I was not surprised to wake up without Ares beside me - I had expected him to leave long before we eventually fell asleep next to each other because he was clearly thinking about what he had said to Zaahra and how she would respond when she found out the truth.
We didn’t talk about what he planned on saying, or how he was going to handle this situation when we got back; I would have told him I didn’t care if he was Alpha or not, and he would probably have laughed and said that things were different for him because I couldn’t possibly understand what things were like for him.
The smell of a fire and food cooking reassured me that he was still here, even before I caught his scent and figured out he had gone to wash at a stream nearby.
It was a relief when I realized I could smell him, bec
