by Emilia Rose
Nearly immobile, especially my neck, I curled my fingers around the edges of the table and glanced at the harrowing sight around me. Dead hounds, ripped couch, and Elijah. Broken glasses smudged with blood and bottom lip swollen and bloody, Elijah paced around the room and held his hand against the giant gash in his bare abdomen.
Using all my strength, I sat up and nearly screamed when I saw Dr. Farral in a puddle of his own blood with his face torn off and multiple slashes in his body. All my mind could seem to think about was finding my mate like that.
“Ares?” I asked, stepping down from the table. “Where is Ares?”
With wide eyes, Elijah hurried over and gently pushed me back down. “Lie back down, Aurora. It’s not safe for you to be up this quickly after surgery.”
I shoved his shoulder but only pushed him a few inches before my arm unwillingly fell by my side, hitting the metal table with a thud. “Where is Ares?” I asked again, this time stronger. I scanned the room once more, hoping that I didn’t find him in the bodies.
Elijah glanced at the chaos outside, and then grimaced.
Realization hitting me, I shook my head. “No,” I whispered, trying to rise to my feet again, only to be held down by Elijah. I grasped his wrist to push him away. “No. I need to go find him. I need to make sure he’s safe.”
“You can’t go out there,” Elijah said, blood from his wound staining my pastel Luna Ceremony dress. “You need to stay here.”
“I’m going out to find my mate!” I shouted, my limbs becoming lighter by the second and strength reverberating through my entire being. It must’ve been the stone’s power because it couldn’t have been mine. I had never felt this strong before.
I swung my feet off the table and took off toward the door.
“Aurora, you can’t,” Elijah said, grasping my wrist to pull me back.
Overcome with emotion, I shoved him. Flying back with incredible speed and force, he slammed against the metal table twice as hard as Ares had earlier. Doubling over, he clutched his stomach, the gash opening up even more.
He rolled onto his hands and knees with his head hung. “Aurora …”
Not knowing what to do, I stared at him and then down at my hands with wide eyes. What was that? Did I just … did I do that? That was from … me?
Wolves howled outside, their cries of despair and fear drifting through the quiet bunker. The alpha and luna inside of me ached to run into battle to protect my people, but the human side of me desperately wanted to help Elijah.
“Aurora, don’t. Please, help me,” Elijah begged. “Think about yourself if I’m not enough.”
“Mate,” my wolf whispered. “Find our mate.”
Physically unable to ignore my wolf’s pleas, I turned to the door. I wanted to stay to help him, but she wouldn’t let me. She ached to find Ares, just to see him so we knew that he was okay and hadn’t sacrificed himself for us.
“Aurora, you’re pregnant!” Elijah shouted before I could leave.
I stopped, my heart racing. “What did you say?” I whispered over my shoulder.
With the help of the table, he stumbled to his feet and held his wound. “You’re pregnant with a baby girl. My doctor found out right before the surgery. As far as I know, the baby made it through your death and resurrection successfully.”
When he stepped toward me again, he stumbled into the wall, brown face paling. I grasped his arm and helped him to the nearest chair, taking off his cracked glasses so I could see his face. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t want to be pregnant now, not when we were in the middle of a war.
“Stitches? Bandages? Do you have anything?” I asked, scrambling to find something that could heal him. All the bags, boxes, and medication that Dr. Farral had brought had been emptied, hundreds of used rags covered in blood, orange pill bottles, gauze torn apart.
My thoughts raced so fast that I couldn’t latch on to just one. Blood poured out of Elijah’s abdomen faster than I could even comprehend. He was going to die because of me, because I couldn’t control my emotions or my wolf.
Elijah shook his head, slowly closing his eyes, as if they were too heavy. “No. Nothing. We used everything we had on you.”
I placed my hands over his, desperate to stop the blood as it pooled between our fingers and stained them sanguine. This can’t be happening. This really can’t be fucking happening. I can’t lose everyone important to me.
