ARES
After Aurora shifted into her wolf without a problem, we ran down the jagged Syncome Mountains and through the eerily quiet hound lands. Being able to run freely through miles of land and not worrying about monsters attacking us was both fucking blissful and terrifying.
For the first time in years, the foggy sky had cleared, and the sun shimmered through the trees. Leaves had fallen off branches and decorated our path, crunching under our paws. We passed a field of moonflowers that I hadn’t even known about and paused on the outskirts of it because Aurora had suddenly stopped.
She walked into the field and shifted into her human, strolling around as if she was looking for or remembering something. Brown hair blowing back in the breeze, Aurora glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
I shifted into my human form and followed her, uneasy that she wandered so freely in Hound Territory. Usually, Aurora feared hounds more than I feared losing her. How could she just walk through an untouched plot of land? It seemed like a trap.
“Where are you going?” I asked her, looking up at the setting sun. It would be dark soon, and I didn’t want to have to fucking fight off a bunch of rogues on our way back to the pack house. “We should get back to the pack before the rogues come out.”
“I’ve been here before,” she whispered.
I followed after her, grasping her hand and stopping her. “This is Hound Territory.”
How had she been here before? She wouldn’t set foot here alone.
She brushed her fingers against the flower petals. “With Helios.”
Tightening my grip around her wrist, I growled, “Helios?”
Eyes widening, Aurora slapped a hand against her mouth and tensed. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I know how much you don’t like him. I just … I haven’t been here with him as myself, but I can feel his presence here.”
Still, Aurora had awoken the beast in me that I’d badly tried to suppress since Mars had died. I wanted to be both Ares and Mars for Aurora and had tried so desperately to shield my arrogant, asshole side of myself from her since then.
“What is he to you?” I asked through clenched teeth.
After running her hands across my chest, she looked up at me, her mate and the one man who was supposed to mean everything to her. Hearing another man’s name on her lips infuriated me.
“Nothing in this life. You’re everything to me, and I’m forever yours,” she whispered.
“But you know him,” I said, my blood boiling. “You told me you didn’t.”
Aurora furrowed her brows at me and frowned. “I don’t know Helios, but I … I have this unexplainable feeling that I have been with him in this very spot. Let me prove it to you … somehow …”
She grasped my hand and hurried to the other side of the field, dropping to her knees and searching the tall grass for something. She crawled around a patch of grass, dirtying her knees and covering her hair in mosquitoes from the grass.
A moment later, she popped back up with a horseshoe in her hand. “Helios rides those flaming horses. He used to park his cart in this very spot. Here’s a horseshoe to prove it. I’m not crazy …” she whispered the last part to herself. “These are real memories.”
“What do you mean, real memories?” I asked her.
Snapping her head up, she swallowed hard and smiled. “I believe you.”
“What?” I asked.
“I believe what you told your therapist earlier—that Mars is gone. She told you that it was just some sort of separation anxiety, but this”—she held up the horseshoe—“proves that not everything can be explained by science.”
“Aurora, Kitten”—I took her face in my hands—“we need to get back home.”
I didn’t know what she was saying anymore. She was talking in circles.
Aurora dug her fingers into my shoulders and grinned. “It doesn’t matter what happened in the past or in past lives. What matters right now is you and me. We have to kill those hounds and secure a safe future for our pup.”
There it was again.
Our pup.
I sprawled my hand across her stomach, and our baby kicked damn hard. She felt as strong as me, as vicious as me too. And still, all I could feel was guilt. I wanted to be happy—I really fucking did. But Mars wasn’t here. I couldn’t be happy, no matter how hard I tried.
“You and me,” I whispered, cracking a half-crooked smile, “and her.”
“And her.”
When she repeated the words, I found myself wanting to throw up my fucking lunch. I couldn’t keep lying to Aurora like this and have her keep believing that I was cut out to be a father. I couldn’t fucking do it. I grasped her hard and pushed back a sea of tears that threatened to fall.
“I’m not going to be a good father,” I said. “Mars would have been a good father, but I won’t.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked with wide eyes, taking my face in her hands and tearing up. “What are you saying? Where is this coming from?”
“I hurt people, Aurora. I don’t care for them. I don’t know how to love.”
“You love me, don’t you?” she whispered, worry etched into every fucking millimeter of her beautiful face. “Tell me you love me, Ares.”
I stared down at her hands and pressed my lips together to stop them from trembling. “I love you more than you even know,” I whispered, gently grasping her hand and stroking my thumb over hers.
“You care for me. You protect me. You are more than enough, Ares.”
“But Mars—”
“Mars isn’t here. He’s gone for now. It’s just me and you,” she said, poking a hard finger against my chest. “So, don’t think that you won’t be a great father to our pup. I have seen the way that you interact with the pups in the pack. You care about them, even the ones from my old pack. You would do everything in your power to protect them, just like you did everything in your power to protect Mars.”
With strands of brown hair blowing into her face, she stood on her toes and kissed me, her lips moving softly and slowly against mine. Wanting to feel fucking loved, I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her back.
My lips moved up and down the column of her neck, pressing hard enough to make her skin a light pink in the place of my lips. I roamed my hands around her smaller body and seized her hips, picking her up and placing her in the field.
The moonflowers illuminated around us, twinkling and flickering against our flesh.
And I found myself letting go.
