A tear raced down my cheek, but I quickly pushed it away. I couldn’t cry. Ares thought I was strong, so I would be strong.
When the pack house came into view, I took a deep breath and walked toward the backyard. I begged myself to be restrained, but a whimper clawed its way up my throat and out of my mouth.
Ares had come here with thirty wolves, and at least half of them were lying in their own blood. The majority of Mom’s wolves had been killed, but I couldn’t recognize most of them. With faces torn to pieces and all this gore, it was hard to identify anyone.
“Ares,” I said, voice shaky through the quiet forest. “Ares …”
Nobody answered.
I stared up at the moon and wondered why the Moon Goddess had allowed something this horrific to happen again. Why hadn’t she helped us? Where was she?
Walking through the bodies, I touched each one and tried to find him. But nobody felt the same as he did. Nobody looked the same as he did. Nobody had the same sweet hazelnut scent as he did. Or maybe I just couldn’t spot him with bones jutting out of his ripped flesh.
After walking through everyone, the last person I found was Mom. I doubled over, tears falling from my eyes. With her highlighted hair and that scar running down her ear, she was still distinguishable … but I felt like the shittiest daughter to have ever lived.
Though she had made me feel like shit, I knew that all she’d wanted was for this pack to survive. She had given me book after book to study to become a smarter alpha, had tried to train me to be strong, and I really believed that she’d loved me at some point—even if it was just a bit.
And now, I would never see her again.
After closing her dull eyes, I stood up, determined to find my mate. Maybe he was still alive.
A twig snapped, and I whipped my head toward it.
My old neighbor’s four-year old child, Yara, stared at me from behind a big oak tree. Dressed in a pink polka-dot onesie, she sprinted toward me with tears streaming down her face. “Alpha Aurora!” When she reached me, she jumped into my arms. “Alpha Aurora, my daddy is missing. I-I can’t find anyone.”
My heart shattered, and I held her tightly in my arms. “I …” What could I even say to her? “I … don’t know where your father is. Let’s try to go find any others,” I whispered, hoping to keep my voice steady.
Since the last hound attack, I’d created underground shelters for pups to hide and to stay safe in while the warriors fought outside. They were all connected by a series of tunnels that led to a larger underground shelter under the pack house.
Covering Yara’s eyes so she wouldn’t see any more of this terror, I walked toward the pack house. I set her down, shut the sliding door, and locked it. She sniffled and wiped her snot with the back of her hand.
We walked down the stairs to the basement. After over a decade of not using these shelters, Mom had decided to turn off all the electricity down here despite me telling her not to. I lit a torch and grabbed Yara’s hand.
We hurried through room after room, finding no pups inside any of them. My chest tightened as we approached the last three rooms. If there were no pups, that would mean that they were all dead.
First room … nobody.
Second room … nobody.
I opened the third room and peered into the darkness. Five sets of eyes stared up at me from the corner.
I crouched down to their level. “It’s okay,” I said, reaching out my arms. “You’re safe. Everything is going to be okay. It’s Aurora.”
The pups ran into my arms, clung on to my legs, and grasped my fingers as we walked back to the pack house. I didn’t know if everything was going to really be okay, and I definitely didn’t know if we were safe, but I knew that I would protect them with my life.
I ushered the pups up the steps and instructed them to sit on the couch as I searched the house for all the silver knives I could find. I stuffed them into a backpack, grabbed a pair of car keys from the counter, handed each pup a bag of chips I’d kept for Ruffles in the pantry, and hurried to put them into Mom’s old SUV—hoping the damn thing had enough gas to get us the hell off this property.
After plunging the key into the slot, I thanked the Moon Goddess that the gas tank was full. I threw the car in reverse and sped toward Ares’s pack.
When I pulled onto Ares’s property, the early morning sun was rising just over the horizon. The kids had only fallen asleep for a couple hours last night and had woken up, hungry and full of questions about their parents that I didn’t have the strength to answer, but I hadn’t stopped driving. If we’d stopped and the hounds spotted us, I had known that I wouldn’t be able to protect them.
I glanced at them through the rearview mirror. “This is where we’ll be staying from now on. We’ll be safe here.”
Some of Ares’s warriors watched the car through the woods. I made eye contact with one of them, and he immediately sprinted toward the pack house. All I wanted was to find Ares, alive and well.
I parked in the driveway and tugged each and every one of the six pups out of the car. They grasped each other’s hands and followed me in a line, like ducklings following their mother.
Mr. Barrett jogged up to me from his house. “Aurora.” He sighed deeply through his nose. “I’m
