Aurora

The hound sprinted straight for the passenger door again.

A vicious growl exited Ares’s throat and echoed throughout the entire forest. He shifted midair into his wolf and sprinted toward the car like his life depended on it. The hound hit the side of the car again, blood-colored foam oozing from his mouth. He thrust his snout into the broken window, trying to latch his teeth into my shoulder.

More hounds appeared through the forest, trapping Ares. My heart pounded in my chest, and I threw myself over Ruffles to save her life, like I wish I had done with Jeremy. But Ruffles had other plans.

She hissed, jumped on my shoulder, and swatted at the hound with both paws, tearing into his skin. It wasn’t hard but was enough to be annoying. Her tail stood straight up, and she caught him in the eye. Thrashing back and forth, the hound howled.

Goddess, I wished I could shift, so I could kill him instantly. The rogue shoved himself further into the car, saliva dripping from every one of his teeth. I glanced back at Ares, hoping that he, the woman, and her son were okay. But what I saw instead were two hounds lying dead in the middle of the street and Ares surrounded by four more.

Rain beat down diagonally around him, fog sitting heavily in the air.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

I felt useless. Completely useless. My mate was fighting the monsters—the same ones I had dedicated my life to finding a way to eradicate—while I just sat in the car, trying to protect myself and Ruffles from being ripped to shreds.

This was how Jeremy had been murdered. Surrounded by four wolves. In the pouring rain. Unable to escape. Torn to shreds. The leader of that hound group had killed him almost instantly with a look of pleasure on his face.

I tossed Ruffles to the driver’s seat and scooted into the seat myself, kicking the wolf’s snout with my heel. He sink his canines into my foot. I fumbled with my backpack, grabbed the silver knife inside the bag—because silver was the Achilles heel for wolves, and shoved it right into his mouth.

The blade sliced through the back of his neck, and he released my foot, shaking his head from side to side. I kicked him again, crawled over to my seat, wrapped my hand around his neck, and snapped it.

When I looked back at Ares, he was pulling a hound’s throat from his neck, and the other three were lying dead on the cement with their comrades. Ares’s teeth dripped with blood. He gazed over at me with the darkest golden eyes that I had ever seen and growled lowly.

I lured Ruffles back into my backpack with the bag of chips before he had a chance to notice her and cursed to myself for ever coming with Ares. We hadn’t even made it a couple hours before shit happened.

Ares gazed around the forest twice and shifted into his human. Blood gushed out of a bite mark in his chest. He hurried over to the car, opened his door, pulled out a phone that he had gotten from somewhere, and glared at me.

“Liam. Hounds. North Sanguine Wilds. Get here now.” He threw his phone onto the seat and growled at me. “What was that?”

My eyes widened, and I pushed my backpack into the backseat. “What do you mean?”

“He attacked you.”

“Yeah, and they attacked you.” I pressed my lips together, unable to hold back my rage. “Why the fuck are you angry with me for your stupid-ass decisions? I told you not to go out there.”

“You didn’t shift.” He clenched the door handle in his fist, muscles flexing. Beads of blood rolled down his naked and tensed abdomen. “You could’ve gotten killed because you didn’t shift, Aurora.”

I wanted to argue with him, but nothing came out. How was I supposed to tell my mate—one of the strongest alphas of our time—that I couldn’t shift? That I wasn’t the alpha he thought I was. That I was useless to Mom and that I’d be useless to him too.

My wolf whimpered at the thought. Mate won’t want us if we tell him. Nobody will want us. We can barely even protect ourselves. 

She disappeared in the back of my mind, and I wrapped my arms around myself. Ruffles would want us. She would always want us. But my mate might not.

I’d become a lone wolf. Maybe he’d feed me to the hounds himself when he found out. The horror stories of him told me that he would do such a thing. And then we’d cease to exist together.

“It was one hound,” I said, brushing it off as if it were nothing, but my voice wavered.

Ares continued to glare at me with eyes so rageful and so hateful that I thought he would kick me out of the car right then and there for not protecting myself. And I didn’t know how to feel about that. Part of me thought that it would be great. I could go back to my pack—my pack that didn’t want me. The other part of me dreaded the mere thought of being without my mate, without Mars or Ares or whoever the hell he really was.

After a few moments, he gestured to the mother and child. “Get out of the car, so I can watch you.”

“I can watch myself.”

He clenched his jaw. “Now, get out of the fucking car. I’m not going to say it again.”

I grumbled to myself, trying not to touch the shattered glass sprinkled along the seat, and stepped out of the car. Some had cut into my leg, but I hid it well with my dark jeans. It didn’t need to be treated now. I’d deal with it later.

After Ares found a spare pair of pants in the back of the car, we approached the woman. 

She turned to Ares, tears streaming down her face. “How can I repay you? I-I don’t have anything of value.”

“With information and by accepting membership into my pack, so we can keep you safe.”

My eyes widened. He was going to let her into his pack just like that? While I had sympathy for her and her son, she was still a rogue, and rogues were known for betraying, slaying, and murdering innocent wolves.

She fell to her knees. “Yes, of course. You’re my savior today. What kind of information do you need?”

“The Malavite Stone. Tell me all you know about it.”

I stiffened. I should’ve known he’d ask about that.

The Malavite Stone.

The stone he tore apart packs to find. The stone that could really make him a god with all its power. 

The stone that I had inside of me.

After the hounds had attacked my pack, it had been used to heal me. Half of it was inside my back, keeping me alive. And the other half was with the hounds—lost forever.

The stone had powers that not many knew about. Healing properties. Strength properties. Power properties. Properties that hadn’t even been unlocked yet. It was the rarest gem in the entire world. Every alpha wanted to get their hands on it, but nobody knew where it was. Except Elijah—one of my closest allies—and me.

“I don’t have any information about the Malavite Stone,” the woman said, blood draining from her face. “As far as I know, it’s not even around here.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Ares said in his alpha tone, so frighteningly deep and stern.

My wolf purred, heat warming my core at how powerful he sounded. Damn mating bond.

She stepped back toward the woods. “I-I don’t know anything about it.” She snatched her son’s hand, tongue clicking against her teeth. 

Her gaze was fixed on the ground, and I knew she was lying. Ares knew it too.

He snatched her chin hard. “Tell me,” he demanded. His voice was deadly quiet. “What do you know?” When she didn’t say anything, Ares gripped her chin tighter. “Tell me now before I have to make you.”

After parting her lips a few times and squeezing her son’s hand, she nodded. “Okay,” she said quietly. “I … the hounds have the stone … a man with a large scar down the side of his face rules over them. That’s as much as I know.”

He glared at her for a few minutes and then shoved her back and released her chin. Wow, what a total bipolar—

Ares’s beta and a few other warriors pulled behind our car. They sniffed out the forest around us, looking for other hounds but found none. When they returned, Ares instructed them to take the woman and her pup back to his pack and get them food, water, and shelter.

But something wasn’t sitting easy with me. This wasn’t the Ares I knew. All of the stories I had heard of Ares were about him being ruthless and cutthroat, killing anyone and everyone in his path without a care in the world. This was different, and I didn’t know how I felt.

Because Ares didn’t save people from disaster. He caused it.