by Emilia Rose
Starting down the ladder, I stopped and glanced back into the mess, making eye contact with the golden man. He watched me intently as he held off the beasts, and then he shifted his gaze beside us.
“Go, my dear,” someone said from beside me. Dressed in her green veil and tunic, Medusa stepped out of the smoky shadows and urged Ares to start his descent into the bunker. “He won’t be able to hold the hounds in this forest much longer. If you don’t go now, there is no saying what will happen.”
Needing to keep my people safe, I hurried down the steps. Whatever the cost of protecting the pups, the warriors, and my mate, I would pay it. At least we’d be safe down here for a while as everything went to hell above.
Ares closed the door and locked it above us. When I made it down, I leaned against the side of the room and took deep, unsteady breaths. Tears welled up in my eyes from the sheer amount of commotion and anxiety running through me, but I refused to let any fall. I needed to be strong for the pups as they crowded around us, wrapping their arms around our legs and telling us how scared they were down here, all alone.
Hounds howled viciously from above, trees cracking and striking the ground in thunderous roars. I pressed my lips together and vowed to calm my own racing heart, so I could be sane for these pups. The entire time, I told myself to be strong, that they didn’t deserve this misery, that hiding out here was all for them. I’d do whatever I could to keep them safe.
“Are you ready to have some more of those therapy sessions?” I whispered to Ares twenty minutes later, trying to lighten the mood. But I wasn’t joking. “Because I think we’re all going to need them after this.”
The catastrophe would scar every one of us, and this was just the beginning. If Medusa and the golden man couldn’t defeat the hounds, we’d be here without any protection. We’d be weak and vulnerable. Many of our warriors were injured or dead by now.
How were we supposed to survive?
A loud whoosh echoed through the earth above us, followed by a deafening silence. My chest tightened for a moment, and I inhaled deeply, trying to find solace in Ares’s hazelnut scent. The world sounded too quiet, and I wondered if they had all died.
Was it safe to come out now?
“Did anyone hear that?” Marcel asked through the mind link from another underground hideout.
“Don’t go out until we know that everything is safe. Wait at least an hour. If there isn’t anything, then we’ll go,” Ares commanded.
After waiting for fifteen more minutes, Ares turned to me, jaw clenched. “Who is that golden man?”
“He seems familiar, but I don’t know how I know him.”
Ares rested his hand on my thigh and squeezed tightly. “He knows you. You seem … special … to him.”
“This is not the time to be jealous, Ares. He means nothing to me. I don’t know who he is,” I snapped, my fingers tingling. I glanced down to see them glowing slightly and curled them into fists to stop whatever it was that was happening to me.
Knowing I shouldn’t have snapped, I looked back toward him and inched closer. “Ares …” I whispered. “I’m sorry. Just so much has happened within the past twenty-four hours. You killed the man you’d wanted to kill for years. I have this stone in my back. We—”
“For what?” Ares interrupted me, voice teetering in anger. “So many of my wolves died today.”
“We lost a lot of wolves, but you killed Fenris… at least who he was. I don’t know what happens now that Hella raised him from the dead.”
“Nothing good comes of this,” Ares whispered, voice fading into the blackness of the bunker. “I wasted my life on that fucking asshole, only to find out that the hounds don’t die with him. Medusa lied to us.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, brows furrowed. “You’re alive and well, Ares.”
As the pups whimpered from beside us, Ares spoke up again, “I wasn’t going after Fenris only for my mom.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “My pack was cursed a long time ago. The leader of the hounds was to take a luna of this pack. My dad said that the only way to get rid of the threat and break the curse was to sacrifice an alpha.”
“Sacrifice an alpha.”
Why was this the first I was hearing about this? Was that why he was so powerful? Did he sacrifice someone? Maybe his father, who had once been an alpha?
