AURORA
“What the hell did you just say?” I asked, having heard him clearly the first time. I just couldn’t believe those words had actually come out of his mouth. I really couldn’t believe it. “I have hound blood running through my veins?”
Elijah stuffed his hands into his jeans and nodded. “Yes.”
“It’s not possible.”
I paced between him and the royal-blue couch in Lucy’s Boutique and ran through everything Mom and Dad had told me about our family and about the hounds. None of this made sense. My blood was of Mom and Dad, two respected warrior wolves from the Sanguine Wilds, not of hounds.
“Luna, are you okay?” Lucy asked from her desk.
She, Charolette, and Adrian glanced over at us with worried expressions. And I didn’t know how to even answer that question.
Was I okay? Who the hell knew what I was?
Instead of expressing my worry, I gave them my best smile. “Yes, of course. Thank you for all your help today. Adrian, please walk Charolette home. I need to speak with Elijah alone.” I snatched Elijah’s hand and pulled him toward the exit. “Oh, and, Charolette, don’t forget our date tomorrow!”
After shoving the door open, I tugged Elijah out into town. “How do you know for sure?”
Elijah dropped my hand and nodded to a much quieter path leading to the pack house through the forest. Ruffles and Pringle hurried before us, chasing the leaves blowing in the wind and stomping on fallen branches.
“We only have theories about the hounds. We don’t have vast knowledge about them …”
“But?”
“But what makes hounds biologically different from rogues and wolves is their blood,” he said. “At least, that’s the only thing we’ve found so far. And that’s only with alive hounds. Dead hounds have the same blood as werewolves.”
I clenched and unclenched my hands. That didn’t solve anything, but it wasn’t Elijah’s fault. He was just as clueless as I was about this entire thing. Still, this wasn’t possible. We needed more information on the hounds to figure out why I had the same blood as them.
“You don’t know any other reason?” I asked, desperate for answers. “Dr. Farral, the doctor who did my surgery, hasn’t found anything else that could be the cause of my blood being different than normal werewolf blood?”
“The only other difference between you and regular werewolves is the stone.”
I swallowed hard. “You don’t think the hounds have—”
“No,” Elijah said. “There was no stone in the hound we studied.”
A long time ago, Dr. Farral had told me that the stone changed my blood, but there had to be more to this explanation. My mind wandered to Fenris, the man who I thought was trying to take the Malavite Stone from me. While the stone was special, it might not be the reason Fenris was after me. Maybe he wanted me because I had the same blood as him; we were of the same kind.
Who knew? Sure as hell not me.
Though it didn’t solve anything, that was better than knowing there was another stone out there that every hound had. If those beasts got their nasty paws on any sort of stone, they’d be unstoppable.
“We’ll study it some more,” Elijah said, stepping into my backyard. “We’re working as hard as we can. I know the war is approaching faster than we’d like. I want to have some more information before that time.” He glanced up at the kitchen window at Mars, who was furiously scrubbing a pan. “And let me know when you plan to have the stone surgery. I’ll speak to Dr. Farral about it tonight.”
After parting ways with Elijah, I blew out a deep breath and wondered how I’d tell Ares that I had hound blood. We had so much other shit to worry about, and this was just an added problem. What if I ended up becoming one, losing all sense of reason and murdering my mate in cold blood?
A few moments later, the backyard light turned on, and the door swung open. Ruffles ran to it, chased by Pringle, who had a brown leaf on his head. She turned around, swatted the leaf, and hit him in the face. Then, she walked right past Mars and into the house. Pringle followed after her.
I guessed Ruffles had a boy spending the night.
Dressed in a black T-shirt that hugged his biceps, Mars smiled at me with four pizza boxes in his hands and two bottles of soda stuffed between his bicep and chest. “Did you find a dress?”
“Yes,” I said, grasping the sodas rom him and walking into the house to prepare for the pups to visit tonight.
Mars had been so anxious about this all day; he had texted me throughout the dress-picking session about not wanting to fuck this up.
“What’s it look like?” he asked, setting the boxes down in the kitchen. “I want to see it.”
“You can’t see it until the Luna Ceremony,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist from behind and resting my cheek on his back. How was I going to tell him about the stone and then about my blood? I didn’t want Ares to reemerge from his slumber and explode right before the pups came over tonight.
But I needed to tell him. The sooner, the better.
“Not even a peek?”
I forced out a laugh and shook my head. “No.”
Mars turned around, brow raised, and grasped my chin, immediately sensing that something was eating me up on the inside. “What’s wrong?” he asked, searching my face for any sort of response. “What happened?”
