ARES
My sister couldn’t die.
I refused to believe that her bruise had originated from her sickness. Hell, as much as I hated the thought, I’d prefer that Marcel had really given it to her during rough sex or whatever the fuck that excuse was.
Balling my hands into fists, I stared emptily at Mars’s fucking therapist. Aurora sat next to me on the living room couch, shifting her weight from one hip to the other every few moments and making me so fucking anxious.
“How are you feeling, Ares?” Denise asked, crossing one leg over the other. Her black skirt rode up her calf enough for me to see the large bite mark in her flesh from the hound attack.
Fuck, I didn’t even like this woman, yet I still felt like a shitty alpha for letting her get hurt during the battle weeks ago. She shouldn’t have been in danger, Aurora shouldn’t have been in danger, and Mars shouldn’t have been in danger.
But they all had been.
And it was my fault that I couldn’t save him.
“Fine,” I said between clenched teeth, holding all the pain inside me.
“I’ve been so busy with counseling the pups that I’ve barely seen you. Has anything unusual happened since the last time we spoke?” she asked me.
I placed one hand on Aurora’s knee and squeezed tightly. “No.”
Aurora stopped shifting and pushed back her shoulders. “Yes, actually. Ares told me that Mars died, but I … I did some research about dissociative identity disorder this past weekend and thought that personalities and alters couldn’t just die.” She glanced over at me with big eyes, as if to apologize. “Maybe I’m wrong, but …”
When she suddenly got quiet, I dug my fingers into her thigh. But … she wished that Mars were still alive too. Like the rest of this pack, she didn’t want to believe that he had sacrificed himself for her. Yet he was gone.
And he wasn’t coming back.
Denise hummed and furrowed her brows. “Mars died?” she asked me, pushing a couple strands of her silver hair out of her face with the tip of her pen, which had flown into her face from the harsh wind drifting in through the open window. “When do you think he died?”
“Don’t talk down to me. He did die, during the hound attack. He sacrificed himself.” I clenched my jaw and my fists tighter, hard enough to draw blood. “He shouldn’t have fucking done it. I should’ve talked him the fuck out of it. He’s fucking gone now.”
I stared down at the bead of thick red liquid rolling down my arm. How much I could hurt myself seemed to be the only fucking thing I could control anymore. I didn’t even have power over my fucking life, especially with those damn nightmares.
Denise glanced down at my palms and leaned forward, grasping my hand. “Please refrain from these self-harming behaviors here, Ares. You know how to regulate them, and I doubt Aurora wants to see this. We’re trying to help you …”
Aurora stared at me with huge, sorrowful eyes. “It’s okay, Ares. I’m here for you.”
My claws ached to dig into my palms further, but I forcefully unballed them.
“With your condition,” Denise started, “alters don’t usually just die. If he sacrificed himself, you would’ve died too, Ares. Mars might be in hiding, or he’s merged with your alter, so you’ve become one man again.”
I stood and towered over her. “He’s gone. Dead.” My blood boiled. “I felt him leave!”
She held out her hand to me. “Ares, please, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm the fuck down,” I said through gritted teeth, my nails lengthening into claws again and my canines emerging from under my lips. “You’re not the one who has to deal with him being gone! You don’t have to live with yourself, knowing that you couldn’t protect him. How the fuck am I supposed to stay calm when I’m filled with nothing but wrath and pain, and I want to hurt fucking everyone?”
Denise held a steady gaze and gestured to the seat. “Sit down and talk to me about how you’re feeling after not seeing him for over two weeks now. You must be hurting, and I want you to be able to express yourself, like Mars did with me.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Fine as I can fucking be.”
“Aurora told me that you’re having nightmares,” Denise continued.
Feeling betrayed, I growled again and sat back down next to Aurora. I didn’t fucking want to be here and didn’t appreciate Aurora telling this woman about my business, but I didn’t want to see this lady again. I wanted this fucking thing to be over already, and I knew she wouldn’t leave until I at least tried to make myself seem okay.
“She mentioned that you mumble in your sleep, that you refuse to talk with her about what’s going on. She’s worried about you, Ares. She wants you to get better. She understands that Mars is gone for now and that—”
“For good,” I said, glaring out the window. “Mars is gone for good.”
She paused for a few moments. “So, are you telling me that you died and came back to life? Because if Mars is really dead, that is the only way that you’re here, chatting with me.” She rested her hands in her lap and waited for me to say something. “Is this what happened?”
“No.” I seethed. “I didn’t die. Mars did.”
She wrote a couple things in her notebook and then placed it on the coffee table. “I don’t want to fight with you, Ares. Aurora and I are just trying to understand why you think he’s gone. What makes you think that Mars died?”
“I don’t know what happened,” I said, still angry.
“Yes, you do. Don’t repress your memories. You know what happened.”
Truth was that I didn’t want to relive that harrowing memory.
I glanced over at Aurora, frowned, and then turned back to Denise. “Aurora will hate me,” I whispered, filled with fear.
