AURORA
Marcel flung the front door open, nearly taking it off its hinges, and sprinted out into the forest.
Charolette still stood in the hallway, rocking back and forth on her heels. “No … no, this can’t be happening. Why would Liam do this? He’s a good guy. He’s our beta.”
By the mere look on her face, I could tell that she was thinking the worst. But if Ares had lied about knowing another woman and had been checking up on her without my knowledge, I would be thinking the worst too.
I grabbed Charolette’s hand and hurried through the woods, following the hazelnut trail.
“I want more information on Jeremy.” Elijah hurried right by my side. “But we have more pressing matters. The hounds didn’t attack last night. They just camped out by my property. I didn’t engage … but something isn’t right,” he said, his voice heavy with concern. “They’re planning something, something terrible, and I can’t figure out what it is.”
Deeper into the forest, someone growled.
“Marcel,” Charolette whispered and sprinted away from me.
And though she might love Liam, her heart belonged to Marcel. It always had, and it always would.
Grabbing Elijah’s hand, I pulled him as fast as I could run in human form. “Did you see Tony?” I asked, brows drawn together.
There must be something more going on because it was unusual for the hounds to camp out near a pack and not attack it.
“I haven’t seen him, but I heard that he was spotted with hounds.”
I cursed under my breath and clenched my free hand into a fist.
What was Tony’s damn problem? Why had he betrayed his own people? Had the hounds promised him something? My stomach tightened. Maybe they had promised him the Malavite Stone—the one Jeremy had.
But it still didn’t make sense. Tony had always lusted over my place as alpha, but he knew about the stone in my back. If he’d wanted just the stone, he could’ve killed me for half of it.
What’d Tony want?
Power? The hounds were some of the most feared creatures in Sanguine Wilds.
Reputation? He had blown that the moment he ran from the hound attack.
Me? I blew a breath from my nose. Well, he had tried to protect me from the hound attack, had tried to get me back from Ares by pinning the stone on Elijah even though he knew I had it, had purposefully tried to get Ares to lose control just to show me how unstable he was.
Maybe the hounds had promised him the other half of the stone for me.
It might be the craziest thing I had come up with, but it was the only damn thing that made sense at the moment.
Charolette disappeared into a house that had its door wide open, and suddenly, Liam was thrown through the front window. He landed with a thud on the grass, glass raining down around him, completely naked and … hard. Elijah grabbed my hand and stopped me in the middle of the street, watching the drama unfold.
Marcel leaped through the window in his human form, stalking around Liam, who had stumbled to his feet.
“Do you know how fucking much she loves you?” Marcel shouted, the vein in his neck pulsing violently.
Charolette appeared at the front door again with Ares behind her. He had a look on his face that told me he wanted to kill, slaughter, and take Liam’s head for something.
The woman rogue stepped past him, trying to button up her shirt, and Charolette lunged at her, but Ares held her back.
Oh my Goddess. Liam had been doing more than just telling pack secrets. He was cheating.
Marcel threw Liam to the ground, straddled his waist, and rained down fists on his face. Blood spewed everywhere. Bones cracked. Teeth broke. Liam tried helplessly to get Marcel off him, but Marcel refused to budge.
“Do you know how fuckin’ much she does for you? And you repay her by fucking the woman you were supposed to be watching as the beta? You’re a fuckin’ ”—punch—“no good”—punch—“piece of shit.”
Liam lay lifelessly underneath Marcel.
With swollen biceps, a twitching jaw, and golden eyes, Marcel pulled him up by his throat. “You’re not getting off the hook that fuckin’ easily.”
“Alpha Ares,” a warrior said through the mind link.
I listened through the pack mind link, as this was one of the first times I could listen through it since our mating bond was complete, and hoped that there was nothing to worry about because we couldn’t deal with another problem at the moment.
But I was wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.
“There is a hound at our border. Not showing signs of aggression, but he wants entry.”
My eyes widened, and I pulled Elijah toward the edge of Ares’s property, knowing that it wasn’t just any hound. It was Jeremy. Jeremy was back to see us, and I couldn’t wait another minute to see him again.
Sprinting even faster, Elijah tried hard to keep up with me. There was some yelling behind me, coming from Charolette, Marcel, and Liam, but I ignored it, needing to get to Jeremy after all these years.
“Kitten,” Ares said through the link. “Don’t engage with the hound.”
“It’s Jeremy, my brother,” I said back, inhaling Ares’s scent behind me. “I know it is.”
