AURORA
“Aurora,” Ares shouted as he jogged after me.
I hurried through the dark woods, not because I was angry, not because I was childish, but because I was … unsure of his motives and confused about my feelings toward him.
So many rumors that ex-pack members had beaten into my head about him all seemed to be damn paradoxes. He’d sprinted after me in a rage, like I was his sworn enemy and he was a war god. Yet he hadn’t touched me and hadn’t hurt me, and I would go so far as to say that he wanted me for what I was—weak.
I just didn’t know if this was all to fuck with my head or if he was being truthful.
Did he truly want me? Would he really pick me over the stone, or was this all some elaborate scheme to get me to trust him, so he could slowly kill me? The god of war always had something up his sleeve. But the Moon Goddess wouldn’t have chosen him as my mate if the mate bond didn’t mean something to both of us.
Maybe it was because of his mark on my neck, or maybe it was because I had seen another side of him these past couple of days, but I wanted to trust him so badly. I wanted to be his. I wanted to be wanted for once.
Continuing to walk through the forest, I tried to ignore the growls from hounds in the distance. We were too close to Hound Territory, but I couldn’t gather enough strength to think clearly. All my mind wanted to think about was my mate.
“Please, talk to me, Aurora,” Ares begged, taking long strides to keep up with me.
Never in a million years had I thought that I’d ever hear the feared alpha beg for anything, let alone beg me to not only talk to him, but to also stay.
“I will do anything to get you to trust me again. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
When he grabbed my hand, familiar tingles shot up and down my arm and made everything even more difficult for me. I pulled away, not trusting my wolf around him, and a look of deep anguish crossed his face.
After walking in silence for another five minutes through the eerie forest, Ares suddenly stopped and tensed, his pitiful eyes hardening into an intense, divine gaze. “Aurora, don’t move.”
I stopped and gazed back at him, listening to the snarling hounds surrounding us. They sprinted through the forest in all directions. Branches snapped, thunder suddenly started rumbling overhead, and lightning flashed through the fog. First, one hound. Then, two more. Then, five more. Until we were surrounded by eight hungry beasts.
Ares pushed me behind him, shifting into his wolf and preparing to attack. But he couldn’t take on all eight alone and protect me at the same time, like I knew he wanted to.
He paused, looked around at them, and growled, “Go for the two north. The one with the shorter tail, the other with the one eye. I know that you can hold them off or kill them. And if you can’t, run.”
He leaped forward into the herd of six hounds, his razor-sharp teeth latching into their fur and his claws tearing through their flesh. I swallowed hard, trying to think of anything that I could use to help me fight them. Every other time I had come across hounds, I’d been armed with the silver dagger that Jeremy had given me. But now, I was defenseless.
So, I did the only thing that I thought I could do. I sprinted toward the one with a single eye, leaped into the air when he bolted toward me, and landed on his back with a thump, grasping on to his raggedy fur to stay on top of him. Then, in Ruffles’s honor, I dug my claws into his eye so hard until I could feel it pop out of his head and fall into my palm.
The wolf under me howled to the Moon Goddess and jerked his body side to side, trying to throw me off of him. I clutched on to his fur harder, desperate to stay on his back. The hound with the short tail bared his teeth at me and lowered his head, trying to figure out how to attack me without hurting his comrade.
I kicked my hound hard in the ass with my heel, making him leap forward and straight into Short Tail. Feeling flesh, No Eyes bit Short Tail’s neck and took a whole chunk of muscle out. My eyes widened, and I took this as an opportunity to hop off of his back and snap the other’s throat.
No Eyes wandered around aimlessly, growling and baring his teeth. I slammed my foot into his underbelly, snatched his neck, and pushed my thumbs so deep into him until I broke through his skin and could tear out his insides.
Ares had killed four of the six hounds and was working on the last two. While I didn’t have a chance at killing either of them, as they seemed stronger than the last two I’d killed, I would help him as best as I could.
But just as I was about to jog over, another hound leaped into the air from behind me, knocked me to the ground, and towered over me—one paw on either side of my neck, salivating all over me. I desperately wriggled onto my back and stared up at the deadly beast above me.
My eyes widened. It wasn’t just any hound. It was the hound who I’d remember forever. Hollow black eyes. Two scars forming an X across his face. The pungent scent of cornfields and better days, staying out late with my only brother, but never getting a chance to spend the rest of my life with him, of happiness that had been torn away, of the hound that had murdered Jeremy.