It had been bad the first time I experienced it; if I made Aurora go through it, too, she would realize how weak I truly was.
She’d think less of me.
She’d think I wasn’t good enough to be a father and protect our pup. And she’d be right.
Despite my warning, Aurora rested her hand on mine and squeezed. “I won’t hate you,” she whispered. “I want you to be healthy, Ares. I don’t want you to have nightmares every night or think that you’re going through this by yourself. I’m here with you through everything.”
We sat in silence for five minutes. I didn’t want to talk about it, but neither of them would let me out of here without telling them what had happened. So, I suppressed the urge I had to break something when the memories came flooding back into my fragile mind.
“Mars was fighting Fenris,” I finally said. “I was there; I could see it all. Fenris cut into his ribs, right over his heart, and Mars stopped breathing. Then, I came into control, and Mars wasn’t alive anymore.” I licked my lips and shook my head. “Mars was gone, just gone. I haven’t felt him since.”
Aurora squeezed my hand just a bit harder. “If what Denise is saying is true, Mars can’t just be gone for good, right? Or … maybe these are just delusions or … I don’t know … I just want you to be okay again, Ares.”
Seeing the pain on her face fucking hurt. She thought that I was making this all up, that this fucking illness that Denise claimed I had was forcing me to come up with ideas that couldn’t be true. This was why I fucking hated that bitch.
Everyone thought that there was something wrong with me. Even my mate.
Almost as if she sensed my pain, Aurora brushed some hair out of my face. “I believe you, Ares. I just …”
“You miss Mars,” I said blankly, my heart aching. “I fucking miss him, too, but he’s gone.”
“No,” Aurora said. “I mean, yes, I do miss him. But I want to take away your pain.”
“If Fenris cut into your ribs and punctured your heart, wouldn’t you have died too? Your body would be unlivable and unsustainable,” Denise reasoned. “You wouldn’t be breathing, let alone sitting here and talking to me. I think what you might be experiencing is separation anxiety.”
“No …” I said, refusing to let this bitch tell me what my reality looked like. “It happened.”
A deafening silence fell over the room again, the wind whistling outside and shouts from practice drifting in through the open window. I should be out there, training with my pack and not talking to this fucking lady about my life.
“What was your first memory?” Denise asked me. “Not Mars’s first memory. Yours.”
Another thought I didn’t want to relive.
“Ares?” Denise asked after I didn’t answer.
“A nightmare of watching Fenris rape my mother.” I balled my hands into fists and pinched my lips together. “That is the first thing that I remember in this lifetime. He shoved her onto the bed and ripped off her clothes and did fucking unspeakable things to her while I watched from the closet. When I woke up from that sleep, I refused to be as timid as Mars. I fucking vowed that I wouldn’t let anyone see something like that again.”
“So, you’ve never lived without Mars,” Denise confirmed.
“No.”
Mars might’ve known life without me, but I had never known life without Mars.
Mars had needed someone to protect him when he was younger, so I had shown up and declared myself to be his protector. I defended him every single fucking step of the way until I couldn’t anymore. I’d fucking screwed up, letting him take control and die.
“And how might that first memory relate to you now?”
I might fucking hate myself, but I loathed Denise.
“Because now, I’m fucking helpless,” I said between gritted teeth, letting the pain take control. “I can’t do shit about it, and I can’t fucking bring my other half back. I’m stuck as this man who wants to do nothing but hurt and kill, a monster that Mars would’ve been ashamed of.”
“You’re not a monster, Ares,” Aurora whispered, tears in her eyes. “Don’t think that.”
But I had seen the look in her eyes when I told her Mars was gone. I had seen that sorrow and that pain. I had been the one to cause it because I couldn’t protect Mars from the darkness that was death. Everything that had happened was because I wasn’t strong enough.
I had never been truly strong enough.
And now, these nightmares I’d been having only made me loathe Fenris even more.
All I could see every night was the thought that he’d planted in my mind—I would never be a good enough mate. I would never truly be able to protect the only woman I loved. I wouldn’t be a good father to our pup either.
Everything would crumble with me around.
I wished Fenris had killed me instead of Mars. I wished Mars could spend his life with his family because I wasn’t a family man. I was a monster who bathed in the blood of the hounds and his enemies.
“Do you think you’re experiencing these feelings and nightmares because you’ve been together for so long, and now, Mars is dormant inside of you?” Denise asked, giving me the fakest fucking smile I had seen.
“Mars is not dormant.” I slammed my fists down on the wooden coffee table and broke it to pieces. “Mars is dead.”
Desperate for someone to believe me, I grazed my fingers over my chest—where Fenris’s claws had slipped into Mars’s heart—pulled my shirt over my head, and pointed to a scar on my chest.
“Dead.”
Large, glistening, and pink, the scar had almost healed completely already. It looked like it had happened years ago, not just weeks, but this had happened during the fight. Aurora stared at it with wide eyes and grazed her fingers over the scar.
And suddenly, the pink skin glowed a scarlet-red color.