AURORA
“Do you think Harper’s ever going to come around?” I whispered, curling my arm around Mars’s bicep and following my mates down the long hallway of my old pack house.
My brother’s, Jeremy, pictures still hung on the walls from when Mother lived here.
Every time I passed one, I admired the warrior who had sacrificed so much for me and for the werewolf species. Though he would never live another day in this world, nor the underworld, he deserved to be here and to be remembered.
“Harper spent eighteen years of her life without us,” Ares started from my left. “It’s going to take her some time to get used to having us around. She’s her own woman with her own mate now.”
It had been a month since we’d returned from the underworld, and we were slowly settling into the pack house again. So much time had seemed to pass since we had left the Sanguine Wilds, but things were actually starting to get back to normal—whatever that meant. Our lives were never really normal with the hounds constantly hunting us.
“It isn’t our fault that we couldn’t be here for her,” I whispered, chest tightening. “It’s Medusa’s. I’m glad that she hasn’t shown her face around here since she brought us back from the underworld because I wouldn’t freaking—”
Mars squeezed my hand with his larger, more solid one. “Calm down, Kitten.”
As soon as we had come back to the Sanguine Wilds, his ghostlike body wasn’t as transparent anymore. He couldn’t walk through walls and float through the air, and his body was becoming his own again.
But Ares …
I glanced over at Ares’s fading body and smiled small when he smirked at me with those lustful eyes. Ares was a different story, and I didn’t know what was happening to him. To me, it didn’t make any sense why their bodies were transforming the way they were. But to them, everything seemed normal.
Or at least, that was the way that Ares had put it last night to me when I asked him about it.
“You know what you do to us when you get all riled up like that, Kitten,” Ares growled.
My lips curled into a deeper smile, and my cheeks flushed. “Fine. Fine.”
It wasn’t fine because Medusa had taken eighteen years of my daughter’s life away from me, but I couldn’t be salty about it in front of Harper. I just wanted to appreciate the time I had with her now and learn how to be a mother to her.
When we reached the dining hall doors, I stopped in front of them and took a deep breath. Our lives might’ve been changed forever when we had met, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Suddenly, the doors flung open.
“What are you guys waiting for?!” Charolette said, eyes gleaming brightly.
She grabbed my wrist and yanked me into the room, where Harper, her mate, and Vulcan sat, ready to feast. Charolette’s natural brown hair shimmered under the bright lights. It seemed like she didn’t need to wear a wig anymore. Her real hair was silky smooth and thicker than ever.
Small wrinkles fluttered out from the corners of her eyes, and I didn’t know if she had gotten them these past eighteen years from smiling and laughing and enjoying life or for crying her eyes out over the disappearance of her mate.
Nevertheless, I pulled her into a hug, like it was the last one that I’d ever give her, and sat down across from my daughter at the dining table. Mars and Ares both sat on either side of me, placing their hands on my thighs and squeezing as if they were still the same person with the same thoughts.
“So,” Charolette said, staring between us three, “have you heard anything from the underworld?”
I glanced over at Mars and chewed on my inner lip. “No.”
Her eyes glazed over. “Not even from Marcel?” she whispered.
“I told you before, Charolette,” Ares said, voice hardening. “Marcel is dead. He’s not coming home.”
While the tears piled in Charolette’s eyes, she shook her head and looked down at her empty plate. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe you. He’s still alive out there somewhere, and one day … one day, I’ll find him.”
Ares clenched his sharp jaw and stayed surprisingly quiet. “He died a hero.”
“He’s still alive,” Charolette snapped. “I know he is.”
“Okay, okay,” I interjected, not wanting this to ruin our dinner.
After a few moments of silence, Harper cleared her throat. “So, uh …” She glanced between Ares and Mars. “Are you guys both, like … my dad? How does that even work? Are you guys different people? Brothers?”
“Different personalities in the same body,” Mars said, looking over at Ares. “But now, we’re, uh”—he chuckled—“kinda different personalities in different bodies.”
“We won’t be like this forever,” Ares said, leaning forward. “One day, we’ll return to the same body, but we didn’t start like this. Mars had … Mars had been through a rough time when he was a kid—an extremely rough time.”
“A lot of trauma,” Mars whispered, glancing down at the table and clenching his jaw. “So much that I couldn’t handle it alone, and my brain sorta, kinda birthed Ares to protect me from it. He’s been here ever since, through everything with me.”
“But you’ve grown into your own,” Ares said to Mars. “You don’t need me to protect you anymore. You don’t need me to fight for you anymore. You’ve sacrificed more than I ever could to protect our pack.”
As Ares continued, his body slowly faded more and more from reality. It was as if he was saying that Mars really didn’t need him anymore and that what he had come into this world to do was finally complete. He had fulfilled his destiny.
“You’re fading away,” I whispered, clutching on to any piece of him that I could touch. “What’s happening to you? Don’t leave me again. I won’t be able to … I can’t … I can’t do this without you.”
Ares brushed his fingers against my cheek. “I’m never leaving you again, Kitten. Don’t worry about that. Mars and I are one. We’ll always be together, and he’ll always give me time with you. Won’t you, Mars?”
Mars squeezed my thigh, making me look over at him. His eyes were glimmering gold, like his wolf, yet I could see Ares inside of them too. They were merging back together, someway, somehow.
“I feel stronger than ever, Kitten,” Mars said, but it was Ares’s voice coming from somewhere deep in Mars’s soul.
When I looked over my shoulder to look at Ares, he was gone. And while I should’ve felt so helpless, I didn’t because my mate was back to looking and feeling like himself again.
Mars cleared his throat. “He’ll be back out, Kitten.” He glanced over at Harper, who stared at us in amazement. “And he’ll be back to see you too, Harp. Ares isn’t gone for good. Ares just needs time to rest. But, fuck, he loves you both.”
The dining hall door opened once more, and Ruffles strutted into the room more dramatically than I had ever seen her. “Meow!”
Mars chuckled. “He loves you too, Ruffles. He loves you too.”