by Emilia Rose
Jerking awake, I lay in the bed in a puddle of sweat. I fucking hated nightmares, fucking loathed those shitty-ass dreams. I stared up emptily at the ceiling and thanked the Moon Goddess that I’d had it instead of Mars because to live through that would’ve shattered him. He might have short visions of it, but to fucking feel every emotion… I could barely do it.
Chapter 25
Aurora
“Mars,” I whispered, glancing into the bedroom after Elijah and Adrian left.
Ruffles and Pringle ran by me through the hallway, batting at a toy mouse. I slipped into the room and shut the door behind me, unsure of who I spoke to now.
Face void of emotion as if he was trying to think hard or remember something that Ares had dreamt up, Mars lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, his breathing uneven. When I crawled onto the bed with him, he wrapped his arms around my waist, laid me on his chest, and relaxed. Gently brushing his thumbs across my hips, he asked, “Yes, Kitten?”
“I need to talk to you about something,” I said, drawing circles across his scarred forearms. I hated—loathed—the conversation about to happen, but I had to have it before we left to visit the necromancer tomorrow. What Charolette had done was a threat to our security.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Luna, your father is gone from his cell,” Marcel said through the mind link to me.
Pain split through my chest. I didn’t have the heart to respond. Dad was gone for good. I’d never see him again.
I clutched Mars’s hand. “I love you more than anything, Mars, and I’ll always be here for you. Please know that.”
Sitting up, he grasped my face and searched it with concern. “What’s wrong?”
While I wanted to come out and say that Charolette had betrayed him, I didn’t know if he’d close in on himself and disappear from me for a long time. Ares would do anything to protect Mars from not only the truth, but also pain and heartbreak.
I softly kissed his lips and frowned against him, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. If this was good-bye for a while, at least he knew I’d be here when he got back. I hoped he wouldn’t be gone for long. I needed him.
Not knowing how to say it, I held his face still. “Charolette met with Fenris a few weeks ago.”
He released me and straightened his back, unimaginable fury flooding his golden eyes. “She what?” he asked, voice tensing by the second.
All the sorrow, pain, and grief disappeared from his face, and Ares clawed his way to the forefront, claiming control.
I crawled on top of him and refused to let him move from the bed. “I know you’re furious. I know you’re angry. Give it to me. Not her. She just wanted to talk to her father. Take all that anger out on me, Ares. Take me. Fuck me. Until you feel better.”
“Aurora, don’t,” he said through gritted teeth.
It was wrong to stand up for Charolette, but I understood how she’d felt. She wanted approval from her father. She wanted him to like her, even just a little bit. I didn’t accept of it, but I understood it. And if Ares flipped out on her now, he might do or say something he’d later regret.
All he was right now was a man of muscle and rage. I’d seen what he was capable of when he beat up Elijah. I had seen what he did to countless hounds. I didn’t want him to hurt his only sister.
“Aurora,” Ares growled, shoving me off him.
I toppled over but quickly regained my balance and placed my hands firmly on his chest. “Love me the only way you know how to love, Ares.” I wrapped his hand around the front of my throat and vowed to take Charolette’s physical punishment for her. With one hand on his chest, I moved my hips back and forth, feeling him tense. “Hard. Rough. Ruthlessly.”
Since we would leave for Syncome Mountains tomorrow, tonight was the last night that I was sure I would have him all to myself. I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. I didn’t know if we would find the necromancer. If we would end up killing her, especially if we found out that she took part in helping the hounds. If we could stop the hounds once and for all.
Ares growled and flipped me onto my stomach, his hand around my neck. “I’m not going to hurt you because of her mistakes,” he growled into my ear, pulling me closer. “Don’t you ever say or think something like that again.”
He needed to release his anger somehow.
He pressed his hardness against my backside and roughly swiped his thumb across my lower lip before pushing it into my mouth. “But if you want me to be rough with you, then I’ll be rough with you, Kitten.”
I sucked his thumb between my lips and ground my hips back against his hard cock. Ares tugged down his pants, enough to pull out his dick, and pressed it against my panties. He hooked a finger inside them and drew them to the side, positioning his cock against my pussy lips.
When he thrust himself into me, he grunted. My pussy tightened around him as he squeezed my throat and gently choked me, pumping in and out of me. It wasn’t slow, it wasn’t sweet, and it surely wasn’t soft.
Each thrust was merciless, hard, and cruel.
An alpha releasing his rage, proving his dominance, and proclaiming his worth.
One arm slipping around my waist, he rubbed my clit in tortuous little circles and slapped it twice, making me whimper. I dug my fingers into the bedsheets, the pleasure coursing through my body.
“Is this what you fucking wanted?” Ares asked, sucking on his mark. He pulled my hips into the air and pushed my head against the pillows. “Answer me, Kitten.”
“Yes,” I breathed out, relishing in every inch sliding into me. “This is what I wanted.” I arched my back hard and let his balls slap against my clit each time. “Are you going to come inside your luna’s pussy?” I asked, glancing back at him. “Get me pregnant with your pups?”
He grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me off the mattress until his lips pressed against my ear. He tenderly bit my neck. “Tell me that you know I wouldn’t ever hurt you. Tell me you’re not afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered, the pressure building higher.
He thrust into me harder, and I came all over him.
“I love all of you. Every single bit.”
After he filled me with his cum, he collapsed onto the bed next to me and brushed some hair off my forehead. “I still need to talk to Charolette. She should know better,” he growled, canines lengthening. “I’ll have someone watch her tomorrow and deal out her punishment when we return from Syncome Mountains.”
Chapter 26
Aurora
In a thick cloud of fog, warriors crowded in our backyard, prepared to run to Syncome Mountains. Since we couldn’t take cars, I stretched out on the lawn to hopefully warm up my muscles and brace my wolf for a painful shift.
“Stay here,” Ares ordered to Minerva. “Protect the packs.”
“I’m not letting you go without me,” she said.
“Why the fuck not?” Ares’s nails lengthened into claws, his teeth extending into sharp canines.
Since I’d warned him about Charolette last night, he hadn’t given control to Mars. Ares had been hostile, angry, and ready to rage in the blink of an eye.
“Because you’re unstable,” Minerva said, narrowing her eyes. From what I’d gathered about her so far, she excelled at war, but unlike Ares, she kept her cool and always had well-defined battle plans. “I will keep fifteen of my best warriors here at your pack since the hounds seem to be targeting you, but I am going with you.”
I stepped forward. “We need all the help we can get. Thanks, Minerva.” I pushed Ares toward our warriors, calmly rubbing his shoulder and eyeing the warriors roughhousing by the forest. “Please calm down. Half our warriors are staying here.”
From the plans Minerva and I had organized earlier today, it seemed like we’d be leaving our packs for about a day. It would take six hours to run there and six to run back, and that wasn’t taking into account what kind of trouble we might find as we sprinted t
hrough Hound Territory.
The maps from Sanguine Wilds to Syncome Mountains hadn’t been reconstructed since the War of the Lycans over two hundred years ago. Nobody dared return there, not even Alpha Ares, who wasn’t supposed to be afraid of anything. Hell, people—entire packs—had turned to stone on those mountains and never returned. Traveling there was beyond dangerous.
After I said my good-byes to Mr. Barrett and Charolette, Ares nodded to his father and refused to step foot anywhere near Charolette. They hadn’t spoken, and for once, I was grateful. If he opened his mouth, Ares would explode on her. I didn’t want him angry before we left; his mind needed to be clear in case we ran into hounds.
I pulled Ares behind a couple of trees to shift because I didn’t want any of the other alphas to see just how much this hurt me. I collapsed onto all fours and imagined my arms and legs breaking, my legs extending into limbs, my nose and mouth lengthening into a snout.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I said, “Please, shift,” to my wolf.
She whimpered in my mind yet tried hard to push through the excruciating pain. My unwilling bones broke and snapped back together, refusing to shift. I dug my nails into the dirt until they extended into claws and whimpered softly to deal with all the pain inside of me.
Pain shot through my body, and I worried about being in my wolf form for six hours. I hadn’t stayed shifted for that long in over a decade, as I hadn’t needed to. Would I be able to shift back? Would my wolf want to stay in control?
Pushing my worries aside, I willed my wolf to shift fully. After five more minutes, I screamed out and stood on all fours in my transformed wolf. Ares shifted next to me, rubbing his snout against my neck. He howled to signal to run and nudged me to the front of the pack.
And so, we left our pack behind and ran off our property in a thunderous roar toward Syncome Mountains, our strongest navigator wolves leading us and our best trackers staying on alert for unfamiliar scents.
While we tried our hardest to avoid Hound Territory, we found ourselves running past their foggy borders three hours later. My stomach tightened at the thought of an entire pack of undead awakening and attacking because of how loud we moved. Yet we didn’t even see one of them the two hours we passed through their property, which made me even more nervous.
If the hounds weren’t in Hound Territory, where were they?
My fur stood up as I imagined that when we got home, all our packs would be slaughtered mercilessly. I didn’t want another doomsday like I’d gone through once during Jeremy’s death. Ares wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of pain. He was strong, but that would break him even more than his mother’s death.
After quickly shaking off the thought, I continued to run with the pack. At first, the run had been difficult for me, as I didn’t run long distances anymore, but the closer we approached Syncome, the stronger my wolf felt. Power amplified from the stone in my back, wave after wave radiating down my limbs, pushing me to move faster.
It almost felt like I had been born to visit this place.
Heavy mist draped the jagged Syncome Mountains range, the narrow peaks vanishing into the clouds. I slowed to a jog and stared around at the patches of land that didn’t seem to hold any life—no bugs, no animals, no vegetation.
Biting my tongue, I prepared to shift back into my human form, like the others. And for once in over a decade, I shifted with ease and within moments, like I used to do before the attack. The stone in my back swelled even more, power surging through my body.
Ares, who lay by my side in wolf form until I finished shifting, transformed and stared down at me with panicked eyes. “You shifted so easily. Are you … okay?”
I stared down at my hand in awe as I comfortably shifted back and forth between paw and hand. What made this mountain range so special? Was it the necromancer or something else entirely? If I lived here for eternity, would I be able to shift this freely all the time?