Fumbling with my fingers, I gulped. “I need to speak with you about something that I found out today …” I stared up into his eyes, which turned more gold by the second, and grasped his hands tightly. “We’re going out for milkshakes with Charolette tomorrow.”
“And?”
“And Elijah said that the stone will make me weak if I put it inside of me before the Luna Ceremony,” I admitted. While Mars didn’t get angry that often, he furrowed his brows and scowled. But before he could say anything, I stopped him. “And he’s right. Last time this happened, I could barely move for a week. I was so sore.”
He tensed even harder. “You want to wait to put it inside of you? You’ll be in danger.”
“I’ve been in danger,” I whispered, still not sure if waiting was the right choice.
But Ares and Mars both had been looking forward to this sacred ceremony for so long now. He’d even asked me if I could wear his mother’s necklace because he knew it’d have made her happy. He wanted everything to be perfect. And if I couldn’t attend the ceremony, there was no point of even hosting one.
“It’s only a few days away.”
He pulled away from me. “A few days is a long time.”
“It’ll take me even longer to recover.” I grasped his hands to pull him back toward me. “I can fight the hounds now as I am. If I take the other half of the stone, I don’t know how my body will react. We won’t be able to go to the mountain and get information from the necromancer either.”
“I’ll go with Vulcan.”
“You’re not going alone,” I said, voice strong, making sure he knew my word was final.
Ares went psycho when he was alone. He’d be a wreck, knowing that Fenris could attack our pack during his trip and that he wouldn’t be able to protect me, especially after Mars’s nightmare the other night.
“There’s more. A bigger problem,” I whispered, gliding my tongue across my lower lip. “Elijah found out that—”
“Elijah is just the damn bringer of bad news, isn’t he?” Mars interrupted.
After shrugging in a weak attempt to convince myself that it wasn’t that bad, I sighed. This was bad, damn bad. I didn’t even know what this meant about our future, about possible pups, about if Mars would want to go through with the Luna Ceremony, knowing that I had hound blood.
“He ran some blood tests on the hound and found out that whatever is inside the hound’s blood is also …”
“Is also what?”
Staring down at our tiled floor, I shuffled from foot to foot. “In mine …”
Silence. Frightening silence.
“You’re a hound?” Mars asked, a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
I widened my eyes. “No! I just … there’s something in my blood that makes it similar to a hound’s. Elijah’s doctor doesn’t know anything about it yet, but they’re working on figuring it out and hope to have something soon.”
Mars froze, realization darting across his face. “Dad was right,” he whispered. “The curse … you are who they’re looking for. It wasn’t Mom …”
“The curse? What curse?”
Someone knocked on our doors, and Mars hurried over to it. “We’ll talk about this later.”
After he pulled the doors open, a woman with silver hair and flawless dark skin stepped into the house. “Goodness, it’s freezing outside, and it’s only the beginning of fall.” She wrapped her arms around Mars. “How are you doing, Mars? I hope I’m not late. We haven’t seen each other in a while. I usually get the pleasure of speaking with Ares.”
Mars beamed down at her, the tenseness from our conversation still lingering in his smile. And for some reason, my heart clenched. Mars must’ve not come out as often as Ares did. But I guessed I was one of the lucky ones who had the delight of seeing Mars more than most people did.
She walked up the stairs and introduced herself to me as Dr. Denise Davis, but she told me to call her Denise. After offering her some coffee, I glanced out the window for the kids who’d be here for Mars’s group therapy session. He walked over to me, shoulders tense and worry etched into his face.
“Why don’t you relax, Mars?” I asked, grabbing his hand.
“How am I supposed to relax? My mate has hound blood and keeps getting attacked by hounds. We have about ten kids coming over, who witnessed the most horrific attacks in their lives. There is no relaxing, only stressing, Aurora.”
I pulled him down into a kiss and brushed my fingers against his cheekbones. “Stop. We don’t know about my blood yet. There is still so much to figure out. We’re going to enjoy the night with the pups, and you’re going to be great at it.”
He grasped my hands and sighed. “What if I can’t help them? What if they’re already too screwed up, like I am, and become a monster like Ares?”
“You’re not screwed up, and you’re certainly not a monster,” I said softly.
While I didn’t know if he believed me or if he would ever believe me, I needed him to know that he wasn’t a burden to me; he was not a monster, and he wasn’t messed up. He was as the Moon Goddess had made him—a wondrous creation and my destiny.
