“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

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

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

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

What I had to do made me sick to my stomach. But it needed to be done.I took a deep breath, forcing it to calm my racing nerves. The mate bond urged me onwards, desperate to close the chasm that stretched between Ares and I. For once, my logical mind and my stupid heart agreed on what I had to do.I needed to get Ares to trust me – so that I could kill him. After this morning, and my close call in the tunnels, I knew what I’d have to do to get him to even look at me would make me want to vomit. Even so, my heart pounded at the thought of seeing him again, up close, close enough to touch…Damn it. I ground my teeth together and knocked on the door.“Come in.” Stars, his voice like that – honey and gravel and entirely edible – made my core heat. I bit my lip, swallowed my pride, and pushed the door open.Ares was reclined on the bed. Evening sunlight swept across his featu