“Aurora,” Elijah whispered, holding his eyes open for a fraction of a second. “You’re strong, but don’t be stupid. Don’t blindly go out there, looking for your mate. You won’t find him. It’s been hours, and he hasn’t come back.”
“No,” I whispered, doubling over Elijah and refusing to believe it. I shouted at Ares through the mind link, hoping he’d answer me, but I heard nothing but silence. “No.”
When his hand slipped from his torso, I screamed as loud as I could, making everything in the entire room shake. Power surging inside of me, I covered Elijah’s wound with my trembling hands and curled my fingers into his skin.
Ares couldn’t be gone. I needed that man more than I needed anything in my entire fucking life. We were going to have a baby. My belly was full with his pup, and now … now, Elijah was telling me that Ares was gone. Gone?
A few moments later, Elijah opened his eyes, glanced down at his waist, and then back up at me. “Goddess … Goddess, Aurora, you’re healing me,” he whispered.
The skin under my fingers started repairing itself, stretching across his abdomen and sealing up his wound. My eyes widened, head swaying from side to side, and suddenly, I collapsed on top of him, totally out of breath and my vision blurry.
Oh my Goddess.
What the hell was that? Was this really the power of the stone?
Trying to regain my composure, I furrowed my brows. “What’s happening to me?”
Elijah scooped me up into his arms and laid me back down on the table. “I need you to stay here a little longer,” he whispered, grabbing the doctor’s notebook and scribbling some notes in it. “You’re probably going to be dizzy and weak for a bit. Your powers are going to take some time to get used to at first. You can’t be using them on just anyone and everyone.”
I stared out the door and into the chaos. Sometime during the surgery, the dawn had begun, streaks of pink and yellows stretching through the sky, the colors so soft and warm, contrasting with the cold, dark blood covering Sanguine Wilds like a sheet of snow.
“I need to find Ares. Come with me to find him. Please, Elijah.”
After glancing between me and the outside, he placed the notebook down and helped me off the table. “Only because I know that you’ll go anyway. But if I tell you that we need to come back, then we will. Don’t try to stop me from protecting you. Think of Jeremy. He’d have wanted you to be smart about this.”
Jeremy.
He’d died for me and for this.
Agreeing, I ran outside and into the chaos, Elijah right by my side in his human form. Hounds and wolves sprinted in front of us, leaping over dead bodies and attacking each other’s necks. Elijah pulled me out of the way and into his chest, his hand over my stomach almost instinctively.
I gulped and leaned into him, inches from a hound’s canines. As the hound found another wolf to attack, Elijah ushered me forward.
I enclosed my hand around his and squeezed. “Sorry about earlier. I was so overcome with emotion that I didn’t think twice about hurting you.”
Elijah shook his head. “It’s okay. He’s your mate.”
“But you’re one of my best friends.”
Pausing, Elijah stared at me for a couple moments and gave me a soft smile, and then he shoved me to the ground and shielded me with his body as another hound hurtled toward us. He swiped his claws across the hound’s neck.
Instead of waiting for him to die, Elijah continued forward. “Come on. We don’t have much longer. We need to find him.”
Bodies littered the forest,
so many carcasses of pack members, the stone people, and the hounds. My heart ached for everyone because while the hounds were vicious, in their first lives, they had probably just been innocent people. They hadn’t asked to become undead with a certain necromancer forcing them under his control.
“There are so many people,” I whispered, chest tightening.
About half a mile east, Marcel fought two hounds by himself to protect a cowering Charolette. I started toward him, wondering if he knew where Ares or his body was, but before I could even make it three steps, a hound leaped into the air, slashed his teeth into my arm, and forced me to collapse.
Within a moment, I shifted into my wolf with ease—the feeling of being free again rushing through my veins like adrenaline—and ripped my claws into his underbelly until he went still underneath me.
When I glanced back, Marcel was gone. I shifted into my human again, the gashes in my arm healing almost instantly. Elijah snatched my shoulder and scolded me for not letting him handle that hound, but it’d felt so natural. It was my first instinct to protect myself and my friends.
