AURORA
Once the hound slaughtered the others, he stood before us with sanguine-colored fur and clear, unmurky eyes. After catching his breath, he turned around to face me and approached us slowly. Something about him seemed different than the other hounds that we’d fought before.
He was smaller and looked more like a rogue from earth than a hound from the dead.
Ares lunged at him, but I held him back. “Don’t.”
“Aurora,” Ares said to me through the mindlink. “Kill him, or I will.”
“No,” I said to Ares.
I wanted to see why this lone hound had betrayed the others and protected me. What had he felt when I thrust my hand against the ground and threw him into the air? Was it just a divine power or something else?
As the hound walked closer to us, I knelt down and held out my hand for him. Nerves zipped through me, my hand covered in blood from my stomach and trembling slightly. Memories still drifted through my mind of my past life, and something about this hound seemed so eerily familiar.
When he reached my feet, the hound bowed his head to me, and after a few cautious moments, he pushed his snout into my hand. I drew him closer and let my fingers run down his raggedy coat, coating my fingers in more blood.
“I know you,” I whispered.
Sitting back, I placed my hand over my bump and closed my eyes to remember.
I leaned back in a meadow of flowers, humming to myself and watching the morning sun rise over the trees. A rogue wolf—this wolf—appeared in the distance, walking over to me and resting his head in my lap. I stroked his fur.
Hounds were usually ruthless wolflike beasts—sometimes three-headed, sometimes two, mostly one—with an innate instinct to rip people apart. Some even thought that, under an evil leader, hounds could kill a god.
“Oh, come on, Nyx,” I found myself saying, my icy-white hair blowing in the breeze. I let out a giggle. “You know that I know about you and my brother. I hide you two. I can see it in his eyes every time I mention your name. Is it still just flirting, or is there more?”
“Dawn,” Nyx said, voice sharp. “Please, not now.”
I stroked the wolf’s fur and watched him blissfully close his eyes. “Fine, I’ll tell you about my love life, whether you want to hear about it or not,” I said. “Promise me that you won’t tell anyone.”
“You know me, Dawn.” Nyx smiled at me. “I wouldn’t do that.”
And so, I dove into my nights with Ares while stroking the rogue’s fur, lost in a world of bliss. My cheeks flushed, and I lay on my back. The wolf lay on my stomach, resting his head on my chest and licking my face, like he always did.
I smiled up at him and let my hand run over his fur. He let out a long, low howl, and more rogues appeared in the forest, running over to us. They all lay by my side, their paws sprawled out on my stomach, my arms, and my legs as they sat with their eyes closed in utter delight.
I reopened my eyes and smiled down at the wolf, love bursting through my body. It felt like I had the spirit of hundreds of wolves rushing through me at this very moment, making me stronger than I’d ever hoped to be.
“You’re not a real hound, are you?” I whispered.
The wolf moved closer until his head was pressed against my forehead. “No,” he said through my mind, something I’d never thought could happen without a mind-link connection. “I’m a rogue, brought to the underworld during the War of the Lycans. There are hundreds down there that they captured. Some of which I had to kill just now to protect you. My comrades.”
“Hundreds?” I asked, brows furrowed.
“They’re being corrupted with darkness every day. You need to help us, Dawn. We can’t survive down there any longer. We will die down there if this war continues. We’ve been waiting for you to come get us.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, feeling the pain he must’ve felt for thousands of years.
For a moment, his eyes flashed indigo, and my wolf growled at the eyes of Nyx—the woman who had promised to kill me over and over again. He bared his canines and growled almost internally. I balled my hands into fists, so I wouldn’t hurt the wolf, who had clearly been taken over by Nyx and Hella down in the underworld.
“They’re taking control of our minds and killing our mates,” he managed to say.
Again, his eyes turned indigo for a longer period of time. I growled at him to stay back because I couldn’t control myself right now. I couldn’t kill him. We needed help. He had so much knowledge of the underworld and the people down there who could aid us.
He growled again—at me this time—eyes flashing back and forth between indigo and gold, an internal war that a hound wouldn’t survive against a god.
“Nyx’s here. She’s—I … I can’t stop h—” Suddenly, he stumbled away and shook his head back and forth, howling. “Stay away from me … I didn’t do … stop. Let … me … go.”
When his eyes shifted into indigo and never turned back to their lovely gold, he leaped at me with his teeth bared. Pain shot through me, but to protect myself, I reached up and crushed his jaw until the indigo faded.
He touched my baby bump with his paw, and unruly rage ran through my veins. It was Nyx’s one last try to destroy my baby tonight, but it didn’t work. He slumped against my stomach, his head resting on my belly, like it had during my memory.
“Your baby will be strong,” he said to me, light fading from his eyes. “And Mars has been waiting for her.”
Heart racing, I stroked the wolf’s fur as it died slowly in my arms. “Mars?”
He took his last breath. “Mars is in the underworld too.”