AURORA
Mars hurried back through the forest, away from me and toward the lake, sneaking through the hidden cave that only I knew about, climbing around a small cliff, and moving his large frame between close rocks to come to a clearing at the lake.
I squeezed my pregnant body between the rocks, desperate to follow and see him again.
But the closer we approached the lake, the quicker his pace became. I pumped my legs faster to keep up and shielded my face with my hand, the reflection of the sparkling sun against the blue lake too bright.
Tree bark, leaves, and twigs scraped against my legs, but I didn’t care. And neither did Ruffles because she was right by my side, following me every single step of the way to see Mars again.
When I emerged through the shaggy, verdant trees, Mars stood at the base of the lake with his beautiful, crooked smile that always made my heart warm.
“No matter where I am, I’ll forever be with you.”
“Mars,” I whispered, taking another step toward him.
“Forever yours, Kitten,” he said, brushing his fingers against my baby bump.
And while I’d expected his touch to be warm, I couldn’t feel anything. I reached out for him, aching to hug him again, but my arms swiped right through his ghostly body. Little by little, Mars disappeared right in front of me, his body turning to dust, small particles drifting out over the water, so small that I couldn’t even grasp them in my hands.
A hopeless cry escaped through my parted lips as I stared out into the nothingness in front of me, my stomach in knots and tears pouring down my cheeks. This was all just … a cruel joke my mind had played on me.
I had been chasing a ghost. Mars was gone.
“Meow,” Ruffles said beside me, rubbing against my legs.
Defeat hollowed out my insides and crushed me to my very core.
Needing someone, I picked her up, hugged her close to my chest, and walked away from the place I had met Mars. Ruffles rested her head on my shoulder and watched the lake disappear from her view.
Once I finally made it back to the pack house, I placed Ruffles down and wiped my tears, refusing to let Ares see how broken not having Mars around had made me. Ares had spent all his life with Mars. I didn’t have a fraction of the pain he must be carrying.
Stepping into the house with a fake smile on my face, I found Marcel and Charolette in the kitchen, making breakfast. Marcel stood behind Charolette, his arms around her waist, pulling her closer as she giggled and flipped a couple fluffy pancakes with a spatula.
With his silver hair falling into his face, he buried his head into the crook of her neck and mumbled something into her ear. I smiled at them, my stomach doing flips at the thought of them finally being happy together, and decided not to interrupt their moment.
“Aurora, no,” Ares said from our bedroom.
I hurried toward the bedroom to check on Ares. Ever since Mars had died, nightmares had been plaguing every bit of his sleep. And I was terrified that if he didn’t talk to someone soon, they would seize control of him and force him to slip into the darkness again.
Ares lay in our bed, squeezing his eyes closed and twisting his head from side to side. “No,” he mumbled in his sleep. A bead of sweat rolled down his neck and onto his white Sanguine Wilds T-shirt “Stop. No.”
I furrowed my brows slightly and gently sat beside him, brushing some dark brown hair off his forehead. “Ares, wake up,” I whispered, my heart aching.
Ruffles jumped onto my side of the bed and sashayed over to his face, licking his sweat off him.
But he still didn’t calm down, so I nudged him again. “Ares, wake up.”
“Goddess, stop,” he whispered. “Please, stop. I don’t want to see it again. I can’t see this again.” More sweat formed at the nape of his neck, his entire body violently trembling so hard that the headboard started banging against the wall. “Aurora … don’t touch Aurora.”
Deciding that this wasn’t working, I straddled his waist and pinned my hands against his shoulders to stop him from freaking out. “Ares, stop,” I pleaded, desperate for him to stop it now. This was the third morning that I had to force him awake.
And whenever I woke him and asked about his nightmares, he lied to me. He acted as if his dreams had been filled with moonflowers, the Moon Goddess, or his good memories about his mother. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing making him so anxious during the day that he couldn’t focus.
He was hiding the truth from me, and it hurt damn bad. But I knew that this was what Ares did. He had tried to hide the truth from Mars to protect him, and now, he was doing it with me too. Only this time, it was taking a toll on him because he lived in this nightmare twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Mars was gone.
“Ares, wake up,” I whispered, placing my lips against his and trying hard to pull him awake, to give him some good, so his life wasn’t filled with unpleasant thoughts of losing his other half.
I didn’t know what was truly going on between Mars and Ares, but I did know that mental illness couldn’t be fixed with just a kiss. It wasn’t a fairy tale; it was a hound rearing its ugly head, ready to tear someone apart any moment of any day—even in their dreams.
Ares relaxed slightly yet still mumbled the word, “No,” over and over again.
I grabbed one of his hands and placed it right over my bump, where our pup grew. Ares stirred slightly, his body relaxing against the mattress.
When the corner of his lip curled into a smile and he slowly blinked his eyes open, I finally took a deep, relaxing breath. It had taken longer to wake him than it usually did.
