Chapter 30

AURORA

“You have one last chance, Charlotte. Take the fucking stone,”

Marcel said to Charolette before practice later that day.

They stood off to the side, the striking fall wind whipping their long hair into their faces.

Charlotte scowled at Marcel and bared her blunt canines. “I’ve already made up my mind. Stop trying to force me to do something that I don’t want to do.” She moved closer to him and poked a finger into his chest.

“You’re supposed to be my mate and support me.”

Marcel crossed his arms. “I’m supposed to keep you alive.”

Snapping my eyes from side to side, I continued to watch until Ares walked over to me with a sweat-soaked shirt. After our chat with Vulcan, he had taken a run to clear his mind. Though, by the looks of it, he just looked angrier.

“Why are they always fucking fighting?” he asked me.

Not wanting him to find out about Marcel and Charolette being mates, I shrugged my shoulders and ushered him to the group of warriors stretching in the middle of the field. “Probably about Marcel being a dick or something. You know how he is …”

Ares stopped mid-field and looked me up and down. “You’re not ready for practice.”

I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and scrunched the dry grass between my toes. “I’m going to see my dad. I need to talk to him.” I zipped my jacket up a bit further, the trees blowing another harsh wind in our

direction. “When I’m finished, I’ll be back to train. I promise.” “You better be,” Ares said.

After kissing him goodbye and shoving on some sandals, I swallowed my pride, my hurt, my anger, and my fear, and walked to the prison. My stomach tightened to the point that I thought I’d puke. I didn’t know what to say to Dad or how to get him to talk to me about the War of the Lycans. He barely wanted to talk to me about the damn weather now or how the food was here.

Approaching the two prison guards, I clasped my hands together.

“How’s my father?”

They looked at each other and then back at me.

“Angry. Won’t eat. Same old, same old.”

Annoyed that he still hadn’t eaten, I opened the door and stepped inside the dungeon. The stairs creaked as I walked down them. Lights flickering from above illuminated the many cobwebs that decorated the ceiling. When I made it to the bottom, the door shut behind me with a thud.

Dad sat in the same cell with his back against the stone wall, a scowl on his face and tightly clenched fists. I stepped in front of the bars and eyed the unlocked cell, dumbfounded as to why he hadn’t left yet. Nothing stopped him from escaping without telling me goodbye.

Not knowing how to start a conversation with him, I asked, “Why haven’t you left yet?”

He didn’t have to live here in misery if he didn’t want to.

When he didn’t answer me, I pushed more to try to get a rise out of him. I needed something from him. It had been forever since I’d heard his voice, the same voice that used to sing me to sleep every night when I was a baby.

“The Luna Ceremony is in a few days,” I said, hoping to see any emotion cross his face.

I hoped for happiness, but there wasn’t any. It hurt me beyond words because I wasn’t his little girl anymore. I wasn’t the person he had sung to or played with or even cared about. I was nothing to him, and my father would never look at me the same way ever again.

“I would like you to be there.”

“No.”

I glanced down at my feet as a lump formed in my throat. All I wanted was for him to be happy again. He didn’t have to stay here. He could go back home, and join another pack. Some alpha would take him in because he had a vast knowledge of war from his family history. He could start a whole new life.

“I don’t want to see you mated to that fiend. I don’t want to see you at all.”

My chest tightened. From the moment he’d let Mom trade me for their safety, he had made it clear that he didn’t want me. Yet, stupid me, I kept coming back like a lost dog, hoping he’d change his mind, wishing he’d be the father he always had been to Jeremy, wanting things to switch back to my childhood for just one more moment.

Hell, if he smiled at me again, I’d savor the memory for my entire life.

But he wouldn’t, and I needed to get that through my head. My father despised me.

Not wanting him to see how weak I was, I crossed my arms and turned my back to him. “I’m going to Syncome Mountains with Ares, Alpha Vulcan, and some other warriors in a few days. More hounds have been attacking our pack. We need information about how to stop them.”

“Syncome Mountains?” Dad asked, rustling with something behind me. I glanced back to see him shuffling to his feet but still keeping a distance from me. “Syncome Mountains are where you go to die.”

Being the pissy daughter that he’d made me, I almost asked if he wanted to come. But I quickly scolded myself for thinking such thoughts. I was turning into more of a monster than I already had been, thinking things only Ares—the god of war—would.

“Thanks for having faith in us,” I said harshly, eyeing the bloodstained cement floor. Tears threatened to well up in my eyes. I hated feeling like such a loser; I hated it so much. “Maybe going to Syncome Mountains would be best for us. I’d be out of your hair once and for all, like you’ve always wanted.”

Dad growled and stepped toward me. “I’m telling you that because I don’t want you to die, Aurora. Those lands are cursed. An entire pack turned into stone three days after they went there. You have to be careful.”

I bit my tongue to hold back the pain of my rights. Dad had said he didn’t want me to die, but if I’d died all those years ago instead of Jeremy if it were me who had gotten ripped to shreds, his life would’ve been so much better. He would have had a son who could follow in his footsteps to become the most powerful warrior wolf on the entire planet, a force to be reckoned with.

Instead, he got me—Aurora, a woman who could barely shift, mated to Ares, the most powerful alpha on the entire planet.

“Any tips on how to stay alive?” I asked dryly, turning toward the stairs.

Originally, I had come down here for closure. Yet somehow, he had only managed to make me feel worse. Family wasn’t supposed to hate you and not care about you. They were supposed to support you, no matter what. I guessed I’d gotten the short end of the stick in that department.

“Any tips?” He laughed emptily. “Don’t go.”

Balling my hands into tight fists, I stormed to the steps. Fuck this. I shouldn’t have ever even come down here. I just wanted to have family who still loved me, who supported me, but I didn’t have shit. All I had was a moody father and a dead mother.

“Aurora, wait.”

I stopped on the stairs, knuckles turning white around the dry wooden railing.

“My ancestors were the wolves turned into stone. Only my great-great-grandmother survived. She was just a child and was taken in by another pack. They had all gone out to Syncome Mountains to fight hounds and never come back. I don’t …” He paused, voice softening. “I don’t want that happening to you.”

Lips parting, I wanted to turn around. I wanted to run into his arms for saying the bare minimum, for telling me that he didn’t want me to die. But I didn’t let my emotions control me. I stood my ground on those stairs and didn’t look back.

“You’re going to go whether or not I tell you to, but if you don’t listen to me and you do go, make sure you never let your guard down. There are fucked-up things on those mountains that I don’t even believe I saw for

myself when I visited the outskirts years back.”

“Like what?” I asked, staring at the cobblestone step.

“Dark magic. Hellish zombies. Only things witnessed in your worst nightmares.”

I tilted my head to the side and glanced back to see an expression on Dad’s face that told me he feared Syncome Mountains more than he ever feared Ares and his wrath.

He grasped the silver bars and swallowed hard, brows furrowed. “Once you go there, you’ll wish you never had.”