AURORA
Was Medusa my real mother?
No, she can’t be.
Since birth, Mom had raised me alongside Jeremy as if we were siblings. She never mentioned once that I had been adopted or that I was never really her child. But if this was true, all the name-calling, all the rude remarks, everything about the way she’d treated me would make sense.
In some unfortunate way.
Yet in every myth and legend that I had learned in school, Medusa couldn’t get pregnant. After the decline of the gods, she had been cursed for eternity to never be able to conceive a child and especially not to survive the birth of one. If this was real, was that myth false?
“You’re not lying,” I whispered to her, brows furrowed. “Are you?”
“No,” she said, taking my face in her hands. “You’re my daughter. Venus, goddess of fertility, blessed me with a child after I tried and failed to conceive one for thousands upon thousands of years.” Medusa stared at me with eyes so teary that they looked bloodshot. “And I had to give that child up, so she could have a better life.”
My lips trembled, throat drying. With my spine being fucked, the hounds always after me, and my pack putting me down, my life had been decent at best. It hadn’t been the worst life I could’ve been granted, but maybe it would’ve been better with Medusa. I would never know.
“Why? Why did you give me up?” I whispered, unable to form any other words.
The reason was clear—Hella and Nyx wanted me to stay dead. But I didn’t want to believe that my own mother would let me endure life with this fucking disability and with that dreadful woman who had always put me down behind my back.
If I had been with Medusa since birth, I might’ve been able to grow and become stronger, and I might not have had to deal with the threat of relentless hounds. I would’ve been able to lead a somewhat-normal life without the back problems and without the constant criticism.
“I was never supposed to have children, and I was never supposed to be immortal. It was wished by so many gods and goddesses that I die, that I never bore children to bring into this world. They said that they would be as ugly as me, would turn people to stone with the lift of a finger, and would possess properties that were stronger than all other gods combined. You were never supposed to happen,” Medusa whispered as she stroked her fingers over my cheeks. “But I’m so glad you did. I have watched you grow up from afar and become such a strong warrior, which I knew your old pack would make you.”
“No,” I snapped, wanting her to know how fucked up she had made me. “My pack hated me!”
Medusa tucked some hair behind my ear, lips trembling. “They made you strong. That’s what I needed your mother to do because you won’t be able to defeat the gods of the underworld with love and kindness. They will betray you and hurt you, Aurora. They are out to kill you again.”
Overcome with anger, I pressed my lips together, my chest tightening. “Did you tell my mother to hate me? Did you tell her that I deserved to be talked about behind my back? Is that how you think I got strong?”
Medusa went to hug me, but I held my hand up to keep her back.
“I became detached by watching my brother die and then killing him again. I became strong by learning to fight when I was broken after the hounds nearly slaughtered me. I became powerful with the Malavite Stone. It had nothing to do with that woman you gave your child to.”
Ares wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “Kitten, calm down.” He rubbed small, soothing circles on my shoulders. “Take a deep breath for me. Your heart is pounding so loudly that I can hear it.”
Knowing that I could be endangering the baby, I took a deep breath like Ares had instructed and placed a hand on my belly to feel my baby kick. Medusa was telling me this because she wanted me to be comfortable with giving my baby away, but I hated finding out this way.
“Were you ever going to tell me that I was your child?” I asked when I calmed down.
Medusa gazed at me for a few moments and then looked down at her lap. “No. I wanted you to love that woman despite everything she did to you. She’d selflessly taken you in when I asked her to raise you, and she raised an alpha who is strong enough to defeat the gods.”
“And my father?” I asked. “Who is he?”
“You don’t have one.” she said. “I hadn’t been with another man or god for thousands of years, and I found myself pregnant with you. From the moment I found out, I knew that you weren’t just anyone who possessed the powers of a god, but you were Dawn, the goddess. If Hella or Nyx had found out that I was raising a child without a father, they’d have known it was you. I had to give you away to keep you safe.”
A deafening silence erupted over the entire room, no alpha daring to say a word. I sat back in my seat, pushed my head into my hands, and cried hard, my body shaking. Whatever I had been holding in these past few weeks—whether it was finding Ares cutting himself or trying to be strong for this pack or watching wolf after wolf die from the hounds—I let it all out.
Medusa was my mother.
My true mother.
And she had given me up to protect me from the gods’ wrath.
I wrapped my arms around my knees and pulled them to my chest. How could she have let me endure all those years of pain with my mother—or whoever she was? Didn’t she know how much I hated it there? Had she checked up on me or made sure that I was okay or ever fucking regretted her decision of giving me away?
“Do you regret it?” I whispered, pushing some tears away. “Do you regret not getting to see me or raise me or watch me grow up? Do you regret that I always looked up to that woman as my mother and had love for her at one point because she was my family? Do you regret any of it?”
Medusa looked me right in the eye and said, “No,” with so much certainty. “I don’t regret it, and neither will you. But, Aurora, you will regret it if anything happens to your child. You will hate yourself for putting her in harm’s way. Don’t put her in Hella’s path. Don’t let her die because you’re being selfish and only thinking about how this will affect you. You need the child, but if she dies, you won’t have her.”