The guards stood heavily at the border, all staring at the monstrous hound with the stone in his back, who anxiously paced back and forth in the woods a few meters ahead. When Jeremy saw me, he ran over. Upon Ares’s orders, guards stood in front of me to protect me, but I shoved them out of the way to get to my brother.
Pushing his snout against my nose, he looked over at Elijah and gave him the weakest smile he could muster.
Elijah stayed quiet for a few moments, brows furrowed together. “This is him?” he whispered, crouching next to me and holding out a hesitant hand.
After Jeremy pushed his snout against Elijah’s hand and licked it, Jeremy looked back at me. “Aurora,” he said through my mind link.
I stared at him with wide, teary eyes. His voice. Jeremy’s voice … it was the same. My lips trembled, and I collapsed to my knees, taking his paw in my hands and leaning my forehead against his. I hadn’t heard his voice in years … I’d thought I’d never hear it again.
Out of all the things that had changed, this part of him had stayed the same. And it was my favorite part. I closed my eyes to enjoy the moment with him, remembering all the times I had heard his voice before … when he used to sing me sweet little melodies about the Moon Goddess every night on the porch; when he helped me howl to the moon for the first time; when he told me one of Dad’s family war stories the night before the hound attack.
I’d thought I had lost those memories forever, but now, we could make some more. Whether he was stuck in wolf form or not, I didn’t care. I’d love him no matter the consequences or the struggles that came with him.
“How?” I asked through the mind link, brushing my fingers against the wound in his head that hadn’t closed yet, guilt washing over me. “How are you talking to me? Why didn’t you talk to me at the cave? I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
“The bite …” He gazed down on the bite mark in my wrist, and then he looked back through the foggy forest again. “I couldn’t talk to you without biting you.”
Ares slowly approached us with brows furrowed together. “Aurora …” He gazed down at Jeremy and grasped my shoulder. Though he didn’t pull me away, I could tell that he was ready to.
“Ares is your mate,” Jeremy said weakly, but his voice wasn’t filled with disappointment, like Mom’s and Dad’s had been. “I’m glad. He can protect you from what’s to come.”
My chest tightened, and I had the sudden urge to cry my eyes out. Jeremy approved of Ares. Someone in my family approved of my relationship with the savage, deadly, hurting alpha. And in that moment, the rumors and my parents’ approval didn’t matter to me anymore. Only Jeremy’s.
“You have to listen to me,” Jeremy said.
I stared at him in amazement. The feeling of him being with me was something I’d never thought I’d experience again. I brushed my hand over his ratty fur, wanting to help make him look better. I’d wash out all the dirt and the dried blood, making his coat nice and shiny, help heal his wounds.
“Aurora,” Jeremy said, more sternly this time, “they’re coming. You have to take the stone out of me. You—” He looked back through the woods, as if he’d heard something, with fear that hadn’t seemed to leave his face the entire time he’d been here. “You have to hurry, Aurora. Take the stone. Use it to heal yourself. You can’t let the hounds have it. You can’t let them take it from you either.”
I shook my head at him. “What are you talking about?”
Elijah tapped me on the back. “What is he saying?”
“They’re coming. There’s no stopping them,” Jeremy continued. “I tried.”
“Jeremy, who? What are you talking about?” I asked, scanning the forest for any signs of life other than the birds in the trees.
Elijah started to pace back and forth next to me, rubbing his palms together, probably feeling his mate’s anxiety.
“The hounds aren’t what you think they are. They’re more dangerous, and they’re coming for everyone … especially you.” Jeremy glanced over his shoulder and into the forest. “Aurora, we don’t have time. Take the stone out of me. They were following me.”
“No,” I said out loud. “It’ll kill you.”
Jeremy growled at me and bared his blunt teeth.
Ares stepped between us, but I pushed him away.
“Do it, Aurora,” Jeremy said, whimpering and submitting to Ares.
The Jeremy I had known never submitted to anyone. He was an alpha himself, not this broken wolf before me. Whatever he had been through this past decade must’ve been hell.
“Don’t let Tony have it or you. He’s betrayed our pack over and over, and … and he’s coming here. They all want you.”
“Let him try,” I said. “I’ll kill him.”
Jeremy growled at me again. “You’ll die. Everyone here will die. He’s coming with hounds.” He gazed back into the woods. “Aurora, you have to do it. You have to take the stone and survive. That is my only wish for you.”
From deep in the forest, I could hear the thunderous roar of paws hitting the ground. I swallowed hard, not wanting to believe it. Why were they coming for me, and why were they coming at all?
“Jeremy, no … there has to be another way.”
Pain was written all over his face. “I don’t want to live this life anymore,” he said, voice breaking. “Put me out of my misery and save your new pack. Lead the people who survived the hound attack and make sure they survive the ones to come.”
