ARES
“Get them fucking down now,” I said, staring at the three hanging corpses.
As warriors scrambled to remove them from the tree, I shifted my gaze to the pale faces and heads impaled on silver stakes. Blood leaked down the poles, the silver still sizzling against the wolves’ brains.
All I felt was anger at the hounds for doing this and sadness for my pack members. Liam had been my best friend since childhood, helped Mars through Mom’s death, and stuck around when Mars’s personality split and I barreled into their lives.
And now, he was dead.
Glancing at the pup dangling by his ankle, I balled my hands into fists. At barely ten years old, that boy shouldn’t have been brought into this mess at all. I should’ve invited him to the pack house the other night; I should’ve done something other than reject his mother, which in turn rejected him.
He had shown signs of superiority and ruthlessness.
I could’ve made him stronger.
I could’ve made him a warrior.
I could’ve protected him.
Marcel grabbed the boy, but I seized his wrist and pulled him back.
“I got him,” I said quietly, untying the rope with shaky hands and taking the headless pup in my arms. I pulled the stake from the ground and walked into the woods, far away from my warriors so they wouldn’t see me break down.
He hadn’t deserved to live as a rogue, just because his mother subjected him to it. He hadn’t deserved to witness the hounds rip off Liam’s head and his mother’s head. He hadn’t deserved to die so horridly to beasts that should’ve stayed dead.
After fifteen minutes of wandering aimlessly through the entire forest, I found myself in the cave. Alone. Without backup, without Aurora, and without anyone to fight with me if something turned out bad. Once I found a place to bury the boy, I laid him on the ground and started digging with my bare hands. I could only imagine the fear, the helplessness, the sorrow, and the guilt rushing through his mind in his final moments. Unable to stop the hounds from hurting his mother.
It hit too close to home, felt too much like watching Mom get raped and not being able to stop it, thinking that I should, knowing that it was the right thing to do, but unable to move from the fucking spot in the closet as it happened.
Why couldn’t I protect the people I loved? First Mom, and then an innocent pack member. Who was next? Aurora?
An inescapable hollow feeling lay heavily in my heart. Something told me that this pain wasn’t going to pass quickly. I’d hold this pup’s agony for as long as I lived, just like I boarded up the torment I felt with Mom and Charolette and even Dad.
My entire pack relied on me.
And I couldn’t even protect them.
“Ares,” Aurora said through the mind link, “are you okay?”
I pressed my lips together and cut the connection between us right now, knowing that if I responded to her, it’d only be with another painful howl. I hated feeling so helpless in front of her. I wanted to be her rock, like I was with Mars. But sometimes, holding the entire world on my shoulders hurt too fucking bad.
Once I dug a hole deep enough for him just outside the cave’s entrance, I laid the boy to rest and covered him with dirt. I wanted to plant a moonflower over his grave, but nothing would grow this time of year, especially not with all this fog.
Pounding against the dirt until it solidified, I stood and walked to the back of the cave to stare down into the hole where Fenris had raised the dead. Against my better judgment, I jumped down into it, hitting the ground with a thud, and collapsed onto all fours.
Nobody was here.
It seemed like they hadn’t been here for days now, yet my wolf snarled. I sprinted through the cave in my wolf form, wanting to find someone or something to kill to release all this anger and hurt. How could they have done this to innocent people? How could they have killed a pup? Was it all for Aurora, or was there more?
My heart pounded, another vicious growl exiting my throat.
I wanted blood. I wanted fur. I wanted to kill those fucking bastards.
I wasn’t backing down. We weren’t going to let this go. We would track Fenris down—even if we had to go to hell and back to catch him. Nobody would get away with torturing an innocent pup and murdering my friend and former beta. Liam might’ve deserved to be hurt but not dead.
Scratching the walls. Digging into the dirt. Howl, growl, snarl, and nip at the musty air. I couldn’t stop myself, and I didn’t want to stop myself. I fucking hated hounds with everything I had. They had destroyed my life, Aurora’s life, everyone’s fucking life.
After what seemed like hours, I walked back to the hole in the ceiling and leaped out of it, landing on all fours in the cave. Scrapes covered my fur from colliding into the cave walls over and over and over again.
I had wanted to feel pain today because I deserved it. I was a shit alpha and let my people die. So many bad memories haunted my mind, and I thought back to the times after Mom died. How terrible I’d felt. How I’d thought I deserved all the pain. How I’d wanted to hurt myself because it made me feel better. Even the thought of death had sounded … it’d sounded …
At the thought, agonizing physical pain shot through my body. I hung my head low and whimpered, suddenly only able to think about Aurora. It was my wolf, begging me not to think destructively anymore. We had someone who cared about us now. We always did, but we needed to be strong for her.
We couldn’t think about doing what Mom had done to herself. We fucking couldn’t.
But Aurora knew that she couldn’t fix us. She knew that she couldn’t heal us. But she would stay by my side if we slipped, right? She would be there for us. She would love us still for who we were.
My wolf let out another growl and demanded that I stop now. Denise had taught me to spot the early signs of when I started to slip into negative thoughts, to not feed that side of me, but it was fucking hard sometimes.
I thought about cutting myself again.
I wanted to do it again.
It would ease the pain even if it was only for a moment.
It was the only real thing I could control.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
I shifted into my human and walked to the cave’s exit, glancing at the pup’s grave. “Run with the wolves,” I whispered. “Run with the wolves.”