ARES
Everything went dark.
One moment passed, then two, and then I landed with a thud on broken, dry ground. Hundreds of warriors that had been cemented in stone at our pack house stood around us, all speaking in hushed tones and careful not to alert the monstrous creatures lurking in this foggy land.
The beasts looked like wild, savage monsters who had traveled these lands for far too long. Too fat, too tall, too broken, too zombie-like to live on the ground above, on earth, a place I wasn’t sure we’d ever return to.
After Ruffles reunited her babies with Frito, Aurora appeared beside me a moment later, her arm immediately looping around mine. She inched closer to me and bit her lip, trying hard to stop her sobs from breaking through the quietness.
“It’s coming,” a sea of whispers echoed through the lands. “The ferry is coming.”
I grasped her hand tighter and pushed my way through the warriors until we reached the front. From the corner of my eye, I saw Marcel lurking behind the blackened, charcoaled trees. He nodded to me, and I nodded back to thank him for all he was doing for me, for my sister, and for our family.
He was making the ultimate sacrifice.
When I turned back, a half-human, half-skeleton–looking man who must be Charon stood on the small wooden boat with an oar in his hand and a black hood covering his head. If the oar in his hand were a scythe, he’d almost look like the Grim Reaper from this distance.
Everyone behind me turned silent when he docked the boat on the edge of the river and looked in our direction.
“A coin for your travels,” he said, voice coming out hoarse and raspy. When he spoke, he tilted his head up to the side just slightly, and I saw the jagged tooth in his skeleton mouth.
With a canine that large, was he part wolf?
“One coin per traveler,” he continued.
I stuffed my hands into my pocket, finding a spare coin that I knew I hadn’t had before. Someone must’ve put it there. Aurora pulled one out of her pocket, too, and stared down at it with wide eyes. It wasn’t a normal human coin, but one that I didn’t recognize despite my travels far and wide to find the stone.
After swallowing my fear, I placed the coin in his hand and looked him dead in the eye. Though I expected to see someone cold staring back at me, I saw the eyes of Charolette and froze. When he looked away, I shook my head. It hadn’t even been twenty minutes yet, and I already missed her so fucking much that I was seeing her in other people. Was that what the underworld did to wolves like me?
He held out his bony hand for Aurora to place her coin in. She stared at it and swallowed hard.
“Ares, I-I don’t know if I can do this …” she said, but I knew she wasn’t talking about being in the underworld. She was talking about being without our daughter.
I didn’t want her to know that this was hurting me too. She had been there for me so many times when I didn’t feel good enough. She had supported me during my darkest times when I felt like the world was crashing down upon me. I wanted to be that rock for her too.
Maybe I should’ve broken down and cried, but I hadn’t just given birth and had our baby stolen without seeing her first. I’d caught a glimpse of her face—those small pink lips and unruly black hair and eyes so bright, just like Aurora’s.
After grabbing Aurora’s hand, I placed the coin in Charon’s hand for her, walked with her to the boat, and led the way for the warriors behind me. “The only way back is to fight,” I said to her.
We didn’t know the first thing about being gods, our true potential, or the powers we possessed. But we would learn, and we’d be back for the girl who we loved more than anything.