In some fucked up way, this was the only time I could. I hated talking about my feelings. I hated admitting my faults. I hated thinking that I would never be a good enough father to our pup.
Months ago, I’d wanted to put a pup inside of Aurora so badly.
Now, with my nightmares … I didn’t even want to think about it.
I drew my canines up the column of her neck, making her shiver, and moved my fingers against her panties. While I didn’t know how to express my feelings, I damn well knew how to make my mate feel good.
“You’re mine,” I murmured against my mark. “Mine.”
“Here, Ares?” she whispered, a moan slipping from her mouth. “We’re out in the open.”
Wrapping a hand around the front of her throat, I gently stroked it and gazed down into her eyes, illuminated by the flowers around us. “I’m not leaving until I get every piece of you again, Kitten.” I trailed my lips down her body, grabbed her hip in my free hand, and pulled her closer to me.
Truth was that I didn’t want her to pry anymore.
I hated feeling like shit.
So, I kissed up her thighs and then between her legs, leaving sloppy kisses all over her wet cunt. She sprawled her arms out around us and dug her claws into the dirt, another sweet moan escaping her lips.
Massaging her clit with my tongue, I drew my fingers against her tense inner thighs. “Stop worrying, Kitten. Nobody is going to spot us. And if they do, I’ll snap their necks for you, kill them in cold blood.”
Her pussy tightened, and she whimpered, lacing her hand through my thick brown hair and pulling my face closer to her core. She moved her hips against my face, back and forth, desperate to hit just the right angle.
While she did, I pushed a long finger into her pussy and growled against her clit, making it vibrate.
She tossed her head back again and pulled my hair harder. “Oh my Goddess, Ares. More!”
“More, Kitten?” I asked. “You want more?”
“More, please, Alpha.”
After picking her up, I twirled her around and set her on her hands and knees in the middle of the moonflower field. With her back against my chest, I positioned my cock at her entrance and buried my face into the crook of her neck.
“I love you,” I mumbled into her ear, tugging on her nipple.
She whimpered and clenched against the head of my cock.
Goddess, I loved those sexy moans of hers.
Grasping her hip in one hand and her swollen breast in the other, I pushed the head of my dick into her aching cunt. She bit her lip, entire body tense, and pushed back against me, my desperate kitten letting out a purr when her ass met my hips.
She stiffened around me, squeezing my dick harder than she ever had, and moved herself on my length. I leaned over her, taking both her tits in my hands and squeezing gently, her nipples rolling against my palms and making my cock even harder.
“Back and forth on me, Kitten,” I murmured into her ear, sliding my fingers to her hardened nipples and tugging until she whimpered again. “Just like that. Keep moving on your alpha’s dick. Your pussy is just swallowing up my cock.”
After digging her claws even further into the dirt, Aurora bounced faster and faster, her tits swaying wildly underneath her and in my palms. If she kept this up for much longer, I was going to fucking fill her snug pussy with my entire load.
I gently bit down on her mark and sucked it between my teeth. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”
She nodded, her pussy pulsing around the base of my cock. “More, Alpha. I can’t move any faster. I want you to pound me into—”
Before she could finish her sentence, I seized her breasts and used her body to thrust my cock in and out of her pussy, destroying it as quickly as I could. I slipped some of my fingers from her tit to her pussy and rubbed torturous circles around her clit. She closed her eyes, clenching hard around me, and wiggled in my grasp.
When my balls smacked against her clit, too, she tossed her head back and screamed out, her pussy clamping down on my dick and sucking the cum right out of it. I grunted—nothing felt better than this—and fell back in the field with her still in my arms.
Wanting to get every last drop inside her, I moved my hips up and down, ramming my cock into her. She squeezed me even more when I sucked on my mark on her neck and growled into her ear, making sure Aurora knew who she belonged to.
With my dick still buried balls deep inside her, I lay against the field and wrapped my arms around her waist, my fingers dancing against her belly bump. “Every part of you is mine, Aurora,” I whispered into her ear. “And, Goddess, I love you more than anything.”
Once Aurora finally crawled off me, she buried her face in my arms and kissed my shoulder, her thighs pressed together and small little whimpers escaping her lips. I glanced down at her and gently tucked some hair behind her ear, admiring the way the moonflowers’ light reflected off her face.
After a couple of moments, I intertwined my fingers with Aurora’s. “We need to talk about the stone. Before your surgery and during the Luna Ceremony after-party, my dad told me that only one person has wielded a stone like yours.”
Aurora rolled onto her stomach and stared down at me, the flowers shimmering off her big eyes. She set her hand over my chest, right across the glowing scarlet scar, and furrowed her brows. “Who?”
“The Moon Goddess,” I said.
“Selene?” she asked.
“Selene?” I asked. “Since when do you ever call her Selene?”
“I don’t know …” Aurora said, eyes even wider and confusion written all over her face. “I don’t know where that came from.” She glanced up at the sky and spotted the faintest crescent moon among the stars. “What does this mean for me?”
According to Dad, the last person to use a stone like this was the Moon Goddess. And if she hadn’t died like the rest of the previous users of the Malavite Stone had, did that make Aurora just like her?
“You have healing powers and super strength. Normal wolves don’t just magically get powers from a stone, and you heard Medusa … not everyone can wield a stone like you can,” I said, swallowing hard. “You have to be special. You have to be godlike.”