My brows furrowed, eyes widening. “Ares is alive?” I asked in disbelief. He nodded his head, and I gave Yara’s hand to Mr. Barrett. “Please, watch them for a bit.”
“Of course.” He grabbed Yara’s hand, smiled down at the kids, and nudged me toward the training field. “Hurry, before he leaves. Ares is preparing to hunt with his warriors.”
I hurried through the forest, following my mate’s hazelnut scent.
“Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.”
My wolf paced around restlessly inside of me. There was a trail of blood leading me toward the field. Ares’s blood. My chest tightened, throat closing up, and I started sprinting. I needed to get to my mate, needed to make sure he was okay.
And when I turned the corner, I saw him standing in the middle of a group of warriors. There were open and untreated wounds all over his tense and bloodied back.
“Ares,” I whispered ever so softly.
He turned his head and gazed at me, eyes a raging gold. “Kitten.”
Chapter 42
Aurora
Ares wrapped his arms around me, pulled me to his chest, and spun me. “I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d fucking lost you,” he whispered against my neck, his breath warming my mark and making it tingle.
I pulled him closer to me and breathed in his hazelnut scent that always seemed to help me relax. Ares was safe and not another victim of the hounds. I could sleep well tonight.
“Call all the trackers you have after me home. They’re not safe out there.” I pulled away from him slightly and stared down at all the open wounds he hadn’t healed yet.
Shredded red chunks of flesh jutted out from a gash in his thigh as a thick layer of blood ran down his leg. My eyes widened slightly, and I shook my head. It had been hours since I last heard his howl … and he hadn’t had anyone treat him yet?
“We killed all the hounds, Aurora.” He brushed his fingers against my cheek as if he didn’t even feel the pain. “We’re safe.”
“We’re not safe.” I pressed my lips together. “There are still more of them out there. Tony is out there too.”
And I was going to kill that piece of shit when I found him.
Ares grasped my hands and ran his index finger over my knuckles. “Then, we’ll go find them. Right now. Get rid of them for good, for everything that they’ve done to us.”
“We can’t, Ares,” I said.
But I didn’t think leaving was his intention at all. If it were, he would’ve been storming toward the property edges, shouting at his warriors to prepare. Instead, everything in him seemed to soften.
He just stared at me with wavering human-brown to wolf-gold eyes, searching my face, as if he couldn’t believe that I was standing right in front of him. “Goddess, Aurora,” he whispered, pushing a strand of hair from my face. “I-I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you were dead.”
I tried my hardest to smile, but I couldn’t get myself to do it.
Ares had refused to heal his wounds, just so he could spend more time trying to find me. I appreciated the commitment he had to me, but I didn’t like how he had refused to help himself. It hurt to know that my mate would rather bleed to death than to heal himself and be strong. What would’ve happened to him if I had died out there?
After grabbing his hand in mine to show him that I was really here, I gazed at all the other warriors. “No more fighting today. Call everyone back home. Nobody leaves the property, and nobody enters it without permission.”
The warriors glanced at Ares and waited for orders. I expected Ares to say something, but he just continued to stare at me in disbelief, as if he didn’t even know there were others around.
Ares and Mars had always been in control and led with such power and authority. Seeing him lost for words and so scared didn’t sit right with me.
Marcel cleared his throat and stepped forward. “You heard our luna. Don’t make her say it again.”
When the warriors started to disperse, I nodded to Marcel and reminded myself to thank him later. I pulled Ares toward the hospital, where I would make sure the doctors healed him this time. But on our entire way there, I could hear his thoughts racing through his mind, his wolf begging him to tell me that he was okay and that all he wanted was to spend time with me.
Despite his silent pleas to take me home, I continued through the woods until Ares and I sat in a cold, bleak hospital room. He lay back in the bed and held my hand tightly, refusing to let go, even when a woman knocked on the wooden door.
Dressed in a long white coat, the doctor walked into the room with utensils and a bottle of clear gel. “We have been trying to get him to come in all morning,” she said, pulling up a chair next to his bed.
“All morning?” I asked, more to myself than to her.
It was true. Ares didn’t take care of himself when someone he loved was hurting. Charolette had mentioned it before, but we had been in the middle of something, and I hadn’t had a chance to really think about it. But now, it was right here, smacking me in the damn face.
My gaze drifted from his face tensed in pain to his deep thigh wounds, and my heart ached. Ares had hurt himself before, and this was another form of self-harm.
After the doctor cleaned the wounds, she put some gel right on his raw flesh. “This will help him heal. It’s a special gel for werewolves.” She stitched every one of his wounds until they were closed. “Time to get you cleaned off, Alpha, so you’re not dirty for your mate.”
Ares
