Come Here, Kitten (God of War Book 1), стр. 91
I brushed a strand of brown hair from his face. “We should build underground tunnels to keep pups safe during attacks,” I said, remembering the exact system I had come up with a decade ago. It needed improvements, but I was sure I could figure it out with the help of Elijah’s pack and their intelligence. “And we need to understand the hounds. They’re smarter than I thought.”
“We could capture one and torture him.”
My lips curled into a smirk, and I rolled onto my stomach, poking his abdomen with my finger. “No.” I took a deep breath, knowing that this would sound so crazy. “We should capture him, study him, and … pick him apart if we need to.”
Mars raised a brow. “Your father was right,” he said. “Ares is rubbing off on you.”
“Sometimes, it’s good to be a bit crazy.” I hopped off the bed and tugged on his hand. “Now, get up. We have one more thing to do before we even think about preparing this pack for a hound war.”
After throwing on Mars’s T-shirt and tucking it into my jeans, I opened Ruffles’s bedroom door. “Do you want to come with us?” I asked.
She looked at me and then toward the window, as if she was ignoring me.
“Ruffles,” Mars said behind me, placing his hands on my waist.
Her head snapped in his direction, and she stood to her feet and purred. I stared at him with one brow arched. Damn, my cat loved him more than she loved me.
Mars smiled at her. “Get your hat. It’s sunny outside.”
“Her hat?”
Ruffles jumped off the mattress, disappeared under the bed, and came out with a tiny navy-blue hat between her teeth. She pulled it by its string all the way over to Mars, who leaned down and fastened the cap on her head.
I crossed my arms and stared at him.
“What?” he asked. “I brought her to the store yesterday, and she picked it out.”
“Ruffles has you whipped.” I curled my arm around his and let Ruffles lead the way to the front door.
We decided not to take the car and just walk through the forest to the cave, letting the warm sun hit our faces.
It took less than an hour, but I retraced my steps to it quite easily. The forest was quiet this morning, no signs of rogues or hounds anywhere, which didn’t make me feel any safer. I knew that the worst of the hounds was yet to come.
“Jeremy told me to come here,” I said when we reached the cave.
It still had that putrid stench of feces and flies flying around in the corner, but the sun was shining brightly through the trees and into the cave this morning.
I stepped inside of it and frowned. “This is where he dragged me away from the hound attack at my mom’s property.”
Dressed in her little sun hat, Ruffles immediately began sniffing around the perimeter of the cave and stopped in the back.
I crouched by her side and dug my claws into the dirt underneath her paws. “Do you smell something?”
Ruffles continued to sniff, and I looked back at Mars. “Like I said, before he died, Jeremy told me to come here and dig,” I said.
I wasn’t sure what I was digging for, but I wanted to honor his last wish. Maybe he’d had some old toy or memory here that I could dig up.
With my hands, I tossed dirt behind me into a small pile. Every inch I dug, the stench of rotting shit became more intense. I held my breath, sat on my knees, and continued, creating a larger and wider hole and hoping to find something.
Suddenly, Ruffles widened her eyes and puffed out her tail. She hissed down at the hole and hurried over to Mars, standing behind him in fear. I furrowed my brows at her, my heart rate starting to quicken.
Ruffles wasn’t afraid of just anything …
Mars walked closer to me and sat on his knees, helping me, while Ruffles stayed right by the cave’s exit, just to make a quick dash if anything happened. I didn’t know why she was making such a big deal out of it. It seemed quiet here.
We continued to dig, our hole becoming deeper.
Sweat dripped down Mars’s forehead, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “We should get a shovel or something.” He looked over at me. “You sure your brother told you to dig in the cave?”
“I’m positive,” I said, leaning over the edge of the hole.
Ruffles grabbed the back of my shirt with her teeth and tugged on it, trying to pull me back. When she realized that I wasn’t going with her, she latched her teeth into Mars’s forearm and pulled. He swiftly shook her off and told her that he’d play with her later.
We must’ve dug four feet into the ground, the hole at least three feet wide. I was just about to give up when I heard Mars’s claws scratch on something. He tensed and leaned over, kicking back dirt faster than he had before.
I squinted down into the darkness, and that was when I saw it. My eyes widened. Heart-pounding, sweat forming on my neck, all my arm hairs sticking right up, I scrambled back on my hands and heels. What … what was that?. It … it couldn’t be.
Mars suddenly stopped digging and stumbled back.
“Oh my Goddess …” I breathed out.
Mars stood up taller, his entire demeanor changing into Ares. Though Ares had always been so strong and so fierce, I could only see terror on his face.
“We need to leave,” Ares said, grabbing my wrist in one hand and Ruffles in the other. “We need to leave right now.”
And that was when I realized that Jeremy was right. The hounds weren’t who we’d thought they were. They were worse. They