AURORA
Strong, warm arms wrapped around my torso. I lay on the cold forest floor, my body feeling so heavy and my mind reeling with thoughts and dreams and images that were not my own. They looked almost like the future, almost like a piece of everyone’s future.
“Kitten,” Mars whispered into my ear, lifting me into the air. “Kitten, tell me you’re okay.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed a hand to my forehead, whimpering softly. “My head hurts,” I started, a sharp pain shooting through my temple. When I reopened my eyes, everything looked fuzzy and distant. “I-I can’t see.”
While my vision became even more far off and blurry, I could feel the wind whipping around my body, as if Mars was rushing through the forest.
“Stay with me, Kitten,” he said, his words more and more distant. “I’m going to find Acesca for you.”
When my vision became completely black, a bright figure appeared in the distance. I focused on her, wanting—no, needing—to see, desperate for something that’d help calm my racing heart. All I could think about was that killing Nyx had been a mistake because now, I had lost my sight.
The figure stared at a bonfire burning in the distance with a bunch of wolves around it. Elder wolves—including who looked to be Alpha Vulcan and his warriors—were gathered around it, drinking beer and talking to a muscular, younger alpha wolf about how he should’ve been mated already, about how he needed a strong luna to lead this pack with him, about how only a she-wolf with beta or alpha blood would do.
The younger wolf sighed deeply through his nose, staying quiet. A woman—who looked like a spitting fucking image of Mars, Ares, and me—peeked her head around the tree to watch the young wolf nod toward the elders, silently agreeing.
The girl, who must’ve been our daughter, clutched the tree hard, her claws digging into the bark and her canines lengthening. She gritted her teeth. “Why is he such an asshole? I hate him so much. How could he just agree with them like that?!”
Just from the mere look on her face, I could tell that she was hurting as much as I had that one night that Ares almost ripped my best friend to shreds and hunted me down after I ran away from him. She walked out from behind the trees and looked at the alpha wolf for the briefest moment. A pained expression crossed his face before it was replaced with a devious expression that only Ares had given me before.
They were mates. They had to be.
But instead of our daughter walking over to him, she pulled her gaze away from him and walked to the guy who sat to his right. “Meet me south of the lake, Axel. Five minutes,” she whispered.
Axel glanced up at her, his eyes dancing with excitement. He ran his fingers over hers.
The alpha’s gaze hardened, watching her fingertips run up Axel’s chest. She smiled at him, and for good measure, she pressed a kiss on Axel’s neck. She glanced back up at the alpha to see him clenching his jaw, eyes flashing gold. Then, she balled her hands into tight fists, as if she was simmering with anger, and walked into the forest.
“Aurora!” someone shouted to my left.
I snapped out of the daydream that had been drifting through my mind. I couldn’t tell if it was the future or if that had been in real time, but I … I couldn’t help but cry out. Whatever it was, all I wanted was to get home soon to see my daughter. This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.
“Aurora,” Mars said again, hovering over me now.
With my back against the stone ground, I stared up at the sky and my warriors, who stood around me. I closed my eyes for another brief moment, letting out a long sigh after not seeing another dream, and sat up. I didn’t know what was happening to me.
Nyx was gone, dead.
How can I still see them?
“Sit back,” Acesca said, gently pushing me back down. “Tell me what happened. You were out for a good five minutes.”
“I …” I lay back down against Mars and took another deep breath. “I think I saw the future or the present. I had another one of those dreams about our daughter.”
“But we killed Nyx,” Mars said in a whisper.
I glanced around the group, hearing whispers and seeing figures that weren’t there, but that seemed to be partners or children of these wolves and hounds.
I clutched my head again. “I don’t know. I just … I want to go home. We need to find Ares.”