Come Here, Kitten (God of War Book 1), стр. 49
He sighed deeply through his nose and rubbed his face. “It’s not my place to tell you. You have to talk to Charolette.”
“Charolette?” I asked, brows furrowed together. “Why do I need to talk to her?”
More pain crossed his face, and he suddenly got quiet. “You just have to. I can’t tell you.”
I wanted to be so angry with him; I wanted to hurt him like he had hurt me; I wanted to make him feel all the pain that I had … but I could feel the agony festering inside of him.
From the moment I’d met Ares, I had felt it, but I always thought it was just his immense anger. But this was killing him slowly on the inside, tearing him down, making him hurt just as badly as I always did.
“I will talk to Charolette later. I need to go help Elijah. Don’t follow me, and make sure none of your guards get in my way, or I’ll lock them inside one of those cages and do to them what you did to Elijah.” I turned on my heel and stepped away.
He grasped my wrist. “Promise me that you won’t leave me, Aurora, please. Promise me that if you leave this property, you’ll come back to me.”
I swallowed hard and stared at my feet. Then, I placed my hand on top of his and pushed him away. I needed to find Elijah. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Chapter 27
Aurora
Elijah sat against the stony cell wall, his head tilted back. The pungent stench of the prison’s rusty metal bars and plaster nearly made me gag.
When I saw him, I burst into the room, knelt by his side, and gently grasped his swollen face. “I’m sorry. This is my fault. This is all my fault.”
Blood soaked through his Sanguine Wilds T-shirt. I peeled it off of him, careful not to hurt him more than Ares already had, and cleaned out his wounds with some supplies I’d picked up from the pharmacy next to Mad Moon Grocery. It took nearly an hour to wipe off the blood, stitch him up, and bandage his stomach. But by the early afternoon, he stood in fresh clothing in the prison bathroom.
“Goddess, Aurora, I thought he’d killed you,” he said, his teary eyes still swollen but not nearly as bad as Ares had left them. “The way he’d marked you. The way he had run after you. The look of pure malice and terror in his eyes. It was nothing that I had ever seen before, not even during hound attacks.” He blew a deep breath out his nose. “Whatever you decide to do with him, please be careful.”
From the moment I had come here, I had known I needed to be careful around Ares. He was a loose cannon and could snap at any moment. But what he had done—or rather hadn’t done—in the woods was the polar opposite of his rumored bloodthirsty ways.
“Can you get my glasses?” Elijah asked, using the wall to guide him back toward the cell. He squinted his eyes and tilted his head in the direction of the wall. “I think they fell over there.”
Splattered with blood and with both lenses cracked, his glasses sat in the corner of the room. I wiped off as much blood as carefully as I could and handed them to him. Though he could barely see out of them, he put them on and leaned against the wall.
“Why did you tell him about the stone?” he asked.
“I’d rather he kill me for the stone than kill you for protecting me.”
“If he had killed you …” He took a deep breath, pulled off his glasses, and tossed them to the side. “I don’t know what I would’ve done. Jeremy would’ve never forgiven me, and neither would …” His eyes went wide. “Never mind.”
“Neither would who?” I asked, brows furrowed together. “Who were you going to say?”
A look of fear crossed his face for a brief moment, and then he cursed. “I’m not supposed to tell you or anyone, but during the hound attack that killed Jeremy, a veiled woman in green gave me half the stone and told me to save you. She visits me every now and then, asking how you are.”
“Veiled woman?” My eyes widened slightly. “Who is she? Where is she from?”
He shrugged. “She’s never told me, and I’ve never asked. I’m just grateful.”
Instead of asking Elijah more questions that he probably didn’t have the answers to, I grabbed his glasses and deposited them into my pocket. “I’m going to get you a new pair, and then I’ll have someone take you home.”
We walked around the property, trying to find somewhere to get new glasses. Since I had only been here a few days, I hadn’t really had the chance to check out everything yet.
After walking around aimlessly for a good fifteen minutes, I retraced my steps to the pharmacy, faintly remembering that I’d passed some reading glasses inside. Maybe they’d have something for distance.
At two p.m., the store was relatively empty. There was a small optic center within the pharmacy near the back, which seemed to close at 1:59:59 p.m. on the dot for a late lunch. I gazed over the counter at the doctor who wore a pair of thick bifocals and was gathering his things for his break.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Deep creases in his forehead and a full head of graying brown hair, the man glanced over at me. “Aurora,” he said, surprised, holding out a strong hand. “It’s great to finally meet you.”
I hesitantly placed my hand in his. “I’m sorry. What’s your name?”
“I’m Mars’s father. You can call me Mr. Barrett or Steve. Actually, Steve works better.”
He chuckled, and I grasped his hand tighter.
This warm, calm man was Ares’s father?
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“You’re a doctor?” I asked.
He cracked one of Ares’s infamous teasing smirks. “Picked it up as a hobby when Ares took