AURORA
“Godlike,” I whispered on our way toward the Pink Moon Tavern, spotting the glowing neon sign through the thick brush.
There was surely no way I could be an immortal goddess. Godlike and being a god were two very different things.
Besides, my heart had stopped beating multiple times during the stone procedure, and on both occasions, I had come back to life. If I were immortal, I’d never die. That was how it worked, right? But if a heart stopped beating and the person lived on, what did that mean? How had I returned to life both times? Magic? A Moon Goddess curse?
I could be a zombie hound since I had hound blood, or I could be something else …
And then again, in Helios’s letter, he had said that Dawn had died by Nyx’s hand.
Wrapping my arm around Ares’s to ground myself, I continued down the path with him to a clearing in front of the tavern. Wolves hung around front, drinking milkshakes and chatting with each other about the war to come.
When I saw Marcel and Charolette sharing a milkshake through the large glass windows, I stopped and smiled. Ares looked back at me with furrowed brows, asking me with his eyes why I had suddenly paused. I nodded toward the windows and rested my head on his shoulder.
“They love each other,” I whispered.
Inside the tavern, Charolette tore the paper wrapper off the edge of a straw, wrapped her lips around the end, and blew the other wrapper piece at Marcel’s face. It hit him square in the nose, and he shriveled back, his silver hair falling into his face.
Charolette looked so happy and lively that it was hard to believe she was dying.
She tucked some hair behind his ear, smiled sweetly at him, and leaned in to kiss him softly on the mouth. Marcel tensed for the briefest moment and kissed her back, his lips still lingering on hers before he pulled away.
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach, a giddy feeling erupting through my body. I grasped Ares’s hand tighter and pulled him into the Pink Moon Tavern, deciding to give them more privacy. They were just too damn cute not to watch. I loved them together, almost as much as I loved Ruffles and Pringle together.
“Aurora!” someone called to my right.
Elijah sat in a booth with two milkshakes in front of him, one full and the other nearly empty. I tugged Ares toward his table, sniffing the air and catching the scent of Adrian. They must’ve had a date here tonight too.
After quickly pulling the empty glass to his side of the table, he gestured for us to sit. “Just the couple I wanted to talk to tonight. I didn’t have time to stay after the meeting this morning, but I, uh”—he scratched the back of his neck—“wanted to let you both know what’s up.”
Once we ordered milkshakes, we slid into the booth.
“What’d you want to talk to us about?” I asked.
“I’m not going to the underworld,” he said, adjusting his thick glasses. “I think it’s best for me to stay up here and continue to research the hounds, so I can give everyone some kind of advantage. If I find something, I’ll make sure to relay the information to you. And if you are both going, I can oversee your pack while you’re gone.”
Ares tensed. “We won’t be gone that long.”
“We don’t know how long it’s going to take,” I said, placing a hand on his thigh and hoping to calm him down. My stomach twisted into tight knots, the upbeat music playing through the tavern doing nothing to still my nerves. “It could be years.”
The thought that our daughter might have to endure some terrible things in her lifetime finally sank in. We didn’t know anything about the underworld yet—not the layout, not the terrain, not even if we would be able to survive for centuries.
“Alpha Ares! Your milkshakes,” the woman shouted from the counter.
When Ares slid out of the booth to grab our shakes for us, I leaned across the table and stared at Elijah in fear. I hadn’t quite said this out loud yet, but … with everything changing so quickly and his nightmares, I was afraid that things would just get worse for Ares. I desperately needed to figure out what had caused the red scar on his chest and if it had anything to do with Mars’s disappearance.
After finding Helios’s horseshoe in that field, I really believed Ares now and not Denise. Denise might’ve thought that this was separation anxiety, but … if my dreams were real, then his reality must be too.
“I’m afraid that he’s losing it,” I whispered.
Elijah looked over at Ares. “He seems fine to me. The same old cruel Ares.”
“He says that Mars died during the hound attack, that his heart stopped beating and Mars left him. The doctor doesn’t know what it is. She says it can’t happen and that this is far more than her area of expertise. But … he really did die.”
A part of Ares had died.
How could someone go on with their life after something like that happened?
Elijah furrowed his brows in the same supportive manner he always did with me. “I would offer up another doctor, but none of mine have experience with DI—wait, you said he stopped breathing?” he asked. “And now, he’s alive again, just like when our doctor put the stone in you?”
My eyes widened slightly, but then I shook my head. No, this was different, wasn’t it? Ares didn’t have the stone or any stone inside of him … but he had that red scar. Did that mean something?
“He has a red scar right across his chest. It’s glowing,” I said.
Ares approached with two milkshakes and napkins between his teeth. I smiled up at my mate and grabbed the shakes from his hands. He sat down beside me, and I decided to change the subject for now. I didn’t want Ares to feel bad.
“Ares thinks that the stone makes me godlike,” I said.
“Your powers are as strong as a goddess’s,” Elijah said. “I’ve witnessed them with my own two eyes.”
“She is a goddess,” Ares said with so much confidence that it almost scared me.
“I’m not a goddess,” I whispered, shaking my head and turning back to Elijah. While I was almost positive that I wasn’t a goddess, that didn’t mean that I didn’t have something in my blood making me different.
It could be those damn hounds.
“Have you taken notice of two distinct types of hounds?” I asked.
Elijah raised his brows. “I … I’ve seen some distinct differences, but I never thought anything of it. It’s a conversation I was having with one of my researchers earlier. She had dug into a book during the War of the Lycans about there being hellhounds and zombie-like hounds, like the ones we’ve fought. Hellhounds don’t typically leave the underworld, but some of the stronger and more divine wolves can.”
