My eyes widened.
Love? I loved Mars?
I hadn’t even known that I had fallen so hard for such a vicious, daunting man. Yet here I was, telling him that I loved him and watching his beautiful golden wolf eyes shift through a thousand shades until they melted into his chocolate browns.
Love, he mouthed. He grabbed my hands, held them to his chest, and grinned down at me with the same boyish smile I had seen in that picture he had taken with his mother.
“I have to go, Mars.” I kissed him again, my eyes closing softly, and smiled. “I’ll be back in an hour. If you need me, text me.”
Mars nodded his head, eyes in a daze, as if he was still thinking about how I loved him, how I wanted to be with him forever, how I never wanted to let him go, and how he’d always be mine.
I gazed over his shoulder, smiling at Mr. Barrett and Charolette. “I have to go,” I said to them. “Thank you so much for dinner. Hopefully, next time, I can stay for dessert.”
Someone laid on the car horn outside, and Charolette got up from her seat.
“That’s Marcel, isn’t it? Goddess, it sounds like that car is shrieking.” She hooked her arm in mine. “I’ll walk you out.”
After saying my good-byes, she pulled me down the stairs. I glanced back at Mars, who had sat down at the table and was grinning down at his cheesecake. And in that moment, I knew that I really was in love with that man.
It hadn’t just been said in the heat of the moment. It was real.
Stupid, young love. Real stupid, young love.
Charolette pulled me outside and gave Marcel the finger from the door. I hurried to his car and hopped into it, my mind still buzzing with thoughts of my Mars and how three silly little words meant the world to him.
Marcel stared at me and then at Charolette and clenched his jaw. “You had dinner with them?” He pressed on the gas, and the car lurched forward. “Liam is there, isn’t he?” he asked, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Fucking idiot,” Marcel said under his breath and then stepped on the gas harder, heading toward the pack exit.
It seemed like someone was jealous. And this time, it wasn’t Ares.
Chapter 33
Aurora
The Pink Moon Tavern was relatively empty tonight, only a few high schoolers sipping on milkshakes out front. Elijah sat in a turquoise booth in the back, drinking a Moscow mule. While his eyes were still bruised, the swelling had disappeared completely, and most of his wounds had healed already.
Gaze traveling from me to Marcel, Elijah raised a brow at me in question.
“It was the only way Ares would let me come,” I said, sliding into the booth. “What did the hound look like?” I asked, foregoing the chitchat. Elijah’s gaze lingered on Marcel for a moment longer, and I waved a hand to dismiss Marcel. “Don’t worry about him.”
Elijah turned back to me. “Black hair and broad.”
“Black hair? He was in his human form?” I asked, eyes widening.
It was a known fact that hounds didn’t—or couldn’t—shift from werewolf to human. They were thought to be stuck as animals forever, which made them extremely dangerous.
“Yes,” Elijah said. “My warrior heard Tony and the hound mention the stone several times.”
Marcel slammed his hand against the wooden table. “That fucking prick knows where the stone is?” he asked.
Elijah’s mule sloshed over the side of his cup and spilled.
So much for emotionless reactions. I wiped a napkin over the spilled drink.
Elijah shook his head. “I don’t know if he knows where it is, but he has information. My warrior said they seemed friendly.”
“How could Tony do this? He knew exactly how Ares would react to you having information on the stone.” I pressed my lips together and shook my head in disbelief.
Tony and I had spent so many nights together, and he’d never acted like this … but maybe he was always an asshole, always out to hurt, always out for power.
“We need a plan,” Elijah said.
“A plan?” Marcel growled. “Why don’t we go to your fucking mother’s house and torture the son-of-a-bitch until he tells us where that stone is?”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, feeling as I thought Ares would in this situation. Cruel, violent, and bloodthirsty as the darkness begged for me to let it in. Mars wanted the stone, but Ares … he wanted the person who had it to hurt.
Once he found out that Tony had information on it, he would do exactly as Marcel had suggested—run on Mom’s pack, capture Tony, and torture him.
No. Questions. Asked.
The thought should’ve terrified me, but it didn’t. If Tony had any sort of information on the stone and hadn’t told me—after watching me grow up in pain—he deserved to get punched more than a few times. And as for my asshole mother, who had traded me—her only heir—because she didn’t think I was good enough while the strongest alpha in the world did, I didn’t care what happened to her either. If she didn’t care about me, why should I care about her?
Elijah sipped his drink. “Tony would rather die than tell Ares anything.”
It was true. Tony had a tolerance for pain, both physical and emotional. Every time I had seen him fight—besides the time Ares had raided our pack—he was terrifying. During the first hound attack when we had still been young wolves, he had torn out so many throats and then swallowed them like a fucking psychopath. I didn’t put it past him to have something up his sleeve, so he could kill Ares and be claimed the most ruthless man alive.
“I will tell Ares tonight,” I said to Elijah. “We will run on my mother’s pack early tomorrow morning. I will talk to
