ARES
Mom was a hound.
I didn’t recognize her. I couldn’t see those bright eyes that always used to stare down at Mars and me with so much love, no matter how hurt we were on the inside. I couldn’t see that smile she’d faked, even when Mars asked her if Fenris was hurting her after he raped her. I couldn’t even see her skin.
But her scent was one that I would never forget. Even in death, it would haunt me.
Rage and agony shot through my body, a fiery vengeance forcing me to growl once more. I didn’t give a fuck if these assholes saw us because this time, I wouldn’t let Fenris live. I would kill him and take back control of Mom.
She didn’t deserve this. She deserved life.
“Ares,” Aurora said through the mind link, her voice a mere whisper. “Please don’t attack them. We’re not ready for another battle. There are far too many of them. I don’t think we’ll be able to—”
But as much as my mate pleaded with me, I couldn’t stop myself from barreling forward.
I loved her with my entire heart and would do anything to protect her, but Aurora hadn’t watched her mother get raped. Aurora didn’t experience the pain and sorrow that Mars did every fucking day because he hadn’t done anything to stop it.
Once another growl ripped through my throat, the hounds finally looked over at us. Collectively, they let out a bellowing roar and ran toward us, almost as if they had been trained to rip any human apart.
Sprinting forward, I latched my canines into the first hound and ripped his skeleton body to pieces. Fenris and Hella would bring him back someday and sometime, but it would take time and energy. If we got rid of as many of them as we could now, then it would be harder for her.
Fenris growled from across the forest. I snapped my head in his direction, watching him shoo Mom behind him. She ran backward through the forest and into the darkness, disappearing from my view. But I wouldn’t let Fenris escape with her.
Now, I would kill him for good and take his bones, so Hella couldn’t rebuild him.
Our packs clashed against each other, my pack easily snapping and killing these undead creatures for a second time in the past few days. Hella’s army might’ve been growing, but it was getting weaker by the day.
Every time we killed these hounds, they came back weaker. The more death, the easier it would be to stop Hella once and for all. If we needed to fight over and over and over to protect our daughter, we would.
Fenris ran through the crowd, right for me, as if he wanted revenge—or something much more sinister because I’d kill him in the human world. He was stronger than I’d originally thought and still had some consciousness left inside of him.
Most hounds didn’t.
But I refused to let him kill any more people I cared about. This was the end for him.
I sunk my teeth into his throat, snapped the bones, and towered over his crumbling body. Each brittle bone fell to the ground into a pile at my feet, the stench of it making me gag. But I didn’t stop tearing apart the little flesh that he had left.
Last time, I had torn his body in half. This time, I planned to keep him that way.
A skeleton. Fleshless with brittle bones. Dead.
After spitting the last of his flesh from my canines, I transformed back into my human and glanced over my shoulder to ensure that Aurora was all right. She stood across the field with piles of bones around her and tears in her eyes.
“Kitten, what’s wrong? Did one of them hurt you?” I asked through the mind link.
I gathered Fenris’s bones in my arms and held them to my chest, vowing to one day piece him back together to torture the fuck out of him with Mars. As calm and collected as he was, I was sure that Mars would love to torture him too.
“I hate the hounds, but these people …” She paused, looked up at me and frowned. “Most of these people were wolves we knew, my old packmates. They don’t know what they’re fighting for or why. Hella is using innocent lives.”
Suddenly, red, pink, and orange—the colors of dawn—erupted in her eyes, completely consuming her wolfish gold eyes and human blue eyes. Her irises glowed brightly along with the veins and arteries throughout her body.
I inhaled sharply at the vigor coming off her in waves, the strength undeniable. “Kitten.”
“I hate it!” she screamed, the mere sound so powerful that the trees blew wildly above us and all the creatures—wolves and hounds alike—in the forest stopped fighting around us. “I hate it so much! I will kill her! I will take these hounds back.”
The hounds, even the sickliest and frailest, showed no sign of aggression anymore, so much so that our wolves didn’t look comfortable even facing them in battle. We weren’t down here to kill aimlessly; we were here to defeat Hella.
But maybe we could do that in other ways.
One hound walked over to the bones at Aurora’s feet, head hung low. She collapsed next to the pile of bones and curled her bony body around the pile, a slight whimper escaping her throat. Though she couldn’t communicate with us, I could still feel the pain shooting through her. Maybe these hounds did have a bit of life left inside of them.
“If you want to destroy Hella with me, follow me,” Aurora announced to the hounds, eyes still shining red, pink, and orange, her veins completely glowing through her human body. “We won’t hurt or kill any more of you. We’ll protect you.”
A rumble erupted through the hounds, and then the ones still alive—if we could even classify them as that—bowed their heads in submission. Aurora took a deep breath, her shoulders slumping forward and a small smile crossing her face.
“We have an army,” Aurora said through the mind link. “An army that will win.”