Chapter 21
AURORA
“Charlotte,” I called, walking down the wide hall and gazing at
family pictures in wooden-carved frames.
After knocking on her door, I stared in awe at a picture of Mars with his mom, his arms wrapped around her thigh and him grinning from ear to ear, his front two teeth gone but his canines poking out through his gums. My lips curled into a frown as I listened to Ares scream at his father downstairs about keeping this secret from him for years.
While part of me wished Mars could be that happy again, I had little control over that man, and I didn’t blame him for blowing up at his father. I had always been fond of Mr. Barrett, but knowing that his son would become the alpha … he had to have expected Ares would find out sooner or later.
I knocked twice and placed my ear against the door. “Charlotte, can I come in?”
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she opened the door. Almost instantly, she enveloped me in a huge hug, rested her head on my shoulder, and tugged me into the room. “I miss her. I miss my mom.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, staining my clothes but I didn’t care. “I hate when they talk about her because it makes me so sad.”
Not knowing what to do, I wrapped my arms around her and gently stroked her hair. I wasn’t going to tell her that it was okay because what had happened to her was devastating and losing a loved one was hard. Goddess, I didn’t know how many times I’d cried over Jeremy.
“I-I—” She hiccuped and slumped her shoulders even more as if she were sinking in on herself. “If I wasn’t born, Mom would still be alive. Sheshe-she wouldn’t have taken her life. I am a constant reminder of—”
“Stop it,” I demanded in my alpha tone. I pulled away, grabbed her chin, and forced her to look up at me. My heart pounded against my rib cage, hurting so bad that my friend thought this way. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence?”
She covered her face with her small hands. “B-but it’s true.”
“No. It’s not true. Don’t blame yourself for how your mother felt or what she did. You didn’t cause her to do that.” I shook my head and took her face in my hands. “It wasn’t your fault, and it will never be your fault, so don’t think like that.”
After she pulled herself away from me, she grabbed an orange pillow shaped like the moon, held it to her chest, and curled into a ball on the bed, staring off into space. “Ares and my dad—my adopted dad—would be so happy if she were still here.”
Sitting on the edge of her bed, I gently rubbed her arm. “They’re happy that you’re here. They love you so much. Ares has gone to hell and back to find you the stone, so you could survive. Don’t think for a minute that they’d be better off without you.”
Charlotte opened her mouth and then snapped it closed. I frowned and glanced down at her cream star-covered blankets, wondering what life would’ve been like if their mother hadn’t committed suicide. Would Mars just be Mars? Would Ares have emerged? Would I have even met him yet?
As a silence fell upon us, I heard growling downstairs from Ares.
Charlotte pulled the blanket over her head and sniffled. “Do you think my dad thinks about me?”
“Your father always thinks about you. He does so much for you.”
“No, I mean, my real father, Fenris.”
I parted my lips and pressed them back together, completely taken aback. While I didn’t want to talk about Fenris because of how shitty of a person he was, I couldn’t deny the fact that Fenris was her biological father. She had been the product of rape and abandonment from him, yet she still wanted to know more about the hound leader.
“Do you think that he’ll raise my mother from the dead? I heard that he has her bones and was trying to bring her back.”
My whole body tensed. “Where did you hear that?”
“Marcel.”
Marcel. I would have to beat some sense into that boy later. I didn’t want him telling anyone about this. If the average wolf found out the true nature of the hounds, everything would end in chaos.
Charlotte curled up next to me and stared up at me with bright eyes like I had all her answers—how I imagined many people would look up to me once Ares and Mars officially announced me as their lunar “Do you think he thinks about her still? Loves her?”
“I don’t know, Charlotte.”
Because, well, I didn’t. When we had seen him trying to bring back those bodies, he’d looked so determined to bring Charolette’s mother back. And I wasn’t sure if it was to hurt Ares or for his selfish reasons. Whatever it was for, I couldn’t get her hopes up. We had to kill Fenris to end this; he had taken so much from us.