Come Here, Kitten (God of War Book 1), стр. 22

After creeping down the hallway and finding only spare rooms and a bathroom, I opened the door to a smaller room with yellow curtains and three empty bags of chips lying on the floor. I cocked an eyebrow and entered the room, closing the door behind me.

Ruffles lay on the bed, on her back. Eyes closed in pure delight. Whiskers coated in chip dust. Tail curled.

“Ruffles!” I whisper-yelled at her.

She opened one eye, annoyed that I’d woken her up, and meowed.

“What’re you doing in here? And how’d you open all of those bags of chips?” I picked up the bags and threw them in the garbage. “What if Ares had found you?”

She meowed again.

I plucked her off of the bed. “Don’t give me that.”

Breath smelling of salt, she didn’t even protest when I moved her. I hurried down the hall to Ares’s bedroom. It wasn’t safe to keep her in the bedroom in case he found out about her, but at least I would know where she was.

Moon Goddess only knew what kind of contraptions and people roamed around Ares’s pack house. I expected to run into a couple torture devices and a few warriors who liked to inflict pain on others.

When I walked into the room, someone shouted from downstairs for me.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I told Ruffles not to escape again and that I’d find her a better place to sleep tonight. Then, I slammed the door, leaving her inside the room.

I hurried down the hall, expecting to see Ares waiting for me, but Liam stood at the foot of the stairs. Instead of saying anything, he just nodded his head and turned toward the back door. After taking a deep breath and preparing myself for the worst, I followed him outside.

The sun blazed overhead, making me break out into a sweat. We walked through the forest until we reached a small lake. People were gathered around, talking to each other and grilling hot dogs on a wild and blazing fire.

In the midst of the pack, I stopped and glanced around, trying to figure out how so many people lived here. There must’ve been thousands of people in Ares’s pack, all under his rule and control. I pressed my lips together. And they didn’t even seem like they had such a bad life.

I’d assumed he treated his people like shit, forced them to do his dirty work. I’d expected cruelty, pain, fear from his pack members. Not … this. Yet no matter how friendly they looked, nobody dared to start a conversation with me. It seemed like they didn’t like outsiders that much.

When I turned to ask Liam where Ares was, I found Liam had disappeared through the crowd. I raised a brow and walked around by myself, listening to people whisper about me, about why an alpha had been traded in war. Some smirked, and others laughed. I ignored them all and continued toward the lake.

A group of men—warriors—gazed over at me from the rocks near the lake. When I looked at them, they just kept staring like I was the most fascinating thing they had ever seen. While some looked vaguely familiar, I didn’t recognize the one staring at me with such ferocity.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

With long, wavy silver locks and scars all over his body, the young man stepped forward. “Just admiring the latest trophy Alpha Ares has brought home,” he said. “An alpha this time.”

The guy next to him chuckled. “He always likes to go bigger and better.”

“At least this one’s hotter than the last few,” one of the older men said.

I flared my nostrils and growled. No disrespect—that was my only demand I’d had. If one more word came out of their mouths, I was going to—

The silver-haired asshole stepped closer to me and drew his finger up the column of my neck. “A feisty one, isn’t she?”

Before he touched my face, I grabbed his finger and bent it backward until it broke. “I don’t care who you are, but you don’t touch me like that.”

He chuckled lower, as if his finger didn’t even hurt. “Trophies from war are everyone’s property, darling, not just the alpha’s.”

“Well, I’m not a trophy of war,” I said through clenched teeth. My wolf wanted me to tell him that I was his new luna, that whether he liked it or not, he would have to respect me, but something held me back.

If we weren’t here, I would’ve already snapped this guy’s neck. But since this was my first meeting with the pack, I wanted to make a good impression and stay under the radar, blend in as much as possible, try to hide the fact that an alpha like me couldn’t shift easily.

These fools were fiends for power. If one of them questioned my abilities and challenged me to a fight—because I’d heard more than enough stories about Ares’s pack staging battles for fun—and I couldn’t shift … if someone looked into me and my history and found out that I had part of the stone, they would try to kill me.

And if they succeeded, Ruffles would die here alone.

Not going to happen.

“Really?” he asked condescendingly.

He glanced into the woods, and I followed his gaze. Through the embers and smoke from the fire, Ares walked toward us with that same blonde girl from the picture in his room. She had her arm looped around his as she grinned up at him, her bright blue eyes sparkling.

I glared at the two in shock and disgust.

After she grasped his jaw and placed a kiss on his cheek, he stared down at her with so much love. My hands clenched into fists, claws ripping the skin on my palms. Jealousy and anger bubbled inside me. Moon Goddess, I was seconds away from ripping them both apart.

For someone who always thought things through before I acted, I couldn’t hold my wolf back from growling. Last night, he