I grasped Ares’s arm and pulled him back. “Ares, stop.”
“He deserves to die, Aurora.”
“No,” I said softly. “He doesn’t.”
Maybe he did, but I didn’t want him to die. I hoped that, one day, we could be a happy family again even if it was just him, Ruffles, and me. But I wasn’t sure if that would ever happen.
After a few more moments of tugging on Ares’s shoulder, I finally brushed my fingers against his mark and felt him relax. Ares threw Dad to the ground, and Dad smacked against the concrete, hitting it with a loud thud. There were red lines on his skin from where the silver bars had burned him.
I grasped Ares’s wrist. “Come on. Let’s go.”
This was a mistake. My mistake. I had come here to tell him one thing, and all I had gotten was yelled at and put down by him. Maybe trading me to Ares was the best decision of his life too. Maybe I was and had always been a burden.
“You’re just going to leave me here, A?”
I turned on my heel, anger running through my veins. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. When you decide you want to be civil with me and actually have a conversation about what happened, then we can talk, but until then”—I paused and swallowed hard—“all I wanted to tell you was that your son is alive.”
Dad stared at me with wide eyes. “Jeremy …” he whispered. He took a shaky, deep breath, his eyes filling with tears. “Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known this? He could’ve saved us all.”
It was stupid and dumb and so damn weak of me, but I couldn’t stop my heart from breaking into a million tiny, jagged pieces. I loved Jeremy with all my heart, but Mom and Dad had always loved him just a little bit more than they loved me. They’d always looked to him first, always compared me to him.
Jeremy could’ve saved us.
Jeremy could’ve been our protector.
Why’re you so selfish to keep this to yourself?
Why can’t you be strong like him?
All their words—and their unspoken words—filled my mind until it felt like I was suffocating. Why did I care so much about Dad? Why had I ever even cried for Mom when she died? They hadn’t cared about me. It was so fucking obvious. During the hound attack, he had run off to protect her and left me there to fend for myself, knowing that I couldn’t shift.
Instead of responding to him, I walked up the stairs and out the doors with tears in my eyes. I’d be back to talk to him. I just needed time to process how unwanted he had made me feel.
The guards shut the prison doors behind us, but I could still hear the disgust in Dad’s voice, woven into every sentence, every word, every fucking syllable.
Ruffles walked beside me like my little sidekick, shaking her little booty back and forth in front of Ares and trying to get his attention.
When Ares finally caught up to me, he grabbed my hand and held it to his chest. “What do you mean, your brother is alive?”
I grasped his hand tighter. “I’m almost certain that he is.”
“How? I thought you said he was killed.”
Ares opened the pack house door for me and waited for Ruffles to hop into the house. But she just stared up at him, waving her tail back and forth.
“Move your ass, Ruffles,” Ares said, pushing her along.
She jumped into the house, looked up at him, and meowed.
“I’ll come lie down with you later.”
She purred and ran up the stairs, disappearing into the hallway.
I smiled weakly at her departing figure. Even when I was a mess and on the verge of tears, she could always bring a smile to my face.
Ares wrapped his arms around me from behind and placed a kiss on my neck. “She takes after you.”
“I’m not that sassy.”
Ares chuckled against me, and my stomach filled with butterflies. The chuckle sounded like home, like my future, like a promise that everything would get better with time even though I knew it wouldn’t.
“You’re both needy,” he said, walking up the stairs and guiding me into the kitchen. “For me.”
I playfully rolled my eyes and stared out the kitchen window at the dark forest. Jeremy was out there somewhere, and one day—even if it wasn’t anytime soon—I’d have to find him. It had been over ten years since I had seen him, and I wasn’t about to let him disappear from my life again.
Ares placed two frozen pretzels and a container of dipping cheese from the fridge into the microwave for us, and then he leaned against the counter, brushing his fingers against my chin and giving me that infamous smirk. “So, are you going to tell me, Kitten?”
I rested my forearms on the counter and frowned. “My brother is alive. The other day, when those two hounds were fighting each other, when that one stood in front of me and protected me … that was him …” I smiled, my heart clenching. “I just … I didn’t know it was him at the time. He smells different and he looks different and he …”
I wanted to tell him that Jeremy had the other half of the Malavite Stone—which must’ve been keeping him alive all these years—but I knew that as soon as Ares found out that Jeremy had it, he’d have every tracker in his pack trying to find him, so he could get it for Charolette.
So, I slumped against the counter and stalled, hoping that if I told Ares
