MARS
During that shocking moment, I snatched control from Ares by the canines. My chest tightened. I knew what I had to do to protect my family. We had waited for this moment forever, and now, I would never get to experience it with her. And if we didn’t protect her and this pack, Aurora would never be able to experience it either.
I shifted back into my human, my mouth drying up. “Boy or girl?” I whispered, wanting to know the kind of family she’d raise when I was gone. “Do you know?”
Elijah glanced back at Dr. Farral, who turned Aurora back over, lightly pressed his hand against Aurora’s stomach, and closed his eyes.
He smiled for a fraction of a second, a sorrowful breath escaping him. “Boys tend to have a slower heart rate, but hers is quick.”
Unable to hold back, I placed my hand on top of her stomach and felt the slightest heartbeat. A tear slid down my cheek. A pup … a little girl … that I’d never meet. It was the most blissful moment of my life, and I hoped that Aurora could find happiness without me.
Behind me, a hound growled. I turned back to it, ready to give this everything I had, and shifted into my wolf. We were having a girl. Aurora was having a girl. And I’d make sure that they had a good, safe life.
“Ares,” Elijah said, pushing his glasses up his nose and nodding to me. “You’re a good guy. I’ll protect Aurora at all costs. Go protect your pack.”
After holding his gaze for a moment longer, I lunged at the hound and killed him before he could enter the room. Then, I stood by the door and scanned the forest for that cynical hound leader I called Fenris.
Standing at the base of a hill with a smug look on his face, he ripped one of my best warriors into two pieces. I needed to end this once and for all. This evil that had plagued my pack for years—the curse that the hounds would take my luna from me—could be broken by me.
“Sacrifice an alpha.”
That was what Dad had said needed to be done.
If offering myself up could end this war, if it stopped innocents from being slaughtered in their own homes, if everyone could sleep peacefully at night from now on, then I would do it. I would sacrifice myself for her.
I lifted my nose and howled to the moon, my heart aching.
Ares and I knew that it had to be done. This was the only way. We just wished we’d had more time with Aurora. We wished we could’ve had pups with her and watched them grow, becoming alphas and lunas themselves. But this was the hand that the Moon Goddess had dealt us.
Taking one last look back at Aurora, I smiled. “I’ll forever be yours, Kitten.”
Shooting forward and into the chaos, I weaved through wolves and hounds and surveyed the woods for the one man that I needed to find to end this war. Ash rained down from the dark gray sky, a layer covering my brown fur.
My family. My friends. My pack.
The hounds were destroying all of it.
And they would try to take my mate, too, if I didn’t stop it now. I couldn’t hold back any longer, couldn’t put this off a second more. I might not have been able to say good-bye to everyone I’d ever loved and cared for, but this had to be done. The world would be a better place.
“Stop it, Mars.” Ares seethed at me inside my mind. “Give me fucking control.”
I ignored him and spotted Fenris about to split a pup into pieces. Lurching forward, I knocked into the side of him and sent him flying against the tree. The pup scrambled to his feet and ran off, crying into the forest.
“Don’t fucking do this, Mars,” Ares said. “You can’t do this. You can’t fight him alone.”
Refusing to listen to Ares, I roared at the man who had ruined my life over and over again. Fenris stood up, shook off the ash and dirt from his body, and growled back, his soulless black eyes fixed on me. Thick strands of saliva dripped from his bloodied canines.
When he leaped at me, I collapsed onto my stomach and waited for his attack.
The world seemed to slow, and all the memories I’d made with Aurora flashed through my mind, all the times she’d made me smile and the late-night pretzel-and-cheese feasts we’d had as Ruffles lounged at the foot of our bed, when she’d shifted for the first time in front of me, and when she had held me in the tub when Ares and I confessed everything to her.
I dug my claws into the dirt and bit back a howl, eyes filling with tears.
Fenris landed on my back, teeth ripping up fur and talons stabbing into any unmarked part of my flesh that he could find. Tearing, jerking, tugging, twisting, slashing, slitting, scratching, and lacerating. All of me.
Unmoving, I squeezed my eyes closed, ignored the pain, and imagined what life would’ve been like if the hounds had never attacked us. Three months from now, Aurora and I would’ve welcomed our first pup into the world. We would’ve taught her how to run and shift and kick a boy’s ass. And later on, we’d have been rocking on our porch chairs, gray hairs and all, watching the grand-pups play tag in the forest and sharing stories of our carefree younger days.
Fenris pierced his claws right through my heart. Blood spurted from my mouth. I closed my eyes one last time. All this would forever be lost in my hopes and dreams, as I would never live another day on this earth.