The ones to come.
He’d made it sound like a war that we couldn’t stop was approaching.
Tears welled up into my eyes, my heart aching more than it ever had in my entire life. Jeremy wanted to die. He didn’t want this life anymore. It had been taking a toll on him, and the only thing he wanted was for me to put him out of his torture.
More branches snapped in the woods, the rumbling becoming louder. I inhaled deeply and got a whiff of Tony’s putrid stench. He was here, just as Jeremy had said.
“Why? Why are they coming for me?” I asked with tears in my eyes. “For my stone?”
“For divine revenge,” Jeremy said. “Now, shift, Aurora.”
Divine revenge? What the hell did he mean, divine revenge?
“Shift!”
I pushed away all my tears and collapsed onto all fours. Fuck the reasoning. I would fight whoever tried to hurt Jeremy, my family, and my pack. If I could do anything, it was going to be trying to save us all.
But I needed to shift quickly. Tony was close, and I didn’t have much time.
Gathering all my strength, I willed myself to shift. My bones cracked and snapped back together. Every part of my body ached. Pain shot up my legs until I could barely feel them. My arms felt like they were being stabbed over and over from the inside out.
It hurt even worse because I was forcing this shift to be quick.
I let out a piercing scream and then saw Tony sprinting in my direction through the fog. My eyes widened, and I forced myself to shift faster than I ever had. There were four hounds with him, running directly at us. Elijah shifted beside me and started to fend them off, but Tony slipped past him.
The warriors and guards around me shifted, including Ares, who stood in front of me with Jeremy. When I finally finished shifting, I looked around and realized that there weren’t just four measly hounds with him. There were hundreds in the woods, surrounding Ares’s pack.
Pain shot through my body as I recovered briefly from the shift, but all I could feel was adrenaline, so much fucking adrenaline. Hounds leaped in my direction, but Ares kept as many off of me as he could.
Somehow, Tony made it past Ares and easily pushed Jeremy to the side. Keeping his head low, he stared at the bare side of my neck and leaped at me. I moved my head away just enough for his teeth to sink into my shoulder instead of my neck.
“Don’t resist it, Aurora,” Tony said through our mind link. “I want to help you survive.”
I thrashed from side to side, trying to shake him off me, and dug my claws into his underbelly. When he realized I wouldn’t give in to him, he ripped out a chunk of my shoulder, spit it out of his mouth, and then lurched at Jeremy, who reacted too late.
Jeremy struggled to stay on all fours, but Tony took him down within moments. Seeing Jeremy so physically and emotionally weak broke my heart. He had always been the strongest person that I looked up to and had always been my rock.
Tony went straight for the back of Jeremy’s neck, about to sink his teeth into it to pull out the stone. There was so much I didn’t know about why he was doing this or what this divine revenge meant, but deep in my heart, I knew that I couldn’t let the hounds have the stone.
So, milliseconds before Tony could rip Jeremy’s spine open to get the stone, I pushed my snout under Tony’s teeth and sank my canines into the back of Jeremy’s neck. My wolf whimpered as Jeremy instantly relaxed under me.
My body heaved back and forth, but I didn’t pull out my teeth from his neck. This was what I had to do. I couldn’t let Tony take the stone, couldn’t give him that kind of power.
Tony sank his teeth into the back of my neck—right where my stone was—yet he only pricked the first few layers of skin before he was ripped off me and thrown across the forest by Ares.
And even then, I didn’t let go of my brother. I stayed on top of Jeremy, knowing that once I pulled my canines from his flesh—whether he had the stone still in him or not—he’d be dead.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” I said through the mind link, my voice cracking. My whole body felt so weak, yet I stayed strong. “I’m so sorry for this. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you all those years ago. I’m sorry that you couldn’t have a good life.”
“Go back to … cave, Aurora. Dig. Don’t go alone.”
“I love you with all my heart. I’ll never forget you, Jeremy. Ever.”
“I love you too.”
And those were the last words I heard from him.
I pulled the stone out of Jeremy’s neck, blood dripping from my mouth, and turned on my heel toward Ares and Tony, who were trying to rip each other apart.
That man had taken too much from me, and I was determined to take everything from him. I growled viciously at the two men, pulled Ares off him, and lurched at Tony myself. Ares had weakened him, but he was my kill.
Before he could even react, I latched my teeth into his neck and ripped out his throat. His throat fell from my mouth onto the ground, and a couple moments later, he fell with it. I collapsed next to him and crawled over to Jeremy, resting my head on his back.
It was over. It was all over.
For now.