Ares had been right. Today, as I waited in the same tree as yesterday (but perched higher this time), I felt my eyelids beginning to droop closed of their own accord. I was full and my thirst quenched. A breeze rippled through the leaves all around me and occasionally sent a few fluttering to and fro until they reached the ground below. The sheer serenity of the moment was almost hypnotic, and even Ares’s growling entrance a while later couldn’t break the peace that had settled warm and soft inside me.
I made sure my feet were too high up for him to snap his jaws at, and while I felt the need for sleep beginning to creep over me, I wasn’t going to risk taking a catnap in the branches while I waited out Ares’s mental transition. As a child, I had fallen out of one too many trees while doin
