Aurora

I snapped my eyes open when I heard Ruffles meow. Sunlight flooded in through the dark curtains, giving—I was assuming—Ares’s room a slight morning glow. I still didn’t know what to call him. Was he that godlike alpha or that man I’d met at the lake a couple nights ago? Maybe he was both.

Monstrously dark and sleek, the room had an oddly homely feel to it with a couple pictures on the walls and—wait a damn second. I squinted my eyes at a picture of him and a young woman across from me. Frizzy blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, lips the color of cherries, she was beautiful.

They stared happily ahead, his head on her shoulder, giving the camera the biggest grin I had ever seen. Nothing like Alpha Ares, the notoriously powerful alpha from the Sanguine Wilds.

My wolf growled, jealousy creeping into my veins. Who was she, and why did she have her arms around my mate like that? Why’d they look so happy and youthful, like they were ready to take on the world together?

Ruffles meowed again. I gazed around the room and sat up almost immediately. I’d find out who she was later. Now, I had to find Ruffles before he found her and threw her out into the hound-infested forest.

Ares lay in the bed next to me, one arm draped around my waist, pulling me closer. “Kitten, lie back down with me. You smell so good.”

“No,” I said. “I need to go—”

He easily curled me to him, making me fall back onto the bed “That was an order.” He pressed himself closer to me, lips brushing against my ear, making me shiver. “Things are going to be different here than they were at your old pack.”

“You mean, my home,” I said, wanting to keep him talking so he didn’t hear Ruffles meow. Moon Goddess, what was she getting into?

He growled lowly in my ear, canines brushing against my neck. “This is your home, Aurora, and you’ll soon find out that this pack is run differently than your mother’s.” His hand slipped under the hem of my shirt, fingers rubbing soothing circles on my stomach. “For instance, you’re not going to disobey me when I give you an order.”

I snorted and sat back up. “Yeah, okay,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll obey your every command, sit at your feet, worship you to—”

He snaked a hand around my neck, yanking me back down next to him. “Another rule … you don’t leave my bed in the morning until I’ve eaten.”

“Moon Goddess, Ares, you expect me to wait until you’re finish—”

“Yes.” He placed lingering kisses down my neck, disappeared under the blankets, and yanked down my underwear, staring up at me from between my legs. “Every morning, you wait until I’m satisfied.”

Author's Note: Spicy scene removed to comply with Tapas standards. Read the rest of this scene on Ream.

Someone knocked on the door, and my eyes widened. 

“Ares,” Liam said from the hall.

“Come back later, Liam.” Ares kept his gaze on me. 

“But there—”

“I said, come back later,” Ares said, growling. 

“Charolette wants to see you,” Liam said again.

Charolette?

Ares tensed. “Tell her that I will see her during the party,” he said.

Was that who the woman in the picture was? He seemed to respond to her name like he would a mate, always there when she called, alert to her whenever and wherever she was. 

After a few moments, he stood and nodded toward the door. “Come on, Kitten. It’s time for you to meet the pack.”

My wolf growled, and I pulled down my shirt to cover my bare pussy, suddenly feeling so … so … distant. I didn’t want to think the worst, but Mom had beaten it into my head that Ares was a no-good, lying, whore-loving man.

What was the point of me even being here, of me enjoying this, if one day, I’d be less than nothing to him too?

“I’ll be down in five minutes.” I pulled the blankets up to shield myself from him. 

If Ares found Ruffles before I did, he’d probably rip her to pieces and serve her tiny little body to me for breakfast.

Ares pulled on a pair of shorts. “Five minutes. If you’re not downstairs by then, I’ll come and get you. And you don’t want me to come back up here, angry, Kitten.”

Yes, we do.

My wolf purred, and I swore at her in hopes to suppress her goddamn hormones.

I gazed at the door, blinking as I waited for him to leave. “Okay, well … bye.”

He paused for a few moments, eyeing me, and then left the room. As soon as the door closed, I sprinted to my purple backpack, which sat just below his dresser. It was unzipped, and Ruffles was gone.

Fuck.

Where the hell did she go? And how did she get out? Where are all her damn chips?

She meowed again, and I followed the noise out into the hallway. Since Ares had disappeared into the house, I tiptoed around and peeked my head into each room, noticing how everything seemed so divine.

Large drapes. Shiny oak floors. Grand hallways.

Though I used to live in a pack house, it didn’t compare to this. Everything here seemed livelier and richer, mighty and strong, celestial almost. And I wondered how Ares, such a bloodthirsty beast, could sustain such a lavish life. Had he stolen these things from other packs, or had his pack always been this wealthy?

After creeping down the hallway and finding only spare rooms and a bathroom, I opened the door to a smaller room with yellow curtains and three empty bags of chips lying on the floor. I cocked an eyebrow and entered the room, closing the door behind me. 

Ruffles lay on the bed, on her back. Eyes closed in pure delight. Whiskers coated in chip dust. Tail curled.