“I’m fine,” I whispered, scared and startled myself. “That was … fine.”
Bare and naked, Vulcan walked ahead of us, following statues of gods and goddesses in what seemed to be a smooth stone path that slowly encircled the mountain. I walked next to Ares and admired how lifelike they seemed, as if the stone could break away at any moment and reveal a living, divine being.
Maybe when Dad had said people turned to stone, he’d meant someone had carved divinities into stone and decorated the mountain with them.
About a mile later, we stood on a plateau on the other side of the mountain that overlooked miles upon miles of uncharted forest that didn’t seem to receive any sunlight, low yowling coming from the darkness. I paused and stared down at it, my stomach tightening.
Ahead of us, Vulcan disappeared around some rocks and reappeared a few minutes later in a pair of loose beige pants. “There’s a house. Clothes too!”
I winced at the thought of Vulcan just barging into someone’s home, especially if that someone was a necromancer who could raise the dead. If we got on her bad side before we even met her, we might be in some murky waters.
“She’s here,” Ares said, grabbing my hand and guiding me toward the house.
Built into one jagged peak was a small centuries-old house with carved and misshapen windows and dirtied white curtains blowing around inside. I stepped into some clothes that Vulcan had thrown to me and walked into the empty house.
Simple, ancient tools and writings filled the insides. I trailed my fingers against the walls, an eerily familiar feeling coursing through my veins. While I had never stepped foot in here before, distant, seraphic memories drifted through me. But I must’ve just been thinking of the stories Dad used to tell Jeremy and me about this mountain.
Continuing through the house, I searched for any signs of witchcraft or necromancy, for powders or chemicals, anything. Yet other than the number of ancient ruins within this home, nothing about it screamed necromancing sorcerer.
I pulled open the closet to the master bedroom, my eyes widening slightly. Twenty sea-foam tunics hung in the closet with matching veils, the cloth so thick that I couldn’t even see through it when I held it up to the light.
After sighing, I walked out of the house to the group of warriors. Maybe Vulcan’s information was wrong, and we’d just barged in on a random person’s home, not a necromancer’s.
“There isn’t anything unusual about this place,” I said to the alphas, staring out into the endless abyss of gloom. “Except the—”
“Who trespasses in my home?” a woman said, stepping out of the darkness.
Covered from head to toe in a sea-foam tunic, she wore a veil over her face and carried a woven basket around her forearm. Thick strands of what must’ve been hair slithered around under her veil. But as she moved closer, I noticed that it wasn’t hair, but snakelike creatures with wolf heads, razor-sharp canines, and glowing gold eyes peeking out from under the covering.
Ares stepped forward, and I yanked him back, my heart pounding inside my chest.
“Who is she?” Marcel asked through the mind link.
“Don’t approach her,” I ordered in my alpha tone to my wolves.
When nobody moved, I leaned forward. “Who are you?” I asked, but I had a feeling that I already knew exactly who she was.
Growing up, Mom had forced me to study books about ancient mythologies instead of books about wolf packs and leadership. There was one woman who resembled her, but she’d lived thousands of years ago. She couldn’t have survived this long.
“You know who I am,” she said, her face level with mine, letting me know that I had her full attention. “I’m sure you’ve heard the myths told down through the ages.”
“Medusa?” I whispered.
“Medusa. Gorgo. All the horrid names warriors have called me over the years,” she said, voice filled with dreadful sorrow, as if the years that had passed were filled with torment and suffering.
After releasing Ares’s hand, I stepped toward her. Something drew me to her
, pulled me in, and made me want to ask her thousands of questions about the world she had lived in for thousands of years now, about life, myths, and those monstrosities called hounds.
“What’s your name—your real name?” I asked.
“That’s a story for another day, my dear.” She stepped back and surveyed the warriors around me. “And so, I am still waiting for my answer. Who is trespassing in my home? You shouldn’t be here.”
I gulped, not wanting to anger her. She held the power to rain misery upon whoever she pleased.
I gestured to each of the alphas. “This is Ares, Vulcan, and Minerva. And I’m—”
“Aurora,” she said softly. “I already know who you are.”
My eyes widened slightly. How’d she know me?
“We’re looking for the necromancer who has aided Fenris,” Ares said his name through clenched teeth, “in bringing wolves back from the dead as hounds. Or any necromancer who knows how to stop this fucking war.”
Tensing, Medusa nodded. “Hella is the woman you seek. She has raised hounds for centuries. You will not find her here, and you will find nobody else who does what she does, except divinities in the underworld.”
“Can you tell us about her? Where can we find her? Who is she? How could—” I started
“You ask a lot of questions, my dear. I cannot reply to many, as I don’t have the answers. Hella and Fenris are siblings, but she lives in the underworld and rarely comes to earth. For your warriors, there are only two ways to travel to the underworld, and I will not allow you to go by either right now. It’s not your time.”
My brows furrowed. “Not our time?”
“You will know when it is,” she said.
Ares grabbed my arm and snatched me away from her. “There will be no time to go to the underworld for Aurora. She is staying here with me.”