While I wanted to hate Medusa for everything that she was, I couldn’t deny her words. If anything happened to my baby because I’d brought her to the underworld or I hadn’t given her away, then I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Deciding that I couldn’t speak another word to her, I pressed my lips together and sank in my chair, tears still pouring down my cheeks. Medusa, my own mother, didn’t regret giving me away. The woman who had raised me loathed me.
Who the fuck loved me besides Ares and Jeremy?
Nobody.
I had no fucking family.
Across the table, Vulcan cleared his throat and leaned forward in his seat. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but did you say Venus granted you a child?”
Medusa pulled her veil over her face to shield her eyes from the other mortal alphas and nodded at him. “Yes, Vulcan, the goddess Venus granted me Aurora.”
A wave of emotion crossed his face—sadness, grief, sorrow, and finally happiness. “If it’s the same woman, she … she is—was my mate. The last time I saw her was in the field of the stone people. She had left me years ago, turned to stone, and never came home to me.”
Medusa tensed. “Yes, she is the same woman you speak of.”
“Is she alive?”
“Venus is alive and in the underworld with Helios to try to stop this war.”
“My Venus is … is a goddess,” Vulcan whispered, lips curling into a smile.
Though I wanted to be happy for him and though I tried my best to smile, I couldn’t get myself to do it. Another person was trapped in the underworld, trying to stop this war before it spilled out onto the soil and destroyed all life forever.
“Yes,” Medusa said. “She is the goddess of fertility, who never typically sets foot in a war zone. Yet these past few hundred years have changed her. Since the gods aren’t worshipped as much anymore, they have lost much of their powers and have had to do things that they normally wouldn’t do to keep earth safe.”
Vulcan nearly doubled over the table. “Why? Why would she leave for the underworld and leave me here? Why didn’t she take me with her? I would’ve fought for her. We could’ve had pups. Will she ever come back?”
Medusa placed her hand on his and squeezed it gently. “Though she is the goddess of fertility, Venus has lost her own fertility due to the lack of worship. She found out she could not have children just after she met you. She didn’t want to disappoint you, so she departed from this world and decided to fight to keep you safe.”
As I listened to them speak, my chest tightened. Nothing seemed worse than not being able to conceive a child, especially when she was part of a pack. It was almost a given that mates bore pups almost immediately after they mated. Every pack loved the children and treated them as if they were their own.
Not being able to have pups was devastating.
“It’s actually quite terrible,” Medusa continued. “She would’ve made such a great mother, always warm and caring. She loves children whether they’re hers or not; she would do anything for them. These past few years have been the hardest on her.”
Ares tugged me into a hug and placed his lips on my temple. “And who else knows about her inability to have children?” Ares asked, body tense and rigid against mine. He rubbed more soothing circles around my shoulder and leaned closer to me, slipping his hand around my stomach to gently grasp my baby bump.
“I was the only one with her when she found out. She is ashamed of it.”
“This doesn’t leave this room,” Vulcan said, possessiveness in every one of his words.
“It can’t,” Medusa said. “Not only for Venus’s sake, but also for the sake of all the wolves about to enter the underworld. Nobody can know this potential weakness that we have on our side. Nyx will use it to make Venus go insane and turn on you all.”
After blowing out a deep breath, I rested my head on Ares’s shoulder and pushed away my tears with the backs of my hands. Ares hugged me close and gently stroked my stomach, his fingers against it.
Our baby kicked, and I hated—fucking loathed—the thought of giving her away.
How could I do it? And who did I trust to take care of her?
It had to be someone that Hella and Nyx didn’t know about already, which meant that Elijah was out of the picture. I had grown up with him, and surely, they would find that out. They would torture him first to find her.
“I know that you don’t want to do this, Kitten,” Ares whispered into my ear, “and I understand why. You don’t want to lose someone else who means the world to you. You watched your brother die twice, you watched Mars leave, and now, our baby is in danger.”
I curled into his chest and whimpered in response.
“If we go to the underworld with our daughter, she will be in danger too,” Ares reasoned.
“Can you imagine a life without our daughter?” I asked him, wanting an honest answer. “Can you imagine not seeing your daughter for almost twenty years, like Medusa didn’t see me? Can you imagine not getting to watch her grow, play with other pups, and do everything we dreamed of her doing?”
“I would rather her have a good life here with some other family than a terrible one in the unruly underworld, where her life will always be threatened,” he said with tears in his eyes. “I hate saying it out loud, but it’s true.”
More tears streamed down my face. He had been looking forward to having a child for so damn long. I didn’t want him to just give up on her. But … this was for the best, no matter how fucking bad it hurt.
“Who will take care of her?” I asked. “It can’t be Elijah.”
Ares glanced over at Vulcan. “Maybe Venus and Vulcan. We’ll just have to get her out of the underworld.”