Chapter 28
AURORA
“Tomorrow, I will talk to Elijah about the stone,” I said after
breakfast.
“About putting it inside of you,” Mars clarified. “Maybe …”
Did I want to use it? Maybe. Would I rather have Charolette use it? Definitely.
Charlotte didn’t want it though. She didn’t want to be a burden on anyone, thought she didn’t deserve this life, and believed her mom had committed suicide because of her. Just like Ares and Mars, Charlotte had grown up living in a harsh reality. She deserved the stone more than I did, but nobody could force her to take it.
“Soon,” Mars suddenly demanded. A darkness flashed through his eyes, and he thrust his shoulders back ripped open the pack house’s front doors, and stormed in. Ares was back in control, about to tear me to shreds for not agreeing. “You’ll get it done soon because I’m not letting Fenris fucking touch you.”
I blew a breath through my nose and gently placed my fingers on his abdomen. “Soon,” I reiterated, hoping it’d calm him down enough for him to think straight.
Alpha Vulcan was here to talk with Ares about his information on the necromancer.
Marcel walked out of Ares’s office, arms crossed over his chest and white hair on his face. “About damn time you showed up. Vulcan has been waiting for fifteen minutes.” He glanced down at my neck and smirked.
“Like the new scar, Princess.”
My ruthless god of war growled low and stormed past Marcel and into his office. I patted Marcel on the chest, thanking him, and followed Ares into the grand room.
With one ankle kicked up on his knee, gelled dark red hair, and sleeves rolled up his forearms, Alpha Vulcan sat in one of the plush red velvet chairs. “Two marks?” Vulcan asked, eyeing my neck.
With his lips parted slightly, I saw the canines in his mouth and noticed how much smaller they were compared to Ares’s.
Ares had the largest teeth I had ever seen on a wolf—good for ripping an enemy to shreds and warning other suitors away from his mate. For another wolf to try to claim me, those teeth promised them death.
“Don’t you think two marks is a bit much?” Vulcan asked.
To Vulcan, two marks from Ares probably looked greedy because not many people knew about his second personality that seemed to shine around me. It was the best-kept secret and one that I wished more people knew about. Ares and Mars weren’t bad guys like the world thought Ares to be.
“No, they’re not too much,” Ares said, keeping his gaze surprisingly steady on me.
He was controlling himself—at least, trying to control himself. But these marks were driving him crazy. I could see it in his eyes. Something had changed him last night. Maybe it was the talk with his dad or the nightmare or having Mars mark me, but he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off me.
After swiping his tongue across his saliva-covered canines, Ares growled under his breath and sat, turning his attention to Vulcan. “What’d you find out about the necromancer?”
Vulcan rubbed his forehead with his thumb and pointer finger and sighed through his mouth. “She’s from the Gargan family, the only magic
family who survived the War of the Lycans.” My eyes widened slightly.
Fought between werewolves and hounds, the War of the Lycans was far more deadly and savage than anyone alive could ever even imagine. Some records stated that gods and goddesses had taken a role in the war and that it was divine by nature. But not many people believed that or even cared, as our Moon Goddess hadn’t taken any part in it.
My history teacher had described the war in three words: magic, ruin, and slaughter. It’d proven to be more fatal and dangerous than a nuclear war or the end of the world. Yet nobody knew how it’d ended or how it had begun.
Some speculated the end had resulted from an entire pack mysteriously turning to stone. Rumor had it that every warrior in that pack had been preserved by the gods, each in their fighting stance—some lying on the ground, others about to be attacked by the unseen beasts.
Nobody knew how or why or if someone had just sculpted replicas of their bodies for their pack to mourn. Some packs believed the former, others the latter. Dad, whose ancestors had won arduous battles against the hounds, had always told me that those people had been real and turned to stone. But packs like Vulcan’s didn’t believe that. Hell, it was hard for me to believe it too.
Maybe I could ask Dad about it later. It’d be a chance to visit him to patch our relationship up or to just tell him to leave if he didn’t want to stay here anymore.
“She lives in the south, near Syncome Mountains,” Vulcan continued.
“Near Syncome Mountains?” I asked. “That place is a breeding ground for hounds. They kill anything that lives on the land—the rodents, the birds, the trees. It’s the underworld on earth. How does she live there?”
Vulcan grimaced and shrugged. “Not sure. That’s all the information I could get.”
After pondering for a few moments, I nodded in response. It didn’t matter. I had to be okay with running into hounds. I had to protect my mate, my pack, and myself. If we didn’t end this now, the hounds would eventually come to us.
“We have to go,” I said.