After a couple moments, I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged gently on the ends of his dark hair. “You’re going to do great. Be who you are. If that’s Ares or Mars, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the pups would love to meet both of you.”
Denise glanced at us, lips set in a small smile and glasses low on her nose. Instead of asking me about my life like I’d thought she would, she looked back toward the front window and clapped her hands together. “They’re here!”
As she hurried to the front doors, Mars froze.
I rubbed soothing little circles against Mars’s back and ushered him to the doors. “Just breathe. These kids are like you. They need someone strong to help them get through this. And they look up to you. You’re their alpha now,” I said.
Mars relaxed slightly and nodded.
“And don’t forget about those pups that you want to have.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Show me how good you are with them.”
At the mention of pups, Mars stood taller and with confidence, and walked to the doors to welcome all the pups into the pack house. About a fourth of his height, the pups waddled into the house one by one and gawked up at Mars like he was the most amazing godlike figure they had ever seen.
Oohing and aahing, all their little murmurs made me smile. I hadn’t been around any pups for so long. Their innocence convinced me that I wanted pups as soon as we could. I’d love to have a couple little babies running around the house with Mars and Ares.
After grabbing plates of pizza, they sat on the floor in the living room and chatted with each other. I stayed back and let Mars take control. He needed this as much as they did, knowing that he was helping pups who were just like him.
Four hours later, Mars concluded the group therapy session and let the children run free in our living room. Leaning against our tan leather couch, Mars whispered something to the young pup in his lap, earning him a huge grin and a face full of hair from her when she nodded her head and her pigtails went flying.
My heart fluttered at the sight. One day, we’d have a pup like her as our own. She’d fall asleep on Mars’s chest, her snores drifting through the pack house; she’d jump up onto his back, wrap her arms around his shoulders, and giggle into his ear. It was something I’d thought I wanted to wait for, but after seeing how natural he acted with the pups, I wanted it now.
Whoever had told me that Alpha Ares was a monster had obviously never seen this part of him.
“Mars adores you,” Denise said as Mars grabbed the girl’s hand and led her to the front doors, where her adopted mother, the owner of Moon’s Café, waited to pick her up. She walked down the stairs, a jacket draped over her forearm. “I’m so grateful that he has you in his life.”
“Leaving, Denise?” Mars asked.
She gently patted his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, hon.”
When all the pups and Denise left, Mars shut the doors and turned to me, hands sliding around my hips. The pups’ visit seemed to have helped him almost more than it did the pups because the pups didn’t see him as Ares or as a monster; they saw him as a fearless leader and protector.
“So, how’d I do?”
“Goddess, Mars, that was amazing,” I said, tugging on the ends of his hair and staring up at him in awe.
“Am I good enough to be the father of your pups?”
I playfully slapped his shoulder. “Stop it. You know you’d be great.”
Unable to wait to take Mars to bed, I pulled him down the long hallways. When we passed Ruffles’s yellow room, the door was closed, and she mewed. I decided not to interrupt Ruffles and Pringle because I had a sneaky suspicion that they were lying belly up on the bed with chip dust coating their whiskers.
After pushing him into our room, I pulled on his shirt. “Take off your clothes.”
Ruffles bellowed in pain. I had heard the agonizing sound only once before—when I found her as a kitten in the bushes. She had been gnawed on by some kind of animal and nearly died. So, my first instinct was to check up on her, just in case.
“When I get back, you’re going to fuck me,” I called over my shoulder to Mars as I hurried to Ruffles’s bedroom.
Another desperate yowl, and I pushed the door open. Damn, this girl sounds like she is—
“Ruffles!” I shouted, staring wide-eyed at her on her yellow bed.
Pringle stood behind Ruffles, doing the nasty with her, and Ruffles actually seemed as if she was enjoying it beyond belief despite her howls.
“Girl!”
Yet they didn’t stop; they just kept going at it like wild animals.
“You’d better not ruin that bed,” I said, scrunching up my nose and walking back to our bedroom.
I wasn’t about to break that up and have two cats angry with me. At least this would keep Ruffles out of Mars’s hair, so I could have him all to myself.
In nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants that clung to his hard-on, Mars leaned against our bed and crossed his muscular arms over his chest. Moonlight flooded in through the curtains, glistening off his sculpted abdomen. Something about him looked and seemed different tonight. I’d finally seen him as more than just an alpha tonight. He was a man, a damn good man, and would be a father to our pups one day. But most of all, he was mine.
“Ruffles?” he asked.
