AURORA
Ares wrapped his arms around me, pulled me to his chest, and spun me. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d fucking lost you,” he whispered against my neck, his breath warming my mark and making it tingle.
I pulled him closer to me and breathed in his hazelnut scent that always seemed to help me relax. Ares was safe and not another victim of the hounds. I could sleep well tonight.
“Call all the trackers you have after me home. They’re not safe out there.” I pulled away from him slightly and stared down at all the open wounds he hadn’t healed yet.
Shredded red chunks of flesh jutted out from a gash in his thigh as a thick layer of blood ran down his leg. My eyes widened slightly, and I shook my head. It had been hours since I last heard his howl … and he hadn’t had anyone treat him yet?
“We killed all the hounds, Aurora.” He brushed his fingers against my cheek as if he didn’t even feel the pain. “We’re safe.”
“We’re not safe.” I pressed my lips together. “There are still more of them out there. Tony is out there too.”
And I was going to kill that piece of shit when I found him.
Ares grasped my hands and ran his index finger over my knuckles. “Then, we’ll go find them. Right now. Get rid of them for good, for everything that they’ve done to us.”
“We can’t, Ares,” I said.
But I didn’t think leaving was his intention at all. If it were, he would’ve been storming toward the property edges, shouting at his warriors to prepare. Instead, everything in him seemed to soften.
He just stared at me with wavering human-brown to wolf-gold eyes, searching my face, as if he couldn’t believe that I was standing right in front of him. “Goddess, Aurora,” he whispered, pushing a strand of hair from my face. “I-I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you were dead.”
I tried my hardest to smile, but I couldn’t get myself to do it.
Ares had refused to heal his wounds, just so he could spend more time trying to find me. I appreciated the commitment he had to me, but I didn’t like how he had refused to help himself. It hurt to know that my mate would rather bleed to death than to heal himself and be strong. What would’ve happened to him if I had died out there?
After grabbing his hand in mine to show him that I was really here, I gazed at all the other warriors. “No more fighting today. Call everyone back home. Nobody leaves the property, and nobody enters it without permission.”
The warriors glanced at Ares and waited for orders. I expected Ares to say something, but he just continued to stare at me in disbelief, as if he didn’t even know there were others around.
Ares and Mars had always been in control and led with such power and authority. Seeing him lost for words and so scared didn’t sit right with me.
Marcel cleared his throat and stepped forward. “You heard our luna. Don’t make her say it again.”
When the warriors started to disperse, I nodded to Marcel and reminded myself to thank him later. I pulled Ares toward the hospital, where I would make sure the doctors healed him this time. But on our entire way there, I could hear his thoughts racing through his mind, his wolf begging him to tell me that he was okay and that all he wanted was to spend time with me.
Despite his silent pleas to take me home, I continued through the woods until Ares and I sat in a cold, bleak hospital room. He lay back in the bed and held my hand tightly, refusing to let go, even when a woman knocked on the wooden door.
Dressed in a long white coat, the doctor walked into the room with utensils and a bottle of clear gel. “We have been trying to get him to come in all morning,” she said, pulling up a chair next to his bed.
“All morning?” I asked, more to myself than to her.
It was true. Ares didn’t take care of himself when someone he loved was hurting. Charolette had mentioned it before, but we had been in the middle of something, and I hadn’t had a chance to really think about it. But now, it was right here, smacking me in the damn face.
My gaze drifted from his face tensed in pain to his deep thigh wounds, and my heart ached. Ares had hurt himself before, and this was another form of self-harm.
After the doctor cleaned the wounds, she put some gel right on his raw flesh. “This will help him heal. It’s a special gel for werewolves.” She stitched every one of his wounds until they were closed. “Time to get you cleaned off, Alpha, so you’re not dirty for your mate.”
Ares went to stand to wash all the blood and dirt off his body, but I grabbed his hand before he could leave the room.
“I’ll do it,” I said, intertwining my fingers with his. “Thank you for everything, Dr. …”
She gave me a warm smile. “Dr. Anand.”
After I thanked her again, we walked out of the hospital and toward our pack house. The entire way, Ares held my hand tighter than usual to his chest and stayed quiet while I battled with all the dark thoughts running through my mind. All I could feel was hurt at the thought of my mate not caring about himself.
Why hadn’t I taken this more seriously earlier? Why couldn’t I see that the man who dealt pain also felt pain? Why hadn’t I tried to talk about this with him? Charolette had told about his self-harm. She’d told me, and I hadn’t done a thing about it.
When we got home, I drew him a warm bath. “Get in.”
