Chapter 23

AURORA

On our short walk home, Ares clutched my hand tightly and repeatedly scanned the forest, as if he was on guard for someone or something to attack. Moonlight flooded the cracked street pavement while tiny lightning bugs floated by, dodging falling leaves.

“You know I love you, right?” Ares asked suddenly. “That I’d do anything for you?”

I stopped, chest tightening, and stared up into his golden eyes. Ares didn’t get affected by many things very easily. The conversation with his father must’ve been worse than I’d thought.

I grasped his hand to let him know that I did. “I’d do anything for you too. I love you and Mars.”

Though a strained expression flashed on his face, he forced a half-smile. “I can’t wait to make you our Luna, but you must do a few things before. I can’t lose you.” He ushered me closer to the pack house, glancing around the forest again. “I can’t fucking lose you, Aurora.”

Ruffles sat in the window, swaying her tail and watching us—or maybe she was staring at Pringle, who sat in front of some hedges and chased his tail. Ares grimaced at him and opened the front doors.

“What’s going on, Ares? What’d your father say?”

After pushing me inside, he shut and locked the doors behind us. “That you should have the stone,” he said, the look on his face telling me that he wanted to say so much more. But instead, he cupped my face and drew his thumb across my cheek. “And I agree.”

“You agree?” I asked in disbelief, laying my hand over his. “I thought you wanted me to give the stone to your sister? I want to give the stone to your sister.”

I couldn’t bear to see her die. I had already lost my brother twice. I couldn’t lose Charolette too. Within the past few weeks, we had grown so much closer to each other.

“You need the stone, Kitten.” He rested his forehead against mine. “It will help you shift and make you stronger than anyone in this pack, including me.”

When he blew an angry breath from his nose, I knew that there was more. He wasn’t telling me everything.

“What is it? Why the sudden change?”

“The hounds,” he said quietly, eyes glazing over for a moment as his minds linked with pack warriors, telling them to increase border security and guards around the pack house. When he turned back to me, he grabbed my hand and walked me up the stairs. “They’re going to try to take you away from me. Fenris, my mother’s mate”—the word came out of his mouth with so much distaste, as if he didn’t think the hound deserved such a title—“he plans to make you his.”

While I had the urge to laugh because I would never in a million years leave with that hound—I’d kill him before he touched me—I instead pressed my lips together because I had only seen Ares this terrified once: after the hound attack at Mom’s pack.

“I have lost everything. My mom. Maybe Charlotte. I can’t let them have you. You’re my life, Mars’s life, too.”

Butterflies swarmed inside my stomach, all those feelings I’d had on the night we met making me smile. Every single day, Ares surprised me with another side of himself, and my love for him grew stronger.

Though I didn’t want to take the stone from Charlotte, she didn’t want it. The reason she’d refused broke my heart, but she seemed way too adamant to change her mind. I had tried desperately. Mars and Ares had tried desperately. Hell, Marcel had even tried desperately. Yet she still refused it.

And I couldn’t let a power like that go to waste.

A war was barreling toward us at lightning speed, and using it might be the only way to stop it.

Or at least, it’d give Ares and Mars peace of mind.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll do it. I need to ask Eli—”

“I already talked to him at the tavern.”

My eyes widened. “You’re serious about this.”

“Dead fucking serious, Kitten,” he said, eyes flickering a hundred shades of gold. He took my hand and led me to our bedroom. “Come. You’re going to wear something of my mother’s for the Luna Ceremony. I want to show it to you.”

Unlike Mars, he wasn’t going to ask me to wear it. Ares demanded.

After rummaging through his dresser, he pulled out a black box with a sparkling emerald-green gemstone on a necklace encrusted with silver. Although hesitant at first, I didn’t think the silver would be in direct contact with any of my skin.

“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

“My family has passed this down for centuries,” he said, handing me the necklace.

Under the moonlight, the emerald flickered. I brushed my thumb across the gem and smiled.

He swept his fingers against the chain. “Let me help you try it—”

Suddenly, he paused, gold eyes glazing over as he talked through the mind link. A moment later, someone knocked on our front doors. He pushed the necklace into my hand and wrapped my fingers around it.

“Go take care of whoever is at the door. And when you come back, I’ll have it on,” I said.

When he slipped out of the room, I walked into our bathroom and shut the door behind me. I clasped the necklace around my neck and slipped out of my clothes, lips curling into a smirk, standing completely naked on the marble floor.

Payback’s a bitch, Ares.

Ares wiggled the bathroom doorknob a few moments later. “Everything is taken care of. Come out. I’ve been waiting to see this on you for so damn long.”

My lips curled into a smile. “Sit and be patient, Ares. You’re going to love it on me.”

“Kitten, you know I don’t have patience.”

“Well, if you want to see it on me, you’ll sit, Alpha,” I said, hand wrapped around the knob. “Be a good boy for once.”