As we hurried through more of the war, my eyes landed on Ruffles. With fur matted in blood and a small gash in her side, Ruffles looked stronger and calmer than even I felt. Like troopers, Ruffles and Pringle ran through the chaos to find pups that I hadn’t, sank their little teeth into the kids’ hands, and pulled them toward another hideout.
I sprinted to her and scooped her up in my arms. Though she turned around to hiss, she immediately saw me and wrapped her paws around my shoulders, burying her face into the crook of my neck.
After Elijah grabbed the stranded pups, we sprinted to another hideaway, where seven pups were already huddled together in the corner of the room. Some of them reached out for me, calling for Luna, but I told them that I had to go. I couldn’t stay. We had to leave, and we had to leave now to protect them.
“Ruffles,” I said, crouching down to her level.
She put her paws on my knees and looked up at me with wide black eyes, her pupils dilated.
I patted her back. “You have to stay here with everyone. Keep them safe. Don’t let any hounds through that door.” I pointed up the ladder and at the metal hatch. “Do you understand?”
She licked my nose and brushed her face against mine. “Meow.”
After tugging her to my chest again and promising her that I’d be back, I followed Elijah up the ladder and locked the hatch door. I hurried with Elijah through the hundreds of wolves, desperate to find Ares and Mars, dead or alive.
I would not hide in the bunkers, knowing that I didn’t do everything in my power to help him. But I had to be careful because it was more than just me who I had to protect. I had a pup … a freaking pup … and Ares wouldn’t forgive me if I put his life over our girl’s.
To my left, fire raged from the pack house and spread through the forest and to the town, a thick layer of smoke settling over the woods. I surveyed my surroundings, catching The Flaming Chariot burning but without the horse statues out front. Someone must’ve knocked them down during the battle.
As we sprinted through the clash, I ached to help my pack. But every time I veered off course, Elijah would pull me back and remind me of the only reason we had come out here—to find Ares. And when I found him, I stopped.
Standing on the other side of the forest was a god. And not just any god.
The god of war.
Gore seeped down the side of his fur, coating and matting it to his body. Saliva dripped from his bloody red teeth. Those eyes were a dark agony, a furious gold, tinted with crimson-red fury. My mate was alive and, somehow, looked stronger than ever, moving with the speed and agility of a god.
Fighting Fenris, Ares snatched him by the neck with his teeth. Fenris had always seemed a bit stronger and smarter than us but now looked rather weak. What was giving Ares this power? I’d seen him fight before, just not like this.
Ares ripped Fenris into two pieces, right down the center of his body, splitting his fur, his flesh, and his bones in almost symmetrical bits. My heart pounded so loud that I could hear it in my ears, and I gasped.
Holy Goddess … when the fuck did he get so strong?
Grabbing one half of Fenris’s body, Ares went to rip him into more tiny pieces when a whirling fiery-orange portal with black flames opened up behind him. A woman dressed in a skintight blood-red metallic suit with eight metal horns protruding from her head at all angles stepped out of it and stood behind Ares with such evil intent.
Certain that I had seen her face before, I sprinted toward them at lightning speed. She drew a sharp horn from her head like a sword and aimed it at Ares’s back. My dawn-colored dress blew behind me in the wind, almost holding me back.
“Ares!” I screamed, but the world around us was so loud that he must not have heard me.
As she was about to slice the blade into his back, I thrust my hands into her side and sent her flying back against one of the trees. She hit it with a thud, the entire tree cracking and toppling over into the forest, hitting others.
Elijah called my name, telling me to come back to him as he ran toward me, but I couldn’t let my mate be killed by whoever this was. Ares turned around, dropped Fenris on the ground, and shifted into his human, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ares said. “I love you, but … you shouldn’t be here.”
“You ripped Fenris in two,” I said in shock. “What happened to you?”