But still, I didn’t understand where he was going with this. He couldn’t have sacrificed anyone or anything to kill Fenris. He’d killed him on his own with his two bare hands. Elijah and Vulcan were the only other alphas here, and they were still alive.
“You’ll hate me for this,” Ares whispered, words raw and full of regret.
I tucked bloody strands of hair behind his ear. “I couldn’t hate you, Ares, ever.”
While I had seen Mars as an emotional wreck, I had never seen Ares that way until now.
He stared at me with tears in his deep brown eyes, lips quivering. “I thought it would stop everything. I was doing it for you and for our little girl …” He curled up next to me, placing his head into the crook of my neck, right near Mars’s mark. “Mars sacrificed himself. I couldn’t stop him, Aurora.”
My throat closed up. “M-Mars?”
Ares curled into me even more, grasping my hips and trying to muffle his cries in front of the children. “I didn’t want him to do it,” he cried, body heaving back and forth. “I wanted to protect you. He thought it-it’d stop this. Now, he’s gone. Forever.”
Chapter 37
Aurora
Stupidly, I believed that after a couple moments, Ares would crack a smile and admit that this was all one big, terrible joke and that he could still feel Mars. But Ares always had been the serious, hotheaded, possessive alpha who didn’t tell jokes for fun.
Mars was gone.
Mars was really gone.
Burying my face into my hands, I bit my lip and wept silently until I couldn’t hold back. I hiccuped and trembled back and forth, not wanting to believe that part of me had departed from this earth. How was I going to live without Mars? How was Ares going to live without Mars? They had been together for over a decade, and while they’d hated each other, they’d also loved each other.
They’d lived in the same body after all.
After two hours of silence from above and muffling my cries so the pups wouldn’t get nervous, I grabbed Ares’s face. “It’s going to be okay,” I murmured to him, stroking his blotchy, tearstained cheeks and praying that the emptiness in my heart would disappear.
But who really knew if anything would be okay after this?
“Be strong,” I whispered, brushing my knuckles over his cheekbones and knowing that neither one of us could be strong at the moment. “We need to get through this for our pack. We can talk more about it later, but the pups and our pack need us.”
He grasped my hand tightly and leaned into it. “Do you hate me?” he whispered, lips quivering. “I would hate me if I were you. I would fucking hate me for trading his life instead of my own. I give you so much pain, so much hurt. You’d rather be with him.”
“You don’t give me pain, Ares. I know who you are deep down,” I said, resting my forehead against his. “But right now, I need you to be that strong man that you always are. We have a pack to lead, people to protect, and a pup to raise.”
Running a hand over my stomach, he let out another heartbreaking sob. I rubbed his shoulders, his arms, his chest, and his thighs, hoping it’d calm him down. I was asking him to be strong after the closest person to him had just died.
After ten more minutes, he took a deep breath, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and nodded. “Marcel,” he said through the mind link, though his words shook slightly. “You’re with the warriors?”
“Yes,” Marcel said almost instantly.
“Go check the surrounding area. Make sure it’s safe for the pups to come out. I’m not opening these doors until I know they’re safe,” Ares said strongly, yet I could feel the pain inside him, s
inking its claws into his veins and dispersing through his body like wildfire.
The mind link silenced, footsteps sounding above us.
“Ares,” Marcel said, “everything is secure, but you need to see this. Now.”
Ares climbed the ladder and unlocked the bunker door, pushing it open. After promising the pups that we’d be back soon, I hopped out after him and closed the bunker door, following Ares. With raging fires, fallen trees, and thick smoke, our pack lay in ruins.
I covered my nose and waved some smoke from the air, gasping when I saw the stone people. Every single warrior from the mountain who had fought with us were frozen in rock again, the wolf warriors all in fighting stances.
But neither the hounds nor Hella and Fenris were here anymore.
Did that mean that they were in this forest with us? Or maybe they were just dead.
Walking farther onto the property, I frowned at the golden man standing with his flaming chariot, the horses captured in stone but their wings still ignited in fire. My fingers glided across the man’s stony face, and I frowned at him.
