AURORA
The Pink Moon Tavern was relatively empty tonight, only a few high schoolers sipping on milkshakes out front. Elijah sat in a turquoise booth in the back, drinking a Moscow mule. While his eyes were still bruised, the swelling had disappeared completely, and most of his wounds had healed already.
Gaze traveling from me to Marcel, Elijah raised a brow at me in question.
“It was the only way Ares would let me come,” I said, sliding into the booth. “What did the hound look like?” I asked, foregoing the chitchat. Elijah’s gaze lingered on Marcel for a moment longer, and I waved a hand to dismiss Marcel. “Don’t worry about him.”
Elijah turned back to me. “Black hair and broad.”
“Black hair? He was in his human form?” I asked, eyes widening.
It was a known fact that hounds didn’t—or couldn’t—shift from werewolf to human. They were thought to be stuck as animals forever, which made them extremely dangerous.
“Yes,” Elijah said. “My warrior heard Tony and the hound mention the stone several times.”
Marcel slammed his hand against the wooden table. “That fucking prick knows where the stone is?” he asked.
Elijah’s mule sloshed over the side of his cup and spilled.
So much for emotionless reactions. I wiped a napkin over the spilled drink.
Elijah shook his head. “I don’t know if he knows where it is, but he has information. My warrior said they seemed friendly.”
“How could Tony do this? He knew exactly how Ares would react to you having information on the stone.” I pressed my lips together and shook my head in disbelief.
Tony and I had spent so many nights together, and he’d never acted like this … but maybe he was always an asshole, always out to hurt, always out for power.
“We need a plan,” Elijah said.
“A plan?” Marcel growled. “Why don’t we go to your fucking mother’s house and torture the son-of-a-bitch until he tells us where that stone is?”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, feeling as I thought Ares would in this situation. Cruel, violent, and bloodthirsty as the darkness begged for me to let it in. Mars wanted the stone, but Ares … he wanted the person who had it to hurt.
Once he found out that Tony had information on it, he would do exactly as Marcel had suggested—run on Mom’s pack, capture Tony, and torture him.
No. Questions. Asked.
The thought should’ve terrified me, but it didn’t. If Tony had any sort of information on the stone and hadn’t told me—after watching me grow up in pain—he deserved to get punched more than a few times. And as for my asshole mother, who had traded me—her only heir—because she didn’t think I was good enough while the strongest alpha in the world did, I didn’t care what happened to her either. If she didn’t care about me, why should I care about her?
Elijah sipped his drink. “Tony would rather die than tell Ares anything.”
It was true. Tony had a tolerance for pain, both physical and emotional. Every time I had seen him fight—besides the time Ares had raided our pack—he was terrifying. During the first hound attack when we had still been young wolves, he had torn out so many throats and then swallowed them like a fucking psychopath. I didn’t put it past him to have something up his sleeve, so he could kill Ares and be claimed the most ruthless man alive.
“I will tell Ares tonight,” I said to Elijah. “We will run on my mother’s pack early tomorrow morning. I will talk to Tony despite Ares demanding me not to speak a single word to him. I have to try to talk some sense into—”
Marcel’s phone buzzed on the table, and he sat up tall, his pupils dilating. “I have to go.” He tossed me the keys to his car. “Bring it back.”
“You’re going to run home?” I asked, brows furrowing.
“It’s not like you can,” he said. The words came out lighthearted and shouldn’t have hurt as much as they did.
I’d told Ares and Charolette to keep this a secret because I wasn’t ready for the entire pack to know just yet. I still felt like I needed to prove myself.
Marcel furrowed his brows, as if he didn’t know why I was frowning at him. “Ares would have my ass if I let you run out in Hound Territory.”
I plastered a smile on my face and nodded in agreement. Okay, good, nobody had told him yet. Marcel was just terrified of Ares, as he should be.
Marcel left the tavern and disappeared into the woods in wolf form, carrying his clothes and phone in his mouth.
I turned back to Elijah and grabbed his hand. “What will you do?”
“What my pack does best,” he said. “Find information. Study Tony. Figure out who has the stone.” He grasped my hand tighter in his, smiling over at me. “Ares is taking good care of you?”
I nodded my head, thinking about earlier at his father’s house when I’d told him that I loved him. The words had come out so quickly yet so naturally. I barely knew the man, but I already knew that I couldn’t wait to spend my entire life with him.
“You have that spark in your eye,” he said, lips curling into a smirk. “The same one that Jeremy always used to have with me.” He paused for a moment, staring deeper at me. “You love him, don’t you?”
My cheeks flushed. I had never felt this way before about anyone, except Jeremy and maybe Dad. Everyone in my previous pack loved me, and I loved them, but they always treated me differently. They didn’t love who I really was; they didn’t see me for me; they didn’t feel the pain I went through during each shift. They saw the fake me.
Ares had seen the real Aurora, and he had loved every moment with her.
I just hoped that it would stay that way.
After another sip of his drink, Elijah gazed out the window in the direction of the cave. “When Jeremy told me that he loved me for the first time, he brought me to that cave in the north. It was in the middle of a snowstorm, twelve degrees Fahrenheit. We slept there that night in the freezing fucking cold, had frozen beer, and, Goddess, it was the best night of my life.”
“Have you been back?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not since he died. Heard it was taken over by hounds.”
I brushed my thumb against his, hoping that the motion would lighten the mood. “I have a question to ask you.”
Glancing back at me through his new black-framed glasses, he nodded. “What is it?”
“When we find that stone, I need your doctor to implant it into Ares’s sister,” I said.
Taken aback, he pulled his hand out of mine and shook his head.
“Please, she has cancer and is going to die soon. He has tried everything to find it.”
“Aurora …” he said. “I want to find that stone for you, so you can shift and be whole again.”
“Then … you really won’t like this request,” I started, grasping his hand again and squeezing it tightly. “If one half of the stone doesn’t cure her, I need you to remove mine.”
“No,” he said with finality. “I’m not doing that. I’m not going to risk your life for hers. I don’t even know her, and I promised Jeremy that I’d always keep you safe, no matter what happened to him or to him and I.”
“Please,” I begged. “She means everything to him.”
“Did Ares put you up to this?”
“No, he’s against it too. He doesn’t want me to sacrifice my quality of life for her, but … she’s everything to him. And I want to see her healthy and happy. Promise me that you’ll do it. Please. He’s just trying to help his sister survive. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same for Jeremy.”
He paused for a long moment, a grim expression crossing his face. “I don’t like this.”
“But you’ll do it,” I said, hopeful.
He tilted his head downward a few inches, and my heart leaped in my chest.
I held out my pinkie. “Promise me that you won’t tell Ares. He would hate me for it.”
He wrapped his pinkie around mine. “I promise.”