“My mate didn’t want me to bring you … but I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
She hopped onto the driver’s seat, placed her two paws on the steering wheel, and stared at the scene in front of us with a single chip in her mouth.
My gaze fell on Ares, who was walking into the woods alone while the woman just stood on the two yellow lines in the middle of the road. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans. Moon Goddess, he shouldn’t be going out there. He should be in here, with me, where he would be safe.
After a few minutes, Ares emerged with a young pup on his hip. The pup was crying, his hair disheveled. The woman fell to her knees and reached up for the boy, unable to hold back her emotions. Ares placed the boy in her arms.
Ruffles glanced over at me and meowed.
Ares gave the woman a breathtaking smile and handed her the child.
My eyes widened slightly, and I nodded my head to Ruffles. “I know, girl. I know.”
She meowed again and swatted my knee. I looked down at her to see her staring at my passenger window. And just as I looked over, something smashed into the side of the car, the glass shattering all over my lap.
I screamed and scurried away from the window, my heart hammering inside my chest. Two black eyes of a hound stared right at me as it sprinted straight for the passenger door again.
A vicious growl exited Ares’s throat and echoed throughout the entire forest. He shifted midair into his wolf and sprinted toward the car like his life depended on it. The hound hit the side of the car again, blood-colored foam oozing from his mouth. He thrust his snout into the broken window, trying to latch his teeth into my shoulder.
More hounds appeared through the forest, trapping Ares. My heart pounded in my chest, and I threw myself over Ruffles to save her life, like I wish I had done with Jeremy. But Ruffles had other plans.
She hissed, jumped on my shoulder, and swatted at the hound with both paws, tearing into his skin. It wasn’t hard but was enough to be annoying. Her tail stood straight up, and she caught him in the eye. Thrashing back and forth, the hound howled.
Goddess, I wished I could shift, so I could kill him instantly. The rogue shoved himself further into the car, saliva dripping from every one of his teeth. I glanced back at Ares, hoping that he, the woman, and her son were okay. But what I saw instead were two hounds lying dead in the middle of the street and Ares surrounded by four more.
Rain beat down diagonally around him, fog sitting heavily in the air.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.
I felt useless. Completely useless. My mate was fighting the monsters—the same ones I had dedicated my life to finding a way to eradicate—while I just sat in the car, trying to protect myself and Ruffles from being ripped to shreds.
This was how Jeremy had been murdered. Surrounded by four wolves. In the pouring rain. Unable to escape. Torn to shreds. The leader of that hound group had killed him almost instantly with a look of pleasure on his face.
I tossed Ruffles to the driver’s seat and scooted into the seat myself, kicking the wolf’s snout with my heel. He sunk his canines into my foot. I fumbled with my backpack, grabbed the silver knife inside the bag—because silver was the Achilles heel for wolves, and shoved it right into his mouth.
The blade sliced through the back of his neck, and he released my foot, shaking his head from side to side. I kicked him again, crawled over to my seat, wrapped my hand around his neck, and snapped it.
When I looked back at Ares, he was pulling a hound’s throat from his neck, and the other three were lying dead on the cement with their comrades. Ares’s teeth dripped with blood. He gazed over at me with the darkest golden eyes that I had ever seen and growled lowly.
I lured Ruffles back into my backpack with the bag of chips before he had a chance to notice her and cursed to myself for ever coming with Ares. We hadn’t even made it a couple hours before shit happened.
Ares gazed around the forest twice and shifted into his human. Blood gushed out of a bite mark in his chest. He hurried over to the car, opened his door, pulled out a phone that he had gotten from somewhere, and glared at me.
“Liam. Hounds. North Sanguine Wilds. Get here now.” He threw his phone onto the seat and growled at me. “What was that?”
My eyes widened, and I pushed my backpack into the backseat. “What do you mean?”
“He attacked you.”
“Yeah, and they attacked you.” I pressed my lips together, unable to hold back my rage. “Why the fuck are you angry with me for your stupid-ass decisions? I told you not to go out there.”
“You didn’t shift.” He clenched the door handle in his fist, muscles flexing. Beads of blood rolled down his naked and tensed abdomen. “You could’ve gotten killed because you didn’t shift, Aurora.”
I wanted to argue with him, but nothing came out. How was I supposed to tell my mate—one of the strongest alphas of our time—that I couldn’t shift? That I wasn’t the alpha he thought I was. That I was useless to Mom and that I’d be useless to him too.
My wolf whimpered at the thought. Mate won’t want us if we tell him. Nobody will want us. We can barely even protect ourselves.
She disappeared in the back of my mind, and I wrapped my arms around myself. Ruffles would want us. She would always want us. But my mate might not.
I’d become a lone wolf. Maybe he’d feed me