Where was he? Why was he gone? And who was he to me?
“Fuck,” Vulcan said, approaching me and Ares from behind. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” He glanced around at our pack, who wept over fallen loved ones or had started healing each other with salvaged bandages and medicine from the pharmacy. “Whatever you two need, I can supply it. I’m here to fight for this for however long it takes. Warriors. Food. Housing. You got it.”
After thanking Vulcan, I glanced at Ares and then at all the destroyed buildings. We needed all the help we could get because this war was just starting. And I couldn’t see an end in sight.
Vulcan ordered his warriors to put out the fires and to burn the bodies, so the pups wouldn’t see their dead parents. Before running off after them to help, Vulcan placed a hand on each of our shoulders. “I’ll get more packs to join us. When they hear of what happened, they’ll fight, no matter what. I’ll make sure of it.”
When he disappeared through the smoke, I turned to Ares, who hid his hurt behind a stoic expression. I grasped his cheeks and turned him to face me. “We can’t stay here, Ares. We should take Vulcan up on his offer, or we should go to my mother’s. Her pack house is empty. There aren’t nearly enough houses in her pack for us, and it might be a bit crammed, but it’s the only place that isn’t in ruins right now.”
Ares stared at me with ferocity in his eyes, but then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug. “I understand if you hate me for what I did. I take full responsibility for it. But I just want you to know that I’ll never leave you. I’ll always protect you. I’ll always love you. We’ll go to your mother’s pack house and start over.”
“Last box,” Elijah said, plopping a moving box onto the kitchen table and slumping down in a seat. One week had passed since the hound attack, and we had slowly started to adjust to this new normal life. He blew out a sigh. “This sucks for you guys.”
“Actually, this is the last one,” Adrian said, setting another box next to his. He placed a hand on Elijah’s shoulder and squeezed. “Why don’t we get out of here and give Ares and Aurora some space and time to rest?”
“Adrian,” I called before they left my old and now-new pack house. “We need to talk about rebuilding the pack and securing it soon. I know it’s only been a week, but I don’t know when those hounds will be back. We should focus our energy here and on reconstructing the underground tunnels, so they’re more stable.”
After Adrian nodded to me, they walked out of the pack house, hand in hand.
Sitting down on the couch beside Ares, I rested my head against his shoulder as Marcel and Charolette walked into the house next.
With his arms around her waist and his face buried into the crook of her neck, Marcel whispered something into Charolette’s ear and made her giggle like a crazy person.
When she saw us, she fanned her flushed cheeks and smiled. “We just finished getting the pups situated with everyone. On the bad side, about half of their parents had died, but thankfully, a lot of families were willing to take them in.”
Marcel nodded to Ares. “Which room are we staying in?”
Grumbling to himself about not wanting Charolette and Marcel sleeping together, Ares stood. “Two doors down from us, in Aurora’s old room.” He eyed Marcel’s hands on Charolette’s waist and growled. “But don’t push it with her, or you’ll end up outside.”
Once they disappeared down the hallway, I led Ares to my parents’ old room to rest. Ruffles and Pringle sat on the comforter in a ray of sunlight, snuggled up close to each other, Pringle’s head on Ruffles’s growing tummy. I had a sneaky suspicion that she was pregnant with little kitties.
Kicking the door closed with his foot, Ares gripped my waist and set me on the other side of the bed. Ever since the hound attack, Ares had become much gentler with me. I didn’t know if he was being cautious about our baby or was trying to make up for the fact that Mars was gone and that he blamed himself for it.
He pushed me back on the bed, his lips traveling down the column of my neck to my chest, and undid the buttons of my shirt to pull it apart. I stared up at him, watching his hot, soft mouth run over my breasts, as if he needed to prove himself.
I trailed my fingers down his back and moaned when he brushed his thumbs over my hardened nipples through my bra. “Ares,” I whispered, back arching.
