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044 | AGAINST THE TIDE
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Alpha Ares 045 | GREY AND WHITE
The wolf stalked us, darting from tree to tree, using snow banks to hide as it got closer. I kept my eyes focused on Ares’s slack face, not wanting to give away that I had seen it until I attacked.Next to nobody had known we were going to be travelling, let alone on this particular route. Ares had barked at Nazte that he was in charge while we were gone, and I had to assume that, as his mate, Cendres knew too. Was this wolf, of average height and average build, the same one that had killed Ares’s wolves? Was it the same one that had killed Damon?Wake up, Ares, I thought, staring at his face and begging him to somehow hear me. My parents could mindlink through their mate bond, as could Etta and Damon – the sting of pain at thinking of them, of Etta, was like a whip’s lash upon my bare back – but Ares and I had never been able to. I had even heard tales of some mates being able to feel each other’s emotions when they were close, but we couldn’t do that, either. I thought it and I th
Alpha Ares 046 | CALLED BY POWER
The cart swayed beneath us, its wheels grinding through the snow. Ares steadied me, his hands gentle as they daubed honey onto the bite marks marring my shoulder.“You’re good at this,” I said awkwardly, needing to fill the silence. Otherwise, stupid thoughts about how stark the contrast between his huge, muscular body and the soft, almost reverent way he bound my wound would fill my mind. “I have to be.”“Oh.”“Yeah.”My throat worked on a swallow. I made the mistake of looking down, and I saw the taut muscles in his forearms flexing as he swept honey down the length of the abrasions. My core tightened.His eyebrows pinched together. “Does it sting?”“No, not really.”He smiled. “Liar.”I rolled my eyes. “Only a little. Not enough that I’d complain.” In fact, compared to the heat of my blood and the pulsing at the apex of my thighs, I couldn’t feel the bite at all. There was only Ares, only his touch, his gaze…Gah. No.I glanced over at the grey wolf instead, slumped across the be
Alpha Ares 047 | SALT IN THE WOUND
I’d never thought coming home would fill me with dread. But, as the cart pulled in alongside the Pack House, my stomach tied itself in knots and my heart beat out a staccato rhythm in my chest. Everything around me blurred into a haze of sunlight and colour, and even as my parents rushed out to greet us I felt like I was watching my own body interact with them from a distance.The warmth of their hugs was even separate from me, as though there was a thick layer of air between their skin and mine. I blinked slowly at my face-full of my dad’s black, curly hair and Mum’s dark brown braid, and slowly eased back out of their embrace.“How is she?” I heard myself asking, my eyes darting through the blur in the hopes that I would be able to pick out Etta’s familiar face and red-brown hair.“Haile…” my dad breathed, his crinkled brown eyes drooping sadly as he pulled me in tight again. He whispered in my ear, “Etta isn’t doing well, sweetheart. I think seeing you will do her some good.”I nod
Alpha Ares 048 | BIG BLUE
I was about to knock on the door to my parents’ office when I heard voices. I didn’t know what made my fist still a hair’s breadth from the wood, but I froze at the sound of that familiar, deep, honey-and-gravel voice.Etta had eventually tired and gone home. Needing a distraction and some reassurance, I’d come to find Ares. I couldn’t stop thinking about her going back to her empty house, but she’d insisted – quite bluntly, which had made the knot of emotion in my chest ease ever so slightly – that she wanted to eat dinner alone.“It’s hard for me, Big Blue,” Ares was saying, and his use of my dad’s nickname sent a jolt of shock through me. It was too familial for a man like Alpha Ares.“As it is for Haile.” There was a hint of sympathy to Dad’s tone, but not half so much as if Ares were part of Blue Moon. Or even if he hadn’t tried to kill me.“I know. Of course it is. And I… I haven’t always made things easy for her.”“I’ll level with you, Ares, from one Alpha to another.” I could
Alpha Ares 049 | A GLIMPSE OF HIS SOUL
I stared at one of the lush green plants in its terracotta pot, my mouth moving over silent words that kept getting lodged in my throat. Nothing about this room had changed, from the heaps of messy parchment on my dad’s desk to the organised piles on my mum’s, but I felt too still, too awkward, as I shifted my weight on the sofa. Like I belonged in this room, but not in this time. Dad had eyed me knowingly as he’d left, shoving his feet into his sandals and shaking his head at me fondly before he’d slipped out – no doubt to find Mum and tell her that he’d caught me eavesdropping. Well… He had been the one giving the Alpha of our enemy pack a free therapy session, so we both had things to answer for. I picked at my cuticles and waited for Ares to say something. My gaze darted from the plant to the wooden shelves, to the coffee table with two fresh mugs of tea on it, both untouched. Ares had had plenty to say before, so…“How much did you hear?”Even though I’d been waiting for him to
Alpha Ares 050 | BEGIN ANEW
Ares told me everything. As night fell around us, he had bared his soul to me. The darkness and the light in him merged, a heady jumble of duty and respect and fear, until I could no longer pick apart the good from the bad. There was just him and I, sat with a slim gap between us, and I –I had closed it.All I had ever wanted was his honesty.And, in the two months that had passed since, I felt as though we had begun anew. There were no secrets between us – well, except for one, which I would take with me to the grave. I wasn’t sure why I had kept my parents’ plan from him, but something had stopped me from being wholly honest with him. I had been overwhelmed in that moment, in the face of his blunt truth, and it had suddenly felt so irrelevant. So small. So small, in fact, that it had been all but forgotten. It had not been an immediate fix. Trusting Ares was still hard at times, but with every day that passed I believed in what he'd said a little more. His actions aligned with hi
Alpha Ares 051 | WINTER
The scream rang out, crisp and clear. Without stopping to think I hauled on Ares’s hand and yanked him towards the sound. It was not hard to find the source of the noise. A group of Omegas were clustered around an open door, their hands clapped over their mouths to hold back their cries.“There was no wood for her fire last night,” sobbed a young woman from just inside the room. “I told her to stay with me, but she told me to stop fussing. Stars–”“What’s going on here?” Ares’s voice lanced through the noise and silenced it immediately, save for the wet, sticking breaths of the Omegas.“She died!” wailed the woman, digging her nails into her palms. “My grandmother. From the cold…” she dissolved into sobs. Ares and I pushed past her. The room was much like the hovel I had been put in when I’d first arrived at Winterpaw. It was windowless, with a single bed, complete with a lumpy mattress, one thin blanket, and one thin pillow, and a decaying dresser at the foot of the bed. There was
Alpha Ares 052 | THE HAND THAT REACHES
“Max,” I hissed, grabbing his wrist and yanking him into step beside me. I pointed with my other hand, proud to see that my finger did not tremble.“Shit,” he breathed. “Okay. Oh–”“Hello?” I called, cutting him off. “Can you hear us?”The fingers twitched, but there was no change.“They can’t be alive, Haile. That snow… It could have been on top of them for hours.”I ignored him. “Click your fingers if you can hear us.”Slowly, shaking violently, the fingers clicked.Max’s eyes went wide. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”“It will be,” I said, dropping his wrist, “if we get them out of there. Come on.”I grabbed the hand sticking out of the snow. It was frozen, and the fingers were stiff as I bent them around my palm. Max shifted into his roan wolf form and started to dig, flinging sheets of ice and compacted snow up into the grey sky. I tightened my hold on the frozen hand, willing my fragile warmth to pool into their skin. “We’ll get you out,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “You’ll b
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