“Morning, Kitten.”
I furrowed my brows. “Are you okay?”
He wrapped his big, strong arms around my waist and pulled me to his chest, grinding his hips against mine until he got hard. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Ares,” I murmured.
“Well then, make me fine.” He sucked my bottom lip between his teeth and grasped a fistful of my hair in his hand, pulling it backward until I was looking down at him. His hard cock glided against my thin shorts. “Come on, Kitten. I can smell your pretty, wet cunt.”
He slid his hand down my backside, slapped my ass hard, and gripped it in his hand. All I could feel was the wetness pooling between my legs and the heat between my thighs.
He rubbed his cock against my pussy and groaned against my lips. “Fuck …”
Rolling us over, he wrapped his arms underneath my thighs and pressed his lips against his mark, sucking on the skin and making me moan. This was his way to keep me quiet, to shut me up so I wouldn’t ask about his nightmares.
“Ares, we can’t.” I gently pushed on his chest. “We have … have people …”
“People what, Kitten?” he murmured against me, his breath hot against the column of my throat. He placed sloppy kisses down my body, his hands sliding under my shirt and groping my breasts. “Hmm?”
“Your therapist will be over soon,” I whispered.
“She’s coming after breakfast.” He yanked down my shorts and underwear. “I want to be inside of you now.”
He stuck two fingers into my pussy and dipped his head between my legs, spreading my folds, spitting on my clit, and flicking his tongue against it. I squirmed in his hold as he grazed his tongue over and over against my core in small, torturous circles, his fingers pumping in and out of me in a cruel, rhythmic motion.
“Ares! Aurora!” Charolette shouted from the kitchen. “Breakfast is ready!”
“We’ll be out in a minute,” Ares said back, not caring if she heard or not.
I shifted under him, trying to displace all the pressure inside my core. It was building higher, pushing me closer and closer to the edge of coming undone underneath him.
And while I wanted Ares to open up to me about what he’d been struggling with, this was sorta my way of dealing with everything going on around us too. I wanted to escape in the feeling of him, my mate.
“It’ll get cold!” Charolette shouted again, her voice muffled through the closed door.
Ares stared up at me, his dark brown eyes never leaving mine. He thrust his fingers deeper inside of me, in and out, quickly and ruthlessly. “I’m not finished ruining this pretty pussy of yours, Aurora. Tonight, I’m going to fuck you until you can’t walk, until your claws are digging into my back and leaving deep red marks, until your legs are trembling with nothing but pleasure.”
I dug my nails into the bedsheets, slapped a hand over my mouth, and came all over his fingers, my legs shaking. My eyes rolled back, and I moaned into my palm, squirming up to the headboard and trying to make the intense pleasure rushing through me go away.
Ares growled, slapped my bare pussy one last time, and tossed me my shorts. “Get dressed before she decides to barge into the room,” he said, standing up and adjusting his hardness in his gray sweatpants.
When I shimmied back into my shorts, Ares stood back and glanced down at my growing bump. He moved closer to me, swallowed hard, and stretched his large hand across the bump, unusual uncertainty in his eyes.
“That’s your pup inside me,” I whispered, hoping to make him smile.
And while he did, the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I know that you’re nervous about how you’ll lead a pack or a family without Mars, but you’re going to be a great father, Ares. I know you will. You will succeed in every part of your life.”
Usually, he’d give me a really alpha-hole reply, but today, he just forced another empty smile on his face and glanced down at my belly bump between us. He moved his fingers against it, my pup kicking his hand almost instinctively.
“We should get breakfast before it gets cold,” he said.
I curled my hand around his bicep, still thinking about his nightmares, and followed him through the large hallways to the kitchen. Charolette sat at the table, eating her pancakes with Marcel beside her, drawing his knuckles against hers in what looked to be a secret little touch.
Ares sat across from her, brows furrowed slightly. “Where’d you get that bruise?”
Charolette’s forearm was covered in a huge brown bruise.
She pursed her lips. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is my business, Charolette,” Ares said. “You’re my sister.”
“Well, maybe I like rough sex,” Charolette huffed and turned back to her breakfast. “Mind your damn business. Nothing’s wrong.”
When Ares growled at her and her mate, Marcel glanced at Ares and me.
“She’s getting worse,” he said to us through the mind link, his eyes almost glazed over with tears. “It’s her cancer.”
Ares stiffened beside me. I placed my hand on his shoulder and gently rubbed it, wondering if I’d be able to heal her with my newly found power I’d discovered when I healed Elijah. Hell, I didn’t even know the first thing about using it, but maybe Medusa could teach me how to use it for the better.
Charolette was dying, and I couldn’t just sit back and watch the life drain from one of my best friends. Because if Charolette died too, I feared that I’d also lose Ares.