Now, he would kill me too.
Two wolves howled in the distance, and I watched Ares rip their throats right out of their bodies, one by one, with his teeth.
“Ares!” I screamed.
He turned his head, eyes a vicious black, and raced in my direction.
But before he could get the hound off of me, another sprinted out from the woods, latched his teeth into the other hound’s neck, and ripped him off of me. I stared at the two hounds with wide eyes, never having seen two fight against each other before, and the image of Jeremy flashed into my mind.
Of his last moments breathing—when he had gazed over at me and reached out his hand for me to take but Mom pulled me away too quickly for me to help him, when his lips had curled into the smallest of smiles and he mouthed the words I love you, when his eyes had become two dull and soulless orbs.
Ares stood in front of me and growled harshly. Jeremy’s killer sprinted into the woods. The other wolf paused for the briefest moment, tilting his head to the side to look at me. I sucked in a sharp breath, recognizing something so eerily familiar about him, and grasped on to Ares’s paw.
The wolf ran into the forest, following Jeremy’s killer, and disappeared.
“Let me kill him,” Ares said.
“No,” I said through the mind link. “Let him go. Take me home. I don’t want to be left here alone.”
Ares shifted and stood up with me. I swallowed hard. So many thoughts, questions, and uncertainties were rushing through my mind. Part of me couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. No hound had ever hurt another before—at least, to my knowledge.
“Do you think it’s because of the stone?” Ares asked on our walk home. He breathed deeply through his nose, his bloodied, brawn chest heaving up and down. “Do you think that’s why they keep attacking you?”
I pressed my lips together, struggling to keep eye contact with him. “I’m not sure.”
The fog cleared, and I could see the grayish-white clouds breaking just enough to let the dawn sunlight filter out over the trees. Some of Ares’s warriors watched us walk back to the pack house through the forest. I ignored them and continued, my thoughts becoming fuzzy with Ares again.
Ares had marked me out of pure rage and jealousy.
Ares had chased me through the forest with his teeth bared.
Ares had terrorized me.
Yet … he loved me. He had said it in the woods, and he had proven it in the woods. He had told me that being unable to shift make him leave me. But I didn’t quite believe that fully. He needed the stone for some reason. And though he’d said it wasn’t for power, he hadn’t told me why.
How could I live with someone who made me so anxious, with someone who couldn’t control his wolf, with someone who terrified me?
Before we reached the pack house, Ares grasped my hand. “Aurora, I want to tell you why I need that stone, but I can’t,” he said, reading my thoughts.
Stupid mate bond.
I pressed my lips together and pulled my hand away from him. “Why not? If you want to gain my trust again, you have to give me something—anything—that I can believe.”
It wasn’t enough to tell me he couldn’t; I needed answers.
A conflicted look crossed his face, and he pushed a hand into his hair, avoiding all eye contact with me. I stared at his face, searching it for any sort of reasoning, any sort of something that I could latch on to. I wanted him to reassure me that though Ares needed that stone, he wouldn’t tear it out of me while I was asleep—when he couldn’t see my terror, when he couldn’t feel my hurt.
He sighed deeply through his nose and rubbed his face. “It’s not my place to tell you. You have to talk to Charolette.”
“Charolette?” I asked, brows furrowed together. “Why do I need to talk to her?”
More pain crossed his face, and he suddenly got quiet. “You just have to. I can’t tell you.”
I wanted to be so angry with him; I wanted to hurt him like he had hurt me; I wanted to make him feel all the pain that I had … but I could feel the agony festering inside of him.
From the moment I’d met Ares, I had felt it, but I always thought it was just his immense anger. But this was killing him slowly on the inside, tearing him down, making him hurt just as badly as I always did.
“I will talk to Charolette later. I need to go help Elijah. Don’t follow me, and make sure none of your guards get in my way, or I’ll lock them inside one of those cages and do to them what you did to Elijah.” I turned on my heel and stepped away.
He grasped my wrist. “Promise me that you won’t leave me, Aurora, please. Promise me that if you leave this property, you’ll come back to me.”
I swallowed hard and stared at my feet. Then, I placed my hand on top of his and pushed him away. I needed to find Elijah. “I’ll see you tonight.”