“She’s fine,” I whispered, trying to control my wolf who wanted to tear off his clothes and let him fill us with load after load of cum until I carried his pups in my belly. My cheeks flushed at the thought of Mars and Ares becoming even more possessive of me, knowing that his pups were growing inside of me.
“Mate,” my wolf said through my mind. “Mate now. Pups now.”
“Not—”
Before I could finish the thought, she took control of me and let out a possessive growl, staring our mate down like any she-wolf would in heat. Except we weren’t in heat. We just craved him to be inside of us again. It had been way too long.
“Is my Kitten hungry?” Mars asked, his wolf recognizing mine. Brown eyes turning golden, he lay back on the bed with his legs hanging off the edge and one hand grasping his hard cock through his pants.
I clenched, heat gathering between my legs, and nodded at his throbbing cock. “Yes, Alpha.”
“Eyes,” he ordered, cocking a finger to his face. “Show them to me.”
When I lifted my gaze to him and saw the wolfish fiend in his golden irises, my heart raced. Goddess, I wanted him to ruin every part of my body, to make me his, and to force me to surrender to the alpha inside him.
“Show me how hungry you are for this.” He groped his cock through his pants, lifted it slightly, and let it smack against his hips with a thud. “Get on your knees.”
I knelt, aching for his cock.
Mars smirked and stroked his bulge. “Crawl to me.”
Crawling to him on all fours, I kept my eyes on his and watched his gaze slide from my face to my tits to my ass as it swayed. My juices coated my pussy lips, making me wet and ready and needy for him.
“Take off the shirt,” he ordered when I knelt between his legs, “before I ruin that pretty face of yours.”
After tugging off my shirt and bra, I let my tits bounce against his thighs. He moved closer to the edge of the bed, and I placed my hand over his to stroke him. Then, I placed my mouth on the head of his cock through his thin sweatpants and sucked.
Groaning, he shoved a hand into my hair and pulled me closer. I moved my mouth down his covered length, sucking. A wave of heat warmed my core, and my wolf purred for him.
When I pulled down his waistband, his veiny cock sprang out of his sweats and stuck into the air, curving down slightly. Grasping it at its base, I spit on the head, and then slowly sucked on him, bobbing my head up and down.
Unable to stop myself, I thrust my hand between my legs and rubbed my aching clit. He moved his hips, sending his dick deeper and deeper down my tight throat.
I stared up at him through teary eyes and gargled on him. “Ruin me, Mars. Make me beg for you to stop. Fuck my throat until it’s sore. Be rough with me like Ares is.”
Mars had always been gentle and passionate, but I wanted to see the wild and savage part of him. Over the past few weeks, I’d caught a few glimpses of it and been craving more. Nothing compared to a dominant alpha who knew when to lose control for his mate and claim her ruthlessly.
“Ruin you?” Mars growled and tossed me onto the bed, so my back was on the mattress and my head hung off the edge. He ripped off my pants and underwear with his claws, leaving me bare to him. With the torn clothing, he tied each wrist to the matching ankle, forcing my legs apart, and then he stood by my head and leaned over me, placing the head of his cock right against my lips and his hand between my legs to rub my pussy.
“Ruin me,” I murmured.
Without another word, he shoved himself all the way down my throat and refused to move when I gagged on his cock. Instead, he fucked my face hard and fast, his fingers moving in torturous circles against my clit, sending waves of pleasure through my body.
Slobber dripped down my cheeks and nose. When he pulled himself out to let me breathe, he rubbed the head of his cock all over my swollen lips. A wave of pleasure rolled through me, and I dug my nails into the sheets.
“More,” I said breathlessly, wiggling my hips to displace all the pressure building up in my core. “I need more. Face-fuck me, Mars. Give me everything you have. Make it hurt.”
He rammed himself back inside of me, shoving all eight inches down my throat. Gargling, I opened my mouth wider to make room for as much of him as I could take. More spit slid down my face, making me a drooling hot mess for my mate.
Wrapping one hand around the front of my throat, he jerked himself off and face-fucked me even harder, using my throat as if he would use my pussy. He rubbed my clit in fast, tortuous circles, making me tighten.
“Is my Kitten hungry for my cum?” he asked, his balls resting against my nose.
Desperate to breathe, desperate to come, desperate for him to be inside me already, I sucked harder on him and nodded. Goddess, I needed it. Anywhere he wanted to give it to me, I would take it.
He jerked his cock off in my throat harder and tensed. “Do you want my load deep in this throat?”
My hips jerked into the air at the thought. I was so damn close to coming. He slapped my clit hard and pulled out of me. Spit and drool dribbled down my face, my nose, my brows, ruining me. He grabbed a pillow, tossed it onto the ground, and pulled me off the bed to sit me right on it.