Guilt washed over his face, but he shook his head. “Now is not the time for that,” he said, but the words sounded a bit too … weak. Ares pushed me behind him. “We have bigger problems than that.”
Chapter 36
Aurora
“Dawn,” the woman said to me, staring me down.
Why’d she think I was Dawn? And why the hell was she after Dawn?
She seethed with a scowl, stood up from the debris, and dusted the dirt off her red metallic bodysuit. She glared in our direction, fury raging in her haunting, dead eyes.
I stepped in front of Ares, but he harshly pulled me back. “Don’t.”
Pointing her fingers at Fenris, she whispered something to him in Latin or Greek or some ancient language that seemed distantly familiar. Though I couldn’t understand it right now, my mind raced with a thousand different thoughts.
Like magic, Fenris’s wolf body merged back together, his soulless black eyes similar to the other hounds. My heart pounded even harder in my chest.
Holy fuck. This was Hella, the necromancer who Medusa had told us about, the woman who could bring someone back from the dead with a sway of her fingers.
How could we defeat someone this powerful?
I rested a hand over my tightening stomach, almost instinctively, my head spinning slightly. Elijah hurried to me and tugged on my hand, but I didn’t budge. What was the point if we were all going to die anyway? I’d rather stay here and fight than surrender to or hide from evil like her.
Hella stepped forward, lips tucked in a grimace. “I thought we got rid of you over two hundred years ago,” she said, flicking her forked tongue in my direction.
A second later, Hella sprang into the air, grasped two of her horns that turned into sharp blades, and lurched down toward us so quickly that we didn’t have any time to react.
Just before she hit us, a man on a golden chariot, led by flaming horses, flew through the air and knocked her back down and into the woods, his body burning almost as brightly as the sun. Fenris leaped at him, but the man in gold dodged the attack and landed his chariot in front of us.
“Leave her, Hella,” he ordered the woman, hopping off his chariot and standing in front of me. “You took her from me once. You won’t take her twice.”
Hella laughed lifelessly and met his glare. “You think this is over?”
Ares grabbed my hand and pulled me back a step. “We have to get out of here.”
“This war is far from over,” Hella said with a
smirk. “But I’m sure you know that after what happened to Dawn centuries ago, by the one and only Nyx.”
At the mention of the name Nyx, the golden man shot a ray of light through his fingers at Hella. She swiftly dodged the attack, the light burning through a row of trees behind her until they were incinerated.
“Nyx,” I whispered.
Suddenly, in bits and pieces, almost-sharp fragments … the memories came flooding back to me. Nyx was the last name I had said before something terrible happened, but I’d never said that name before—at least, not in this lifetime. Maybe this stone belonged to someone else, or … Nyx had been in my dreams before.
So many new faces and names, I couldn’t quite comprehend any of it. These were real gods, no doubt, who held extraordinary abilities. But what did any of this have to do with me? Who were these gods? And why the hell were they fighting on earth?
The golden man tilted his head toward me. “Sacrifices need to be made.” After glancing back at Ares and Elijah behind me, he clenched his jaw. “Sometime soon, you will need to make the hardest decision of your life, just like I did. It’s a fight between life and death. Now, go, Dawn.”
“Why do people keep calling me that?” I asked.
I had too many questions that I needed answered. What was going on? Why was Hella after me? How the fuck hadn’t the hounds died after Ares killed Fenris? How could we stop gods who could just rebuild their armies over and over again?
Ares snatched me in his arms and ran through the chaos, yelling at his warriors and Vulcan to retreat to the underground bunkers as soon as possible. Warriors ran away from the hounds and headed toward underground shelters, pushing through the smoke and fire, as the stone warriors continued to fight.
Ares and Elijah separated, deciding to each protect a shelter with pups.
Setting me down, Ares banged twice on the metal door and shouted, “It’s Ares and Aurora. Let us in.”
A few moments later, the door opened, and pups stared up at us with huge eyes. Sniffling and shaking, they cried out for us to come save them. Ruffles and Pringle stood in the middle of them all, rubbing against their legs.