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010 | BLOOD AND BONE
I woke in a haze of dawnlight, streaks of sunshine glinting off the snow outside and spilling in through the uncurtained windows. I snuggled back against the warm body holding me close, an arm resting heavily across my waist.
Slowly, carefully, I rolled over, turning to face him. Ares pulled me flush against him, pressing a lazy kiss to the top of my head before his breaths evened out and he tumbled back down into the bliss of early morning dreams. I stared up at him, my lips parted on an exhale as I traced the handsome lines of his face, wanting to commit every beautiful part of him to memory, wanting to burn every inch of him into my brain.
His eyelashes formed dark crescents on his cheeks, fluttering slightly and casting pale shadows down his skin. His dark hair was sleep-mussed, tousled down the side of his face and curling by his ears. Unable to resist, I raised a single finger and curved it down the hard edge of his stubbled jaw. He murmured approvingly,
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Alpha Ares 011 | A PERFECT CURSE
By the time I found my way back to Ares’s room I’d managed to school my face into something vaguely calm. My heart thundered in my chest, every unsteady beat of it reminding me that it might be its last. I had enemies here – real enemies lurking in dark corners that could strike at any moment. Though I was used to fighting wolves on the battlefield that hungered for my blood, it was another thing entirely to hear the words spoken so callously in a place I was supposed to call home. But what could I do? If I went up against Nazte and won, it sounded like there were more Winterpaw wolves – many more – that wanted me dead just as much as he did. And, even if I managed to kill most of them, it would fracture the fragile peace that my being here had created. I sucked in a deep breath and knocked on the door. A wave of genuine calm crashed over me as Ares yanked the door open and wound an arm around my waist to haul me inside. He pressed a lazy kiss t
Alpha Ares 012 | WITHOUT WORDS
Somehow, two weeks had passed in a blur. I didn’t want to think about why the time had gone so quickly, but the ridiculous pounding of my heart and the way my bones melted beneath my flesh every time Ares was near pointed it out whether I liked it or not. Even now, sat in the banquet hall, pale sunlight sending colours from the stained glass scattering across the dented wooden table, I could feel his presence more keenly than I could feel the bite of the cold air that swept through the room every time the door was opened. I picked at a stale hunk of bread, tearing off a small chunk and balancing a thin slice of cheese on top of it. The meagre portion of bread, cheese, and berries we were given every morning for breakfast was something I was slowly getting used to, but my stomach ached for cinnamon buns and jam-filled pasties and fresh squeezed orange juice. With no suitable farmland in their territory, the Winterpaw Warrior Pack relied solely on the goods they
Alpha Ares 013 | A REALM OF STARLIGHT
I chewed on my bottom lip, stewing over what to write back to my parents. I hated lying to them, but in this instance I knew I had to. I couldn’t very well tell them that the Beta of the pack I was now living with wanted me dead, and probably a good handful of the Omegas that served me every day did too. So far, all I had managed to write was ‘Dear Mum and Dad,’ and I wasn’t even sure about that because the letter I’d received had been from Dad, not Mum, so maybe I should have started with his name first… I had to get a grip. I adjusted my seat on the stiff-backed wooden chair, winced as a splinter poked at my calf muscle, and took a deep breath. I just had to focus on the things I could be honest about. By the time Ares returned to the room I’d not only finished penning my letter – making sure to leave out anything that a sneaky Omega or worse, a duplicitous Beta, could read before it got sent – but I’d tidie
Alpha Ares 014 | FROSTBITTEN
Our dinner had long since gone cold on the table. I’d forgotten about it, swept up in the excitement of seeing a new part of Ares’s territory. More than that, I’d wanted to go somewhere that meant something to him. I wrinkled my nose at the idea now, my face hidden by shadow as he lit a fire in the hearth. My heart was a frostbitten thing. The fire took, crackling and sending heat spilling into the room, but even it could not thaw my heart. He lit the torches hanging from the walls in silence. I’d started to think of our altercation as an argument, but it had been nothing of the sort. It was worse: a dreadful acceptance of the fact that, no matter the mate bond holding us together, we could never work as a couple. The hope I’d felt earlier dissolved into ash, suffocating my heart even as the mate bond gripped it tighter, pressing me to apologise when I had done nothing wrong. We were from different worlds, and there was no way to bridge th
Alpha Ares 015 | BAD MOON RISING
Even though Ares did not know exactly where the body was, and Cendres and Nazte both did, he assumed the lead as we marched across Winterpaw’s territory. I had tried to keep pace with him, but Nazte had tripped me more than once and, somehow, I’d ended up at the back of the pack. I glared at all three of their backs; I would have folded my arms haughtily, too, but I needed them to balance as we slipped and skidded across the compacted snow. Maybe I should have simply been grateful that I had been included, but the slight in forcing a Young Luna behind a Beta and Gamma was something even I turned my nose up at. One day, I vowed to myself, stomping through a patch of deep, powdery snow that had spilled onto the slick pathway we followed, I would get Nazte back. I did not know when or how – I just promised myself that I would. “Should she be here?” Nazte muttered, too loud for it to have been a coincidence that I’d heard him. “Yes,”
Alpha Ares 016 | HATRED AND DESIRE
The snow, which rose in mounds around the training grounds, glittered in the morning sun. It was splashed in hues of brilliant, resplendent red, dark as blood upon the pallid landscape. It had been the same all week: every fragment of beauty I saw became a portrait of horrors. Even the novelty of seeing in colour could not bring my thoughts from the dark mire they had tumbled headfirst into. I pulled back, sliding my booted foot across a patch of ice and feeling the bite of dawn air slicing at my midriff. I shivered, losing focus for half a second and giving my opponent an opening to swipe at me. The brown wolf lunged, baring its teeth at me; I skidded on the ice and slipped, managing to catch myself at the last second due to luck alone. The wolf – a woman called Valeria that I often ended up practicing against, simply because she was one of the few Winterpaw werewolves amicable enough towards me to fight me without biting my head off, literally – drop
Alpha Ares 017 | PLAN OF ATTACK
I was falling for Ares.I knew it now, for he resided in every fibre of my being. I woke and I thought first of him, where once I would have thought of my pack and of my duty to them. I fell asleep with my legs tangled through his, heat radiating from his chest and the steady beat of his heart lulling me into dreams that were, almost always, about him.I felt like a love-struck teenager: the sort that got giddy over penning their initials and his in a little heart down the sides of their parchment in lessons and linking their hands together beneath the table, imaging their fingers were his and squeezing. That was so far from the person I had been for the last twenty years of my life that I found it hard to look in the mirror each morning, because the flush to my cheeks and the glazed, dreamy look in my usually sharp green eyes did not belong to me.Even as we sat in a council meeting, in a dimly lit room deep inside the cavernous mountain, I could not tear
Alpha Ares 018 | YOUNG LUNA
I pressed my paws into the snow, feeling its sharp bite even through my thick brown fur. Snowflakes swirled through the air, dusting my coat with white and sending shivers rolling through me.I was envious of the Warrior Wolves behind us – they were pressed so tightly together, holding the line that marked the edge of Winterpaw’s territory, that they must have been warm from the flush of body heat. I’d been forced to the front with Cendres and Nazte. The one small saving grace was that Hanna and Hans Pewer were marching around the Warrior Wolves, ensuring they were in the correct formation, so I was saved from their torturous company at least.I wrinkled my nose, flicking my gaze over to Nazte’s huge white wolf form. One of his paws looked like it had been dunked in chocolate and sprinkled with icing sugar from the snow. He stood completely still, his icy blue eyes fixed on the horizon as we awaited the arrival of the Bloodpelt Prowler Pack. The
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