He pressed his hardness against my pussy, and I clenched.
“You don’t have to be gentle. I know that’s not who you are.”
“Kitten, let me do this for you.”
He brushed his teeth against one of my nipples, delicately sucking on it and making me moan out loud again. Heat rushed to my core, and I swallowed hard as he slipped a finger into my pants and rubbed my clit through my underwear.
My toes curled, a wave of pleasure shooting through me. I reached down between my legs and stroked my hand against the bulge in his pants. He slipped his fingers into my pussy and thrust them in and out in a rougher, more rhythmic fashion.
“Goddess, please, Ares,” I whispered, eyes rolling back in my head. “Please, don’t be gentle with me right now. I want to feel pain. I want it to hurt—”
“You like this, Kitten,” he said quietly, fingers nestled inside of me, hitting my G-spot and driving me closer to the edge.
He pressed his lips to mine and bent his fingers over and over until my body trembled under his. I grasped his wrist, my heels digging into the mattress, trying so hard to scramble to the headboard. But he held me in place as the pleasure hit me in waves.
My body tingled, and I stared up into his golden-brown eyes. The red had faded from them over a week ago, and I hadn’t seen him that rageful since the attack. He slowly pulled his wet fingers out of me and stuck them into his mouth, groaning at the taste.
“Kitten,” he murmured, lying back on the bed and pulling me on top.
I pulled his cock out of his pants, desperate to have it inside of me, and tugged up my skirt, positioning him at my entrance. Maybe this wasn’t the best way to make things better, but it sure did make us feel good on the inside for a few moments.
Lowering myself onto him, I let him fill my pussy. He dug his fingers into my hips and smiled up at me. For a split second, I thought I saw Mars in his eyes, but I must’ve been seeing things because there was nothing but heartache, pain, and love for me within them.
He slowly pumped into me, though I knew he wanted to make it faster, make it rough, make it feel so good for him that he forgot about all of his agony for a few moments.
I grabbed his hand and snaked it around my neck. “Harder, Ares,” I said. “Take me. Really fucking take me. Let go of the pain for a couple minutes.”
After hesitating, he wrapped his fingers tighter around my throat, strumming them, and started to pound into me hard from below. The pain faded from his face, the heartbreak gone. I dug my fingers into his chest and let him take me
even harder, the heat gathering in my core.
“Yes,” I whispered, about to tip over the edge. “Harder.”
Ares pulled me back down to him, captured my nipple in his mouth, and sucked hard on it. Pleasure rushed out of me, and I relaxed into his arms, eyes rolling back. After he came inside of me, I moved off his chest and stared up at the ceiling.
So many thoughts rushed through my mind, but I could only seem to focus on the ones about the hounds. “We need to prepare for divine war,” I whispered to him, brushing some dark brown hair from his face. “We need more packs to get on board with this. We need to create alliances.”
He wrapped his strong arms around my body and pulled me closer to him. When he’d told me that Mars was gone, part of me hadn’t wanted to believe him, but after a week of not even seeing a glimpse of him, reality slowly set in. Having Mars gone hurt him as much as it hurt me. They had spent years together, and while they might’ve not liked each other … they were still closer than anyone could be with someone.
“How are you feeling?” I whispered, forgoing the hound conversation for now. “Are you okay?”
“Sometimes, I think he’s coming back to me,” Ares whispered. “… but I haven’t felt him. I don’t think he’s coming back. He left before he could see our pup.” He ran a hand over my stomach. “But I’m going to be there for you every step of the way, and I vow to protect you forever.”
I rested my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat.
Little did we know that this war was going to be bigger than we’d ever imagined, taking us to places we never thought we could go and forcing us to make decisions we’d sworn we’d never make.
Continued in Forever Yours, Kitten
Read Forever Yours, Kitten here: https://books2read.com/u/3LY7LJ
Also By Emilia Rose