Aurora gazed at me, the moonlight bouncing off her fur. “Say something, please,” she said, voice so fragile and so desperate in my mind.
All I wanted was to kill everyone who had made her feel as if she wasn’t enough because of this disability.
I walked over and brushed my snout against hers. I never expected that this would be the first moment that I saw her wolf, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. My mate was strong.
When I curled my neck around hers and licked her mark, she relaxed. She lifted her snout to the moon and let out a harmonic howl, one that I already loved.
Then, she turned to me and … smiled. “Run with me, Alpha.”
She turned on her heel and started through the forest, her tail swaying back and forth. Pushing herself hard, she disappeared behind the trees. I lifted my nose to the air, howling deep into the night, and followed her lemony scent through the forest.
Aurora was mine, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
“So, Aurora can outrun the great and powerful Alpha Ares?” she taunted through our mind link. She knew that name both infuriated me and awoken the beast, yet she called for him anyway.
I couldn’t see her, but her perfume was smothering me. Ares stirred inside me, wanting to run faster, to chase our mate, to put her in her place—right by our side. But … I hadn’t given him complete control since he ran after her.
After he had marked her in the prison and chased her, I’d reined him in. Never letting him control me like that again—at least, not around Aurora. He wanted her so bad, it hurt, but when she finally found out what he was truly capable of … I didn’t know if she would run away from us for good.
The rumors that he’d killed entire packs, burned anything to the ground, slaughtered for power were all true, and those tales didn’t even do him justice. Everyone feared Ares, but they didn’t know that his want for power was because he never wanted me to feel helpless again.
I pushed myself harder, seeing her tail wagging only a few yards ahead of me. Her scent intensified, and her kittenish threats were riling Ares up.
“Alpha Ares,” she said. “So strong, so powerful, so slow.”
He growled inside of me and made me run faster toward our mate. I caught her tail between my teeth, tugged on it ever so gently, and leaped on her. We tumbled on the ground, somersaulting a few times over the pine-covered forest floor.
She struggled under me, playfully swatting me with her paw. I pinned her to the ground, her body easy to control … but I knew she wanted it that way. If she were really fighting back, I was sure she’d have had me on my ass by now.
I stuck my nose into the crook of her neck—right where Ares’s mark was—and brushed my canines against the spot, pressing them into her, just not enough to break through her flesh. For a moment, she tensed and then shuddered in delight. She stopped struggling under me and sighed deeply through her nose. Her eyes glistened under the moonlight, like two stars under a new moon.
Gazing down at Ares’s mark, I saw that while she had been terrified of Ares earlier, she wasn’t afraid anymore. She trusted us not to hurt her, and we would never hurt her again. I would make sure of it.
She howled to the sky, and I smiled down at my mate. This was the moment I had dreamed of since I was a child. All I wanted was my mate, to play with her, to laugh with her, to tease her … but I didn’t know when I would ever get to experience this again.
Earlier today, she had bared her entire soul to me, shown me all of her insecurities, let me feel how she did during her shifts so I could understand her. And now, it had to be my turn. I had to show her mine.
Sooner or later, she’d find out about all of the secrets that I had been hiding from the world. Secrets about Mom. Secrets about Charolette. Secrets about—I gazed down at my scarred front legs—myself.
All I wanted was to be enough for her before I told her. I wanted to make sure she knew how much she really meant to me. I hoped that I could show her that because … I didn’t want this feeling to ever go away. I felt like I was walking on the clouds with the Moon Goddess herself, staring down at utter perfection.
She caught me in a moment of adoration and turned us over, pinning me to the ground. She stared down at my neck, her hungry eyes taking in the spot that she would mark.
I turned my head to the side, giving her permission. “Do it, Aurora.”
I closed my eyes and smiled. I wanted to be hers.
White teeth glistening, she drew her tongue against them. All I could imagine was her claiming me, reassuring me that I would never be alone, that she would never leave me, that I was hers and only hers.
One second passed, then two, and then her teeth were brushing against my neck.
Goddess, I was ready to be hers.
Suddenly, she pulled away from me, blue and gold specks shimmering in her eyes, and stood up. After a bit of watching her fight with her wolf, she turned back to me, lifted her snout to the moon, and said, “Shift,” through our mind link.
It wasn’t a question. It