“Like Fenris?” I asked.
“Just like Fenris.”
“Is there any way you can see if there is a difference between these hounds?”
“For me to see if they’re different, I’d have to find both kinds to study their blood.”
“What kind do you have now?”
“The kind like you,” Elijah said. “Almost the same kind of blood, but who knows how your blood has changed since your body has accepted the stone? It might have created a transformation of some sort on your body.”
“It’s divine blood,” Ares said, certainty lacing every word.
“How are you so sure of it?” I asked, brows furrowed as I looked over at my mate.
He had that stoic and divine look on his face again, and yet I could see a hundred images flash through his mind. And they weren’t images of anything I had seen before when I was with him. They were images of the past, of him carrying me, of my vision I’d had earlier when my fingers brushed against his scar.
“Take a blood sample,” I said to Elijah. “From both of us.”
I needed to find out what all of this meant.
After Elijah took samples of our blood, he promised to get back to us about it as soon as possible. Ares and I returned to the pack house to turn in for the night, and yet even as I lay down in bed next to my mate, I couldn’t help thinking about the possibility of having divine blood or of being a goddess.
It definitely couldn’t be true, but Ares had seemed so sure, and with his glowing scar and the feeling of power swelling inside of me, something was definitely different. And we had to find out what his scar and my power meant before we left for the underworld.
Maybe it really did mean we were something magical. Or maybe my mind was just messing with me.
Moonlight flooded into the dark room, glinting off of Ares’s sculpted face. He pulled me closer to him, his breath uneven against my bare skin. I breathed in his hazelnut scent and tried to relax in it, but thoughts rushed around too quickly through my mind for me to silence them.
All my life, I’d just wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be better or worse off than anyone. I’d wanted to be able to run with the wolves and be happy. Nothing more. But if it was true that I had divine blood, I could help so many people who were like me, who couldn’t shift or couldn’t protect themselves.
We lay there in silence for a good twenty minutes before Ares ground himself against my backside. He stuffed his face into the crook of my neck and growled so lowly that it almost sounded like a purr vibrating against my skin in the darkest of the night.
“A goddess,” he whispered to me, drawing his nose up the side of my neck and letting his lips linger just above the top part of his mark. He flicked his tongue against it, making me whimper. “I knew it from the moment I saw you, Kitten.”
My breath caught in my throat, my body tensing as he teased my pussy with his hardness. He rubbed himself on me, growing harder by the second and keeping his thrusts against me surprisingly calm and even.
“I’m not a goddess, Ares,” I said, though I didn’t quite believe the words myself.
I clenched and let out a breathy moan, all my worries disappearing for a few moments. He had always been good at getting me to relax, at helping me forget.
He growled—harsher and more guttural this time—and then wrapped a hand around the front of my neck and pushed me onto my stomach. Straddling my backside, he ground his hips into mine from behind, rubbing his bare cock against my round ass. He gently pushed some hair behind my ear. “Stop lying to yourself,” he said, tugging my throat up just enough and forcing me to look into the mirror beside our bed.
Ares was on top of me, the moonlight illuminating every one of his bulging muscles and making him look as if he were glowing. I sucked in a breath as he kissed, sucked, gnawed on his mark.
To anyone else, he might look like a savage monster about to ravage his prey.
But to me, he was the god of war who had a soft spot for me.
With his eyes glowing gold and his lips lingering on my neck, he grazed his canines against the mark he had left on my neck. “Watch as I love you tonight, Kitten.”
Love me.
There weren’t many times that Ares made love to me.
I stared at him through the mirror, watching as he spit on his hand, rubbed it against his cock, and thrust himself into me, pushing himself as deep as he could get. His scar glinted red again, the color lighting up the room and bringing back memories of him.
The pressure built up inside me, nearly tipping me over the edge.
“I said to watch,” he growled into my ear, staring at me through the mirror’s reflection.
I reopened my eyes and watched them smolder in the mirror, not my usual golden wolf color but a mixture of reds, oranges, and pinks.
My breath caught in my throat as they radiated more intensely, the closer I came to my orgasm. Ares stared at them in the mirror.
“Look at you,” he mumbled against my skin, his slight stubble brushing against my neck and making me tingle. He grasped my chin lightly in his hand and pushed himself deeper. “Those eyes, Kitten,” he said, quickening his thrusts. “They started glowing after the stone was put inside of you. Those eyes of yours aren’t wolf or human eyes anymore.”
Pressure rose in my core with every thrust. Ares kissed my neck and then gently shifted my chin, so I was kissing him. He slipped his tongue into my mouth, his lips devouring mine, like if they didn’t, I’d disappear.
“They’re divine,” he murmured against my lips.
My fingers dug into the pillow, and my toes curled as pleasure pumped through me. Something about us, about this, about him made me feel so good and so powerful. Ares might think that the stone made me a goddess, but I had thought he was a deity of war since the moment I’d met him.
If I was truly divine, so was he.
“I love you, Kitten,” he said against my ear, pushing himself into me one last time and stilling until he came.
I cried out into the night, feeling closer to him than I ever had before.
He pulled out slowly, wrapped his arms around my waist, and rolled back to his side, pulling me tightly into his arms. “I love you more than you will ever know, and I would do anything for you. You’re my only strength.”
Tears welled up in my eyes—beautiful, sweet tears. Though Ares loved me, he had always been so harsh, so uninviting, so terribly blunt. Hearing these words spoken so softly and truthfully and lovingly toward me … made my heart swell.
I cherished this man more than I cherished anyone.
And Mars might be gone for good, but Ares would forever be mine.
Nobody would step in the way.
Not even the gods of the underworld.