Come Here, Kitten (God of War Book 1), стр. 48
The wolf under me howled to the Moon Goddess and jerked his body side to side, trying to throw me off of him. I clutched on to his fur harder, desperate to stay on his back. The hound with the short tail bared his teeth at me and lowered his head, trying to figure out how to attack me without hurting his comrade.
I kicked my hound hard in the ass with my heel, making him leap forward and straight into Short Tail. Feeling flesh, No Eyes bit Short Tail’s neck and took a whole chunk of muscle out. My eyes widened, and I took this as an opportunity to hop off of his back and snap the other’s throat.
No Eyes wandered around aimlessly, growling and baring his teeth. I slammed my foot into his underbelly, snatched his neck, and pushed my thumbs so deep into him until I broke through his skin and could tear out his insides.
Ares had killed four of the six hounds and was working on the last two. While I didn’t have a chance at killing either of them, as they seemed stronger than the last two I’d killed, I would help him as best as I could.
But just as I was about to jog over, another hound leaped into the air from behind me, knocked me to the ground, and towered over me—one paw on either side of my neck, salivating all over me. I desperately wriggled onto my back and stared up at the deadly beast above me.
My eyes widened. It wasn’t just any hound. It was the hound who I’d remember forever. Hollow black eyes. Two scars forming an X across his face. The pungent scent of cornfields and better days, staying out late with my only brother, but never getting a chance to spend the rest of my life with him, of happiness that had been torn away, of the hound that had murdered Jeremy.
Now, he would kill me too.
Two wolves howled in the distance, and I watched Ares rip their throats right out of their bodies, one by one, with his teeth.
“Ares!” I screamed.
He turned his head, eyes a vicious black, and raced in my direction.
But before he could get the hound off of me, another sprinted out from the woods, latched his teeth into the other hound’s neck, and ripped him off of me. I stared at the two hounds with wide eyes, never having seen two fight against each other before, and the image of Jeremy flashed into my mind.
Of his last moments breathing—when he had gazed over at me and reached out his hand for me to take but Mom pulled me away too quickly for me to help him, when his lips had curled into the smallest of smiles and he mouthed the words I love you, when his eyes had become two dull and soulless orbs.
Ares stood in front of me and growled harshly. Jeremy’s killer sprinted into the woods. The other wolf paused for the briefest moment, tilting his head to the side to look at me. I sucked in a sharp breath, recognizing something so eerily familiar about him, and grasped on to Ares’s paw.
The wolf ran into the forest, following Jeremy’s killer, and disappeared.
“Let me kill him,” Ares said.
“No,” I said through the mind link. “Let him go. Take me home. I don’t want to be left here alone.”
Ares shifted and stood up with me. I swallowed hard. So many thoughts, questions, and uncertainties were rushing through my mind. Part of me couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. No hound had ever hurt another before—at least, to my knowledge.
“Do you think it’s because of the stone?” Ares asked on our walk home. He breathed deeply through his nose, his bloodied, brawn chest heaving up and down. “Do you think that’s why they keep attacking you?”
I pressed my lips together, struggling to keep eye contact with him. “I’m not sure.”
The fog cleared, and I could see the grayish-white clouds breaking just enough to let the dawn sunlight filter out over the trees. Some of Ares’s warriors watched us walk back to the pack house through the forest. I ignored them and continued, my thoughts becoming fuzzy with Ares again.
Ares had marked me out of pure rage and jealousy.
Ares had chased me through the forest with his teeth bared.
Ares had terrorized me.
Yet … he loved me. He had said it in the woods, and he had proven it in the woods. He had told me that being unable to shift wouldn’t make him leave me. But I didn’t quite believe that fully. He needed the stone for some reason. And though he’d said it wasn’t for power, he hadn’t told me why.
How could I live with someone who made me so anxious, with someone who couldn’t control his wolf, with someone who terrified me?
Before we reached the pack house, Ares grasped my hand. “Aurora, I want to tell you why I need that stone, but I can’t,” he said, reading my thoughts.
Stupid mate bond.
I pressed my lips together and pulled my hand away from him. “Why not? If you want to gain my trust again, you have to give me something—anything—that I can believe.”
It wasn’t enough to tell me he couldn’t; I needed answers.
A conflicted look crossed his face, and he pushed a hand into his hair, avoiding all eye contact with me. I stared at his face, searching it for any sort of reasoning, any sort of something that I could latch on to. I wanted him to reassure me that though Ares needed that stone, he wouldn’t tear it out of me while I was asleep—when he couldn’t see