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028 | UP IN SMOKE
I stared at him and he stared back at me. Our noses brushed; we were so close I could hear every shaky inhale of breath he took and every thump of his heartbeat. He eyed me ravenously, as if I were another meal he could never get his fill of. I remained unguarded, the walls I had so meticulously built to keep him out catching fire in the heat of his burning blue gaze.
He swallowed noisily. I watched as his throat bobbed. Stars, he was handsome. He made me dizzy in all the best ways – although that might have been the concussion. If I even had one. It was a convenient excuse, so I decided I most definitely did.
My morals went up in smoke as his lips brushed mine.
“I’m not pretending,” he murmured, his breath warm and his lips soft. A shiver ran through me. “You have claimed me, heart and soul. I did not think it possible, Haile, but despite all odds I find myself consumed by you. That is why…”
“Why what?&rdq
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Alpha Ares 029 | AN ALLIANCE OF FOES
For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel safe in my own home.I held Ares’s hand as we walked down to the meeting room. The back of my neck bristled with tension at the simple touch; I felt as though every Blue Moon wolf that passed us was judging me for it. Thoughts of Tarar and Stede clouded my usually logical mind, turning friends into foes everywhere I looked.But I ignored the hateful whispers, imagined and real, as clusters of Omegas slunk past us. Because Ares and I had agreed to pretend and, judgement aside, it was far too easy for me to do so. It didn’t feel like we were pretending – and that terrified me.Ares squeezed my hand. I glanced up at him through my lashes, my cheeks warming as I met his intense blue gaze.“Are you ready for this?” he murmured, his gravel-and-honey voice catching in his throat.I lifted my chin. Ready to listen to his lies? Yes. Ready to ignore everything that came ou
Alpha Ares 030 | A SOUL AT WAR
“You know,” Ares said, his deep voice unusually soft, “I would do anything for you, beautiful.”My heart swelled and my stomach churned – the same nauseating duo that I had become all too accustomed to as of late. It had followed me back from the Blue Moon Pack, all the way up into the mountains of Winterpaw Warrior. My body and mind were at war, my heart and soul lost to conflict, and I was left to pick up the pieces. A muscle in my jaw ticked. Stupid mate bond.I couldn’t be honest to him – couldn’t say that I knew he was lying. So I forced my lips into a smirk and put a hand on my hip, and leaned back to survey him as I said, “I do know. You called a retreat when your pack had the upper hand in battle. I’d say that counts as a pretty big anything, Ares.”He reclined further on the bed and patted the empty space beside him. Joy and irritation sparked at his invitation; I shoved down the
Alpha Ares 031 | DUSK AT DAWN
“What happened, Haile?” Ares's voice sounded gentle – too gentle. I levelled my gaze at him across the table. We’d gathered in the council room, and I could feel Nazte and Cendres sending burning stares directly at my flushed face. My throat worked on a swallow. The fire behind me suddenly felt too hot – much too hot. I ran a hand beneath my collar. This was the first time I’d felt warm in Winterpaw, let alone boiling. The one saving grace for me was that this meeting intercepted neatly with morning training – meaning that Hans and Hanna, the Senior Warrior Wolves with seriously big sticks rammed up their backsides, weren’t able to come. Someone had to keep the pack running, after all. And cancelling morning training because of a murder would cause mass hysteria. It was such a terrible shame that they couldn’t come, I thought, struggling to keep my lips from twitching into a smirk. “I was running.” My voice sounded ca
Alpha Ares 032 | MY CRUEL ALPHA
Ares was nowhere to be found.I was on the cusp of giving up looking for him when I heard his raised voice bellowing from the Omega’s floor. My eyebrows pinched. What was he doing down there?I crept closer, coiling back down the staircase until I was hovering on the short landing by the guest room that I’d once called my own – if only for a matter of hours upon my arrival. I wrinkled my nose at the memory of the cold, damp, windowless room, but quickly shoved it aside. Ares’s voice was getting louder.My mood dampened further when I recognised the voice speaking to him. Her tongue clucked against the roof of her mouth. Luezza.“I stand by my actions, Alpha.”A smack of skin against skin rung out through the hallway, clear as a bell. I gasped - and clapped a hand over my idiotic mouth. Had he hit her?“Insolence will not be tolerated,” he growled, low and rumbling. &ldqu
Alpha Ares 033 | VENGEANCE
When I woke, Ares was gone. I stretched out in the bed. I felt better when he wasn’t around – more myself, less controlled by the damned mate bond. It was less no vocal, and it still pushed me to slide out of the warm bed and find him, but it was easier to ignore. We’d ended up cracking open a bottle of wine late into the night, and talking by candlelight until our voices had turned hoarse. We’d spoken of duty, of hope, and of loss. In the calm quiet of the night, my traitorous heart had fallen some more. And then we’d discussed the wolf I’d found that morning. It had stayed with me, lurking in the back of my mind as the first Warrior Wolf we’d found had. There was something so coarse about seeing a body not upon a battlefield. Although, I supposed, it was a different kind of battle. A darker one that played out with no honour. I picked up the copy of ‘Born Beneath the Wrong Star’ I’d discarded last night. I tried to focus on it, but my mind kep
Alpha Ares 034 | THE TRUTH OF THE LIE
My good sense slammed back into me, all at once. “Ares!” I cried, leaping up onto the platform behind him. I grabbed his forearm just before he grasped the man’s prone neck and yanked it back, making him stumble slightly.He glanced at me with a frown. “What is it? Do you want to kill this one?”I shook my head. I had to be honest. I couldn’t let innocent men die because of my lie. “I don’t recognise him, actually,” I hedged, gradually towing Ares back towards the edge of the wooden platform.Ares’s frown deepened, lines cutting into his brow and crinkling the corners of his too-damn-pretty blue eyes. “Well – have a closer look. Walk between them, Haile. Your attackers are here. I am quite certain of it.”“How do you know for sure? There must be hundreds of men that match that description…”He grabbed me by my wrists and hauled me back towards the men.
Alpha Ares 035 | FOR YOU
I couldn’t un-see it.Even now, as Ares towered over me, his broad shoulders and muscular arms caging me in, making me bow down beneath his rage, I could think of nothing but the bloodbath we’d left behind.The screams. I –I would never be able to un-hear those screams. Muffled, wet. Somehow, the fact that they hadn’t even been able to scream properly as they’d died had made it worse. That last piece of defiance had been stolen from them.Ares had yanked me inside, all the way up to his bedroom. My arm still ached and throbbed. I held onto that pain; I would take anything, a thousand times over, if only those men had not had to suffer.“Why did you lie to me?” Ares’s voice was more gravel than honey, now. I could feel the low vibrations rolling in his chest. “What purpose did that serve?”I lifted my chin. He would not steal me defiance from me as well. “I was wor
Alpha Ares 036 | BETA WOLF
My lip curled as Nazte stepped into the bedroom I shared with Ares. His eyes were bright – limned with some dark fantasy about murdering me, probably.“What do you want?” I asked. I’d been aiming for callous and disinterested, but my voice croaked – hoarse from being strangled, no doubt – and it made the whole illusion a lot weaker than I’d intended.His blue eyes tightened, and then darted back to the door he’d just come through. I sighed. I didn’t have time for this – I needed to make a plan and send word to my parents about what I’d witnessed and, worse, the terrible things I might have set in motion by giving away the true identity of my attacks.Unfortunately for Nazte, a little chit-chat about the horrors he’d inflicted upon innocent men didn’t quite fit into my schedule. I let my upper lip curl back further and bared my teeth at him.“Scary,” he said, hi
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