ARES
“If you care about me … if you even”—she hiccuped—“respected me at all, please don’t tear me to pieces.” She cowered under me, shielding her face from me, hiding her mark, showing me the back of her neck and nothing else.
Mate is upset.
My mate was hurt. Aurora was hurt. I had hurt her.
I could feel every ounce of her pain, could feel how much it hurt her to think that I—her own mate—would be the one to kill her. She was terrified of me, of Ares and Mars. We had become one monster to her, and that hurt us too.
After staring down at our mate for another moment, I lay on my stomach and just watched her body heave up and down. We both wanted to soothe her but knew that we had broken her trust. She would run away from us for good.
We would lose her, like we would lose Charolette soon.
Her breathing was jagged and uneven. Her heart was racing. She gazed up at me through terrified, teary eyes without raising her head. I waved my tail back and forth, hoping that it’d soother her enough so she’d show me her face, her beautiful face.
Instead of looking back up, she sat there and held herself, as if she’d fall apart if she didn’t. A light breeze blew, making her soft brown hair drift against her moonlit face.
Mate is hurting because of us.
I closed my eyes, trying to calm down my wolf.
The strangled sound of hounds howling deep in the forest echoed through the woods, and Aurora tensed. We were close to Hound Territory, which meant I needed to calm Aurora down enough to get us to safety before they could smell us.
Standing on all four legs, I stepped closer to her. She pulled her legs to her body, curling herself into a ball and tensing even more from me than she had from the hounds. My heart shattered into a million pieces as I watched my mate—the strong alpha woman I had brought home—look so broken because of me. It had never been my intention …
But the stone.
Why did she have the stone? She wasn’t using it for power; she was fierce enough. She wasn’t using it for wealth; all she needed was Ruffles to keep her happy. She wasn’t using it for her health … she seemed perfectly healthy.
“Aurora,” I said through the mind link, hoping that she’d answer.
Complete silence.
I stepped toward her again. “Aurora … Kitten.”
She turned away from me at the sound of my nickname for her, and I frowned. She didn’t want to be called Kitten anymore? Or maybe she just didn’t like the way that I had said it.
Mate doesn’t want us. Mate doesn’t like our nickname anymore. Mate wants to reject us, leave us. But we don’t want her to leave. We love her.
As my wolf spoke to me, I stopped walking toward her and rested my snout at her feet. She raised her head to gaze at me and frowned. Tears slid down her cheeks, and all I wanted to do was brush them away and hold her to my chest. But … she wouldn’t want that.
All of the cries she tried to suppress finally slipped out of her mouth. She sobbed loudly, her howls echoing through the silent forest. Pain. So much pain. Her body shook back and forth, and she tried so hard to hush herself, but she couldn’t.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.
But it only made her cry more.
Mate is crying. Help her. We need to help her.
“I …” Her voice was quiet. “I’m so weak, Ares. Just take the stone out of me. Elijah’s doctors can do it for you. You don’t want someone like me. An alpha who can’t even …” she whimpered. “Who can’t even …”
My heart clenched, chest tightening. Just hearing her degrading words made me shift into my human and grabbed her hand. “Aurora, I would never leave you. Don’t think that for even a second.”
She gazed up at me. “Mars might not, but … Ares will.”
Every single part of my body hurt. “I would not do that. I would never think about leaving you, whether you have the stone or not. I love you so fucking much.” I paused for a moment. “But … why do you have the stone? What do you need it for?”
“I can’t shift,” she whispered, the words so soft that I almost couldn’t hear them. She tried to pull her hand away, to shield her tears from me, but I held it tighter. “Without it … I wouldn’t be able to move.”
I parted my lips to say something, but nothing would come out, except, “What do you mean?”
I didn’t understand it. My mate couldn’t shift? She couldn’t shift into her wolf? We wouldn’t be able to run together through the woods. I would never get to see her wolf in all of her glory, couldn’t play with her, couldn’t run with her, couldn’t be with her. Ever.
“On a bad day, it takes ten minutes for me to shift to minimize the pain. It hurts so bad every single time.” She shook her head, brushing some tears away. “You should reject me. You deserve a strong luna who can lead with you. You need someone who can run in the forest with you and someone you can be happy with and someone—”
I grasped her face in my hands and kissed her hard on the lips. Nothing she said or could say would ever make me want to reject her. She was a force despite all of this. My mate couldn’t shift, but she had killed two rogues in her human form, she had stopped me from shamelessly killing and torturing another alpha, and she had survived the harsh words of countless people who had put her down for this … this disability.
It was me who was fucking weak. The alpha who terrorized every other pack just to find the stone so he could save his sister. The alpha who couldn’t control himself. The alpha who hid behind the horrendous rumors so he wouldn’t be seen as a soft man—because soft men always got hurt in the end.
All I wanted to do was lay her on the ground and worship every inch of her body until she knew that I wasn’t going anywhere, but she let go of my hand and shoved it away.
I pushed away her tears with my thumbs. “Aurora, I don’t want the stone for power. I never wanted that stone for power.”
She hiccuped against my chest, her body jerking in my arms. “Yes, you do.” She stood up and stepped away from me. “All it seems you want is power. You nearly killed Elijah for it. You nearly killed him, Ares.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you had, I would’ve never forgiven you.”
Never would’ve forgiven me …
The words sank deep. If I had killed him, Aurora would’ve left me.
In that moment, I made a promise to myself not to ever kill Elijah or anyone Aurora cared about.
I stood up next to her and pleaded, “Don’t leave me, Aurora.”
I loved her with everything I’d ever had. She was one of the only people Mars felt comfortable around anymore, and she was the only damn person who could calm me down.
“Please, stay.”
After giving me a long, bruising glance, she walked away from the conversation and toward my property. I stood there and stared at her departing figure with a frown. I had so much shit to make up for, so many truths to tell her. I didn’t know where to start or if she’d believe me, but … I needed her to stay with me.
I’d do anything for her to stay.
Hell, I’d do anything to make her fucking happy.