He stared at the tub and then at me. “Only if you get in with me.”
“No,” I said, voice coming out more stern than I’d intended. “Get in the tub.” He parted his lips to protest, but I didn’t want to fight with him about this. “Now, Ares. Don’t make me say it again.”
After a few moments, he pulled his shirt over his head, pushed down his shorts, and stepped into the water. “Can I take a shower?”
“Sit.”
When he finally submerged himself in the water, I knelt outside the tub, grabbed a soapy washcloth, and started to wash the blood off him. And when the water turned a musty red shade, I opened the drain and let more fresh water fill the tub. Dipping my feet into the bath with him, I sat on the edge and grabbed his arm, running the cloth against his forearm and seeing all those tiny little scars that I hadn’t noticed before.
They weren’t scars from a physical battle but a mental one.
I pressed my lips together, an overwhelming sadness washing over me, and tried not to burst out into tears. Ares was broken, more broken than I’d originally thought. He’d hurt himself willingly.
He followed my gaze and then pulled his arm away from me. “I’ll do it.”
“No,” I said. I pulled his arm back to me, brushed the rag against it more gently, and washed away the blood from the battle yesterday morning. And then I pressed my lips to his scars. “I love you.”
I knew that it wouldn’t make everything better. I knew I alone couldn’t heal him. But I could let him know that I would always be there for him, through the thick and the thin and through everything that might happen. I would always try to make him happy and make him smile, wash the hurt off of him when I could, and love him with everything that I had.
Suddenly, his eyes widened and filled with tears. He grabbed my arm, his fingertips digging into my wrist until they turned white. “I-I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, Aurora.” Almost as if he was too weak, his fingers slipped from my arm, and his body started to tremble in the water. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”
“Oh, Ares,” I whispered, stroking his hair to try to calm him down.
But he didn’t stop shaking. Beads of sweat formed on the back of his neck, and I could hear just how quickly his heart was racing.
I stripped my clothes and sat behind him in the tub, pulling him into my lap, holding his head to my chest, running my hands through his hair. “Ares, it’s okay. I’m here.”
“I couldn’t protect you,” he repeated shakily.
“I’m here with you, Ares.”
“I couldn’t protect Mom either.”
After ten heartbreaking minutes of listening to Ares’s broken cries, he slowly stopped shaking. I held him tighter to my chest and let him play with my fingers.
“I could have protected her,” he finally said, tensing. “I could have, but I didn’t.”
I didn’t speak a word. I didn’t know what to say, and I wanted him to continue.
“She … she was raped. Nineteen years ago, she was raped by a hound,” he said, voice cracking. “Our pack was raided by a herd of them. She told me to hide in the closet and not to come out, no matter what I heard or what I saw. I didn’t know what was happening. I heard her screaming and crying and …” His chest heaved up and down, the water rippling violently around us. “I watched it happen through the closet door.” He parted his lips to speak, but no words came out. “I …” His voice was quiet. “I was five.”
My chest tightened. Ares’s mother had been raped by a hound, and Ares had watched.
“She had Charolette nine months later, but she wasn’t happy. Not truly happy, like she had always been. She tried to be happy with us.” He forced a small smile, teary eyes gazing off into the distance. “That picture at my dad’s house was taken four days before she killed herself.”
“Ares …”
“I found her … she was clutching the picture and the teddy bear that we keep in the toy room. I—” He let out a loud cry. “I hadn’t known she wanted to kill herself. I … I should’ve stopped it. I should’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. I didn’t. It’s all my fault.”
He shook uncontrollably again. Tears streamed down his face. Water sloshed over the side of the tub. I just held him tighter.
My heart ached for him. Ares wasn’t the man behind the spear and the shield. He was the spear and the shield, protecting Mars from whatever anguish and hurt he could possibly face. But no matter how strong his armor was … even Ares felt pain.
“Some days, I can’t handle it. I think about hurting myself again. I can’t help it,” he said, lips trembling. “Dealing with both sides of me … is really hard. I don’t want to lose anyone that close to me again.” He clutched my hand tighter. “I don’t want to lose you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You’re not going to lose me,” I said into his ear.
“You keep me strong.” He interlocked our fingers and said those three little words that made my heart tingle all over, “Mark me, Aurora.” He tilted his head and closed his eyes. “Please,” he said so softly that I could barely hear him. “Please be mine forever.”
My breath caught in my throat, and my canines lengthened under my lips. I gently grazed my teeth against his neck. “Ares,” I said through the mind link, “you’re mine. And I’d do anything to protect you.”
And then I sank my teeth into his neck and claimed him.