Share
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
Related chapters
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
Alpha Ares 037 | ALL TOO WELL
I decided to follow Nazte.Maybe it was stupid to stick my neck out and risk being caught so soon after Ares had unpicked my most recent – and most damning – lie, but I didn’t care. He’d hurt me in more ways than one, and if one of these awful wolves were going to kill me then I’d go down fighting, damn it.I eased open the door and slipped out into the dark corridor.Nazte walked quickly, purposefully, with his arms swinging jovially at his sides. His cloak billowed out behind him and his blonde hair bounced with every step. He didn’t look like a man weighed down by a guilty conscience – but, until he’d looked at me with his sad, wide, almost sympathetic eyes, I’d not once thought of him as someone who would face any emotional ramifications for his despicable actions. Apparently even murdering innocent people couldn’t bring down his mood. Stars, he was an arsehole.What on earth h
Alpha Ares 038 | LOST
My chest heaved and my thighs ached. I sprinted on and on and on, the sounds of footsteps thundering down the tunnel behind me growing louder and louder and louder –There was no hope. They would catch me. They knew this tunnel well, and they surely knew every possible hiding place I might go if I managed to escape them.“We heard you!” shouted Cendres. He laughed, the sound of it ringing out, clear and crisp as a pealing bell. “There’s no point in running. Come out and play with us, little spy.”“It’s probably Jonet,” said Nazte. “Wanting to hear what we said about his precious nose.” He cleared his throat and then raised his voice. “We said it was ugly!”I pushed on. My mind spun through a hundred different solutions. I could sprint out, force my breathing to calm, and wander back towards them. Surely they wouldn’t suspect me if I put myself somewhere so obvi
Latest chapter
- Alpha Ares 141 | EPILOGUE
- Alpha Ares 140 | COME TOGETHER
- Alpha Ares 139 | KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
- Alpha Ares 138 | SURRENDER AND SACRIFICE
- Alpha Ares 137 | BATTLE OF THE MOUNTAIN
- Alpha Ares 136 | THE END OF US
- Alpha Ares 135 | BE AMONGST THE STARS
- Alpha Ares 134 | HAUNTED
- Alpha Ares 133 | ON THE WINGS OF FATE
