My body stayed tense the entire time as I tried to keep everything bottled up inside of me. I clutched on to the yellow bed sheets and let my tears fall when he kissed my folds. I bit my lip to hold back the cries, knowing that if I even let out one whimper, he’d stop.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out in pain. I wanted Jeremy back.
Ares maneuvered himself between my legs, letting my thighs rest on his shoulders. He peeled my folds apart with his fingers, his tongue moving back and forth against my clit. I let out another breath, this time a shaky one.
All I had left was Ares. Dad would hate me. Elijah would go back to his pack. Ares was my only family left, and he accepted me … he always did, even when I thought I was weak. More tears slid down my cheeks, and I sucked in a breath, trying so hard not to make a sound.
When my abdomen tightened and I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I let out a quiet whimper. Ares gazed up at me, but I gripped his hair to hold him down.
“Please, don’t stop, Ares. Please.” There was so much desperation in my voice. Hell, there was so much desperation inside of me. All I wanted to do was feel loved for a few moments. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted this.
“You’re crying, Kitten,” he said, words soft and almost inviting.
“Please …” My voice was quiet, and I stared down at him with tears in my eyes. “Please, Ares. You’re all I want right now.”
He gazed at me, brows furrowed together, and dipped his head between my legs again, reaching up to wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I curled my fingers into his hair, unable to stop the cries. “Goddess, I love you, Ares.”
Alpha Ares, the infamous god of war, was the most loving man I had ever known. From standing over Jeremy and me during the fight to letting me decide what to do with the stone … he was more than those rumors. He was mine, and I was his.
To care for.
To love.
To protect.
Ares kissed back up my body, his lips pressing hard to my skin. When he reached my lips, he placed a lingering kiss on them and then rolled onto his side, cradling my head in his arms and holding my body tightly to him. “Come here, Kitten.”
Chapter 50
Aurora
One week had passed since I’d killed Jeremy. There hadn’t been another hound attack, and the Malavite Stone had stayed where I put it—locked in my nightstand. Everything had returned back to as normal as it could get.
But I needed to do a couple things, including talk to Dad, before I could say anything was normal. To say that I was nervous to see him was the understatement of the damn century. Nightmares filled with Jeremy’s dull and dead eyes had haunted my dreams and kept me up every night.
And since last night hadn’t been any different, I hopped out of bed at five a.m., kissed Ares on the forehead, and decided that I would get it out of the way and talk to Dad. He hadn’t asked to see me or to be let out of the cage either. But Ares went down there every day to make sure he was being fed well and had everything he needed.
When I reached the prison doors, the guards nodded to me and parted. I took a deep breath, walked down the creaky wooden stairs, and watched sunlight flood in from above.
Dad slept against the stone wall instead of on the mattress I’d made some of the guards bring down earlier this week. I stood there for a good ten minutes, just staring at him and wondering what the hell I was going to say to my father.
“Dad,” I whispered, stepping away from the silver bars.
He grumbled to himself and moved around to get into a more comfortable position.
“Dad, it’s me, Aurora.”
After blinking his eyes open, he clenched his jaw. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you,” I said.
“After a week, you finally want to see me?” He leaned against the wall and shook his head at me. “You should’ve come see me right after you killed your brother.” His words sounded so vile, so hateful, so full of grief.
I pressed my lips together. I had taken everything away from him … his mate and his son.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said, trying so hard to keep my voice steady. “He’d begged me to do it, so the hounds couldn’t.”
“Elijah had the damn courage to come down here, and you didn’t.” His jaw twitched. “And that, Aurora, is the reason your mother didn’t want you to be alpha. You don’t have the strength to deal with half the shit it takes to lead a pack.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the tears well up in my eyes. Had I done this to him? Had I made him so hateful and so angry with me that he thought I didn’t deserve to lead?
He stood to his feet and snatched some fresh bread from the only table inside the cell with him. “At first, I thought that Ares wasn’t a good fit for you. But now, I see that you two are perfect for each other. You don’t care who you hurt or what you take from people. You just do it without a single care in the world.”
Something inside of me snapped. He could talk about me all he wanted, but he couldn’t continue to disrespect Ares when he didn’t have the first clue as to who he truly was.
I stepped closer to the silver bars, jaw clenched. “You want to know what?”
Dad looked over, surprised I had raised my voice to him, but I didn’t care anymore.
My whole life, I had grown up in fear of Ares’s pack
