ARES
A day later, we stood at the river’s base, where we had entered the underworld. Today, we were going home. Home—where I had been born into Mars’s body, where I had met Aurora, where this had all started.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave,” Mars said to Aurora, stopping just short of Charon’s ferry that led back to the area where Medusa had spawned us in so long ago.
Hades had advised us to head over the river and that Medusa would be waiting for us to get back home.
“What do you mean?” Aurora whispered, curling her fingers against Mars’s chest, her eyes watering. “You have to be able to come home. I’m not going anywhere without you. You-you have to come with us.”
“I’m nothing but a spirit,” Mars said, glancing down at his misty body.
Someone cleared her throat behind us. “You’ll be able to make it back home.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Medusa. The snake-like wolves slithered around her head like hair, her eyes were a piercing green, and her skin was aging slowly. I gritted my teeth and grabbed Aurora’s other hand, knowing that she would kill Medusa right here and now if I didn’t control her.
Aurora growled, canines lengthening. “If you weren’t our ticket home, I would kill you.”
Medusa gave Aurora, her daughter, a smile. “I know.”
Deep down, I thought that Aurora might actually kill her once we got home. We had lost so many years of our daughter’s life, being down in the underworld, and Aurora hadn’t even gotten to see our daughter’s face once.
“Will I be able to survive in the Sanguine Wilds?” Mars asked her.
He didn’t know what Medusa had done to Aurora.
“Yes,” Medusa said, addressing him directly and ignoring Aurora seething beside him. Medusa turned toward the group of wolves who would be entering back into the real world with her help. “Now, is this everyone that will be traveling with us?”
Mars grabbed Aurora’s hand from off his chest, squeezed it, and grinned at us. I gave him a small smile and nodded. We might’ve been the same yet different people in the past, but … man, I loved that kid.
I had done everything in my power to protect him for as long as I could, and he had become a man, so much stronger and smarter than me. He had matured from that little boy who needed protection from the monster we called Fenris.
“We have a prisoner too,” Mars said, glancing over his shoulder at the group of warriors guarding Fenris. He looked over at me and nodded back, as if to say that he wanted to be the one who tortured Fenris until he died. “We’re bringing him to our home, and we’re going to give him everything he deserves.”
Once Aurora said her goodbye to the gods of the underworld, all the hellhounds, and the hounds who’d stay here once we left, she stepped forward and crossed her arms. “I’ll consider not killing you once we make it to the Sanguine Wilds if you keep a portal open from the underworld to the Sanguine Wilds, so the hounds can come visit me anytime they’d like.”
After Medusa scanned the group, she nodded. “Fair.”
Aurora gritted her teeth, jaw twitching. “Fine.”
Medusa called the others to come closer and then mumbled something in a lost, ancient language. My body began hardening, my skin and bones and muscles stiffening like they had the first time she brought us back down here.
One moment passed, then another, and then I couldn’t move.
Everything turned dark, black even, like we were in the middle of a black hole. Then, suddenly, the world lit up, and the scent of pine drifted through my nose.
We stood in the middle of the Sanguine Wilds, back home.
As people dispersed around us, Aurora, Ruffles, and Mars stayed behind with me. Aurora smiled at me, her mind racing with thoughts that she couldn’t seem to control.
“Our daughter,” she whispered to us. “We have to go find her.”
“Too late,” someone said to our left. “We’ve already found you.”
We all glanced over at Alpha Vulcan and a young man, who was a spitting image of him, which must’ve been his son. But … Vulcan and his mate couldn’t have kids—at least, that was as far as I knew. If it was his son, he had to be at least eighteen years old, which meant that …
A young woman pushed her way through the warriors and finally emerged next to Vulcan and his son, her brown hair flowing in the breeze. Aurora stared at her, one hand over her mouth to hold back a sob as she grabbed on to me tightly.
“My baby,” she cried, suddenly throwing her arms around our daughter and pulling her into a tight hug. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for not being there for you. I love you so much. So fucking much, sweetheart.”
While my mate embraced our daughter, I could do nothing but stare in awe.
Never in my life had I thought I would find someone who would ever love me enough to have my child, and never in my life had I thought I would ever love anyone more than Aurora.
But we had done everything for our daughter. Everything.
And now, we could finally meet her.
Our daughter awkwardly patted Aurora’s back, and then she pulled away and glanced up at me. “I … I don’t know what to say,” she whispered, nervously playing with her fingers. She finally held out her hand. “Ruffles told me everything about what you’ve done for me.”
“Ruffles?” Aurora said, glancing down at our cat. “What do you mean? She came down to the underworld with us.”
“She was up here for me,” our daughter said. “At least, some days.”
Ruffles rubbed her furry body against me and glanced up at us with a mischievous look in her eyes. That cat had secrets that even Aurora didn’t know about, secrets that we would never even figure out.
“What’s your name?” Mars asked our daughter, directing the attention away from our mischievous cat.
She smiled. “Harper.”
“Harper,” I whispered, grinning to myself and finally feeling complete for once.
Our daughter’s name was Harper.