ARES
Hounds.
Hounds everywhere.
Saliva dripping from their teeth. Black eyes as dark as a new moon. Claws ready to rip into our fur.
There were so fucking many of them that I didn’t know which to kill first. They had emerged from the forest, surrounded us, trapped us in.
A growl ripped from my throat as I killed hound after hound. Aurora’s pack had to have set us up. How else would the hounds have known to attack while we were here? But how had they known we were coming? Who had fucking told them?
Pools of blood covered the forest floor. My fur was matted. Bodies of wolves from both our packs lay lifelessly on the ground around me … but the deadly hounds kept coming. They didn’t stop. Ever.
All I needed was to protect Aurora behind me. I trusted my pack to kill and to get back home.
A wolf swiped their claws across my chest, and I growled. Instead of another hound, it was Aurora’s mother. When she leaped at me, I dug my claws into her underbelly and ripped her into two. She fell at my feet, her eyes glazing over and her body shifting back into her human form.
Turning back to Aurora, I froze.
Where was she? Where the fuck did she go? Why wasn’t she here?
“Aurora,” I said through the mind link. I ran through the entire pack, desperately trying to find her among the wolves, trying to pick up her scent, anything. “Aurora, answer me.”
But I couldn’t pick up any scent of lemon in the midst of all this chaos and bloodshed. My chest tightened.
No. No. No. No. No. This couldn’t be fucking happening. I didn’t fucking believe it. My mate couldn’t be gone.
Suddenly, her voice drifted through my head like a haunting memory. A memory that I couldn’t remember. But it was her soft, scared voice reaching out to me in bits and pieces.
“I love you …”
“… pups …”
“… be happy.”
Had my mate tried to reach me through the fucking mind link, but I was too damn desperate to kill the hounds for her that … I couldn’t hear her?
I let out a guttural growl and sprinted through the forest to try to catch her scent.
Mate.
My mate couldn’t be gone.
Those couldn’t be the last words I heard from her.
Running back to her mother’s backyard, shuffling through every single body, I tried to find her. I wanted my mate.
Where was she? Was she gone? Had someone taken her?
I shook my head, my heart pounding faster than it had when I found Mom dead. No. No, this couldn’t … this couldn’t be happening. First, Mom. Now, Aurora. She was the only good thing in my life besides Charolette. I couldn’t lose her. I could not fucking lose her.
After shifting into my human form, I ripped bodies off each other, so I could make sure Aurora wasn’t one of them, so I could make sure a hound hadn’t killed her like one had killed her brother.
“Ares,” Marcel said, grabbing my wrist.
I yanked my hand out of his grasp and growled. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
He nodded to a group of men and women from Aurora’s mother’s pack. “We have prisoners from Aurora’s pack,” he said.
But I couldn’t think straight. All I could imagine was Aurora out there in the woods, trying to shift to protect herself but not being fast enough to do it before hounds ripped her to pieces.
One of the prisoners was Aurora’s father.
Before my warriors could drag him away, I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. “Where the fuck is she?” I asked through clenched teeth. “Where would she have gone?”
Her father struggled in my grasp. “Get your hands off of me.”
I growled, sank my claws into the back of his neck, dragged him all the way to the car, and threw him into the backseat. “You’re lucky you’re alive. If Aurora hadn’t told me not to kill you, you would be dead.” Before he had the chance to speak, I slammed the door in his face and looked at Marcel. “Drive him back to the property. Get him there safely.”
Marcel stood by the driver’s seat and looked down at all the open wounds covering my body. Blood spewed from each one, drenching me. “Come with us to heal your wounds before looking for Aurora.”
“No.”
I wouldn’t allow myself to spend a second getting healed when she was out there alone. I needed to find her before something happened, if nothing had happened already.
“Now, leave.” I seethed. I stormed back to the battlefield and searched for her in the sea of bodies for another hour.
She wasn’t gone.
She couldn’t be fucking gone.
Dropping down onto all fours, I doubled over in pain. What would Mars say when he found out? How could I tell him that I hadn’t protected our own mate? All we’d wanted to do was keep her safe, and I’d failed.
I’d failed, and she was gone. The next time we saw her, she’d be dead.
Just like Mom.
My chest tightened. She never got to mark me. I never got to feel those little canines break my skin and claim me. Mars never got to connect with her, mark her, or be with her the way he always wanted.
We wouldn’t have pups.
We wouldn’t have a life together.
I’d be alone.
That was all that I was and would ever be. Alone.
I lifted my nose to the moon shining above and let out a broken howl.
When I gathered enough strength to move again, I sprinted home. I’d find Aurora and bring her home with me, dead or alive. I wouldn’t let this haunt me for the rest of my life, like Mom’s death did.
Blood gushed from my wounds. My vision blurred. Pain shot through every one of my limbs. But I kept running faster and faster until I made it to my property, where everything was in utter chaos.
Pack doctors scrambled to find hospital beds for wounded warriors. Already-healed wolves gathered for battle in our training field. Mothers and fathers ushered children into their homes to hide them from this madness. I transformed back into my human form, threw on a pair of shorts, and hurried through the disarray, putting together a team of trackers who would be able to pick up Aurora’s scent.
Alpha Elijah stood near the pack house with some of his warriors and doctors.
I grabbed him by his collar, ready to fuck up his nerdy fucking face again. “Aurora is gone because of the fucking advice that you gave her last night.”
He pushed me back. “This isn’t my fault. I didn’t know you’d get attacked.”
My heart pounded against my rib cage. He might’ve not known about it, but someone in this pack had to have been working with Tony. Nobody in the Sanguine Wilds knew this pack’s secrets, especially not secrets about Mom. Who would betray me? Who would take their luna and try to kill their own people?
I pushed him away.
I would find out later. Right now, I needed to find the only thing that mattered to me—my Aurora.
“Oh my fucking Goddess,” Charolette screamed, grasping my wrist from behind. “Ares! What the hell are you doing? You need to let a doctor heal you! Even with your alpha abilities, those wounds won’t close on their own.”
Placing one of her small hands on the wound in the center of my chest, she tried to stop the blood from gushing out and yelled for a couple healers, but I ripped myself out of her grip and turned toward the pack.
“I’m not in the fucking mood for this right now.”
“You need to wrap these wounds in bandages.” She followed me. “You need to heal.”
“I need to find Aurora!” I growled at her. My canines emerged from under my lips. My vision grew dark. My nails lengthened into claws. I couldn’t stop myself. “Don’t tell me what I have to do. I’m not losing someone else.”
“I’m being serious—”
I snatched her chin in my hand. Everyone around us stopped and looked over. Never in my life had I laid a hand on Charolette. But then again, I had never lost my mate, and I had never had this much control of Mars.
At least Mars knew when to stop. Mars knew what was right and what was wrong. Mars knew I needed to be healed. But I didn’t fucking care. My mate was out there. And I had to find her.
Charolette pulled herself out of my grip. “I told you not to go out to find that stone.”
“Leave, right now, Charolette.”
She was testing me.
“Leave now.”
“Not until you get healed,” she said stubbornly. “What would Aurora think?”
When she said her name, I growled lowly and clenched my fists by my sides, everything in me hurting. What would Aurora think about this? I wasn’t sure. But I knew what I thought …
I thought that Aurora was dead.