and moved closer to me, the water sloshing over the edge of the tub. Orange sunlight flooded in through the window, and I inhaled her sweet scent, positioning my teeth at the base of her neck.
“I love you,” I murmured against her, and then I sank my canines into my mate.
Chapter 14
Aurora
“Goddess, Mars …” I whispered, tilting my head to the side and allowing him better access to pierce me with his immense, razor-sharp canines.
Ecstasy crashed through me, hitting me almost as brutally as Ares had jerked that hound around the other night. I curled my fingers into his chest and moaned as droplets of blood rolled down my bare chest and permeated through the bath water.
Forget the sex, the lust, the need for this man. I had ached for Mars to claim me since Ares had that night in the prison. Unlike Ares’s, there was no hastiness, no recklessness, and certainly no jealousy behind the bite. Mars’s mark was made with care, caution, and most of all, love.
Mars inhaled deeply and grunted against me, all his thoughts, doubts, and insecurities suffusing my mind. And while Mars almost had more memories than Ares, a distant vision of me being bent over our bed and screaming for something to stop was the only thing I could seem to focus on.
Maybe this was his nightmare last night, one of me being … raped.
I sucked in a breath as the vision became clearer. Mars stood in the corner, unable to move and desperately calling my name, while I lay on the bed, paralyzed with Fenris taking me forcefully from behind.