“Ruffles!” I whisper-yelled at her.

She opened one eye, annoyed that I’d woken her up, and meowed.

“What’re you doing in here? And how’d you open all of those bags of chips?” I picked up the bags and threw them in the garbage. “What if Ares had found you?”

She meowed again.

I plucked her off of the bed. “Don’t give me that.”

Breath smelling of salt, she didn’t even protest when I moved her. I hurried down the hall to Ares’s bedroom. It wasn’t safe to keep her in the bedroom in case he found out about her, but at least I would know where she was.

Moon Goddess only knew what kind of contraptions and people roamed around Ares’s pack house. I expected to run into a couple torture devices and a few warriors who liked to inflict pain on others.

When I walked into the room, someone shouted from downstairs for me. 

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I told Ruffles not to escape again and that I’d find her a better place to sleep tonight. Then, I slammed the door, leaving her inside the room.

I hurried down the hall, expecting to see Ares waiting for me, but Liam stood at the foot of the stairs. Instead of saying anything, he just nodded his head and turned toward the back door. After taking a deep breath and preparing myself for the worst, I followed him outside.

The sun blazed overhead, making me break out into a sweat. We walked through the forest until we reached a small lake. People were gathered around, talking to each other and grilling hot dogs on a wild and blazing fire.

In the midst of the pack, I stopped and glanced around, trying to figure out how so many people lived here. There must’ve been thousands of people in Ares’s pack, all under his rule and control. I pressed my lips together. And they didn’t even seem like they had such a bad life.

I’d assumed he treated his people like shit, forced them to do his dirty work. I’d expected cruelty, pain, fear from his pack members. Not … this. Yet no matter how friendly they looked, nobody dared to start a conversation with me. It seemed like they didn’t like outsiders that much.

When I turned to ask Liam where Ares was, I found Liam had disappeared through the crowd. I raised a brow and walked around by myself, listening to people whisper about me, about why an alpha had been traded in war. Some smirked, and others laughed. I ignored them all and continued toward the lake.

A group of men—warriors—gazed over at me from the rocks near the lake. When I looked at them, they just kept staring like I was the most fascinating thing they had ever seen. While some looked vaguely familiar, I didn’t recognize the one staring at me with such ferocity.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

With long, wavy silver locks and scars all over his body, the young man stepped forward. “Just admiring the latest trophy Alpha Ares has brought home,” he said. “An alpha this time.”

The guy next to him chuckled. “He always likes to go bigger and better.”

“At least this one’s hotter than the last few,” one of the older men said.

I flared my nostrils and growled. No disrespect—that was my only demand I’d had. If one more word came out of their mouths, I was going to—

The silver-haired asshole stepped closer to me and drew his finger up the column of my neck. “A feisty one, isn’t she?”

Before he touched my face, I grabbed his finger and bent it backward until it broke. “I don’t care who you are, but you don’t touch me like that.”

He chuckled lower, as if his finger didn’t even hurt. “Trophies from war are everyone’s property, darling, not just the alpha’s.”

“Well, I’m not a trophy of war,” I said through clenched teeth. My wolf wanted me to tell him that I was his new luna, that whether he liked it or not, he would have to respect me, but something held me back.

If we weren’t here, I would’ve already snapped this guy’s neck. But since this was my first meeting with the pack, I wanted to make a good impression and stay under the radar, blend in as much as possible, try to hide the fact that an alpha like me couldn’t shift easily.

These fools were fiends for power. If one of them questioned my abilities and challenged me to a fight—because I’d heard more than enough stories about Ares’s pack staging battles for fun—and I couldn’t shift … if someone looked into me and my history and found out that I had part of the stone, they would try to kill me.

And if they succeeded, Ruffles would die here alone.

Not going to happen.

“Really?” he asked condescendingly. 

He glanced into the woods, and I followed his gaze. Through the embers and smoke from the fire, Ares walked toward us with that same blonde girl from the picture in his room. She had her arm looped around his as she grinned up at him, her bright blue eyes sparkling.

I glared at the two in shock and disgust.

After she grasped his jaw and placed a kiss on his cheek, he stared down at her with so much love. My hands clenched into fists, claws ripping the skin on my palms. Jealousy and anger bubbled inside me. Moon Goddess, I was seconds away from ripping them both apart.

For someone who always thought things through before I acted, I couldn’t hold my wolf back from growling. Last night, he had brought me home, laid me in his bed, kissed my forehead, and begged me to call him Mars.

Not the fierce Alpha Ares who took whores from packs.

Mars.

The silver-haired asshole nudged my shoulder. “Didn’t think you were his one and only, did you?”

I should’ve known that it was all too good to be true. I should’ve thought with my head instead of my heart. I shouldn’t have trusted a man who had used me to get into my pack and taken me.

He chuckled under his breath, threw an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me in close, his striking silver hair brushing against the side of my face. “You’re just an alpha, here as a trophy to add to his growing collection of whores.”