“Use it. Grind your pussy against it. Pretend it’s my cock.” He grasped my chin and forced me to look up at him.
I ground my hips into the pillow, moving them back and forth quickly to feel any kind of friction that could tip me over the edge.
He trailed a finger down my bottom lip. “Open your mouth.”
I took a deep breath, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to last another few minutes before I came. My wolf ached for me to open my mouth, for me to obey our alpha, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want that. I wanted more. I wanted all his cum inside my pussy.
“Give me your pups,” I pleaded breathlessly, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to resist. My hips moved faster against the pillow, driving me higher. “Please, Mars, fill me with them. I-I-I can’t take this any longer.”
“Fuck, Aurora.” He lifted me off the pussy-stained pillow, tossed me onto the bed like I weighed nothing, and pulled me toward the edge by the hips. He wasted no time, positioning himself at my entrance and shoving himself inside of me.
“Mars!” I screamed, immediately coming all over him.
Mars thrust into me only once more before he stilled and came deep in my pussy, refusing to pull out, even after he came. He pumped into me a few more times, pushing his cum as deep and as close to my cervix as he could get it.
“Kitten, you’re not leaving this bed until you’re full with them,” he growled into my ear, his cock softening inside of me, still refusing to pull out. He slipped a hand between us and rubbed my clit again. “I’m giving you all I have tonight. Everything, Kitten.”
Outside, the soft colors of the dawn danced across the sky. I lay back in the bed, my swollen pink clit throbbing, like it had all night long.
I pushed Ares’s hand away and whined. “Ares, please,” I whispered. “It’s too much. We’ve already fucked all night. We have to get some sleep.”
After growling low, Ares kissed between my breasts and up my neck, stopping at his mark. He sucked on the skin, and I purred for him. Sure, it had been all night, but I was still wide awake, wanting and craving him.
At some point during our ruin my pussy fuck session, Ares had awoken and vowed to fuck me harder and longer than Mars had. Not that I minded. It was just that my pussy was aching to pause for a couple hours at least.
“You asked for the beast, Kitten,” Ares murmured into my ear. “You fucking got him.”
I gently wrapped my hands around his muscular shoulders and pulled him closer to me. Ares rested his forearms on the sides of my head, lightly brushing strands of hair off my face, and smiled. Ares—the big, bad alpha who had just railed me for the past five hours—smiled with such love and kindness and patience just for me.
“Get over here,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist, rolling onto his back, and pulling me onto his chest.
He trailed his nose up the side of mine and kissed me. I rested my head on his shoulders and listened to the ragged thump of his heartbeat.
After a few moments of silence, Ares cleared his throat. “We have to talk. If you’re not going to put the stone in your back until after the ceremony, we need a beta now. I can’t spread myself or Mars thin while trying to protect you. There are too many damn important and uncertain things we have to consider.”
Drawing my fingers across the scars on his chest, I nodded in agreement. “Nobody knows this pack better than Marcel does. And though he’s a dick sometimes, I think he could really step up and lead.”
Out of all the wolves in this pack, I trusted Marcel the most. He had proven over and over again that he’d protect any person here with his life. He had protected me, stood up for me, taken charge when Ares was a mess. Hell, even when Liam had been beta, Marcel had seemed to be a better leader.
“If he becomes beta, he’ll be with us all the time.” Ares tugged on my hair to force me to look at him. “With you.”
“Don’t worry about Marcel. He’s seeing someone.”
“Seeing someone, as in dating?” Ares chuckled. “Goddess, I feel sorry for the stupid girl who thinks he’s dating material. He’s always all over those damn women at The Flaming Chariot downtown.”
I gnawed on the inside of my lip. Part of me wanted to tell Ares that Marcel was seeing his sister and that Marcel was more than just a man-whore. He sounded like one. He acted like one. But when he was with Charolette, he loved her more than anything.
Marcel was misunderstood, just like Ares was.
“Forget that,” I said, playfully pushing him. “Marcel can and will lead.”
“Why don’t you be my beta?”
“Your beta, luna, and alpha?”
“A lot of titles for my Kitten,” he whispered, gently biting into my shoulder.
As if he knew we were talking about him, Marcel voiced through the mind link. I thought it’d be a good-morning message or a gentle nudge to get to a last-minute early morning practice. But it wasn’t. It was far from that.
“Ares, Aurora, get your asses to the prison. We have a problem. Liam has escaped.”