Catch Me, Alpha

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

AURORALong after we’d killed those hounds, I clutched the silver dagger to my chest and walked onto our property with Ares. The fog had almost instantly cleared, but still, my mind was clouded with so many questions. Were hounds really created from the flesh and blood of innocent wolves? Was that what Jeremy had wanted me to find out? He had said that the hounds were out for some kind of divine revenge, but … this was more than I’d expected.

And what about Mom? Mere days ago, I’d laid her to rest behind her old pack house while hundreds of her pack wolves looked on. The hounds had cold heartedly dug her up from the ground, brought her down into that cavern, and made her a monster. What would I tell my old packmates?

The hounds were raising an army of undead wolves for a battle, which seemed to be against us for some reason.

Ruffles rubbed her face against my neck, her soft fur only slightly calming me. Townsmen and women whispered to each other as we walked with the hound almost lifelessly dragging behind us. Warriors scrambled to prepare a prison cell.

We needed to understand what this was all about before that army could attack us again because an attack by a pack of hounds that large would undoubtedly destroy this entire pack. Ares might be the god of war who thirsted for the blood of his enemies, but our pack wasn’t zombie-hounds strong. Not yet at least.

When we walked by the training field, Marcel made announcements to the warriors, waved everyone off for the morning, and jogged over to us. Charolette sat on a small hill with her arms crossed over her chest and a scowl on her face as she glared at Marcel. Although I didn’t know what they were fighting about this time, it was probably—definitely—about the Malavite Stone.

With his foot, Ares kicked the prison door open before the guards could get it for us. The hound smacked against each wooden step that Ares descended and howled in pain through his snout.

Marcel followed us down the stairs. “What’s with the one arm? You do that to him, Roar?”

Ares growled at Marcel for nicknaming me and pivoted on his heel to posture over his strongest warrior. Since we’d left the cave earlier, Ares had been on edge and ready to s*******r anyone who stepped on his bad side. The smallest remark would set that man off.

Swinging open a cell door, Ares hurled the hound into the chamber next to Dad. Dad decided not to acknowledge my existence as he scraped his nails against the hard stone floor, sending a shiver down my back.

I tried to ignore him. Ruffles brushed her fur against my calf and waved her gray tail back and forth, watching with magically wide eyes as Ares snapped the cage’s lock. Purring as if she thought it was the sexiest thing in the world, Ruffles rubbed against his ankle.

Ares relaxed just a bit. “We have a problem.”

Marcel leaned back against the stone wall and crossed his big arms over each other, his greasy silver hair falling into his face. “We have a lot of problems,” he grunted and nodded toward the cage Liam sat in. “Like, when you finally let me kill him, who will become the next beta? How will you convince Charolette to use the f*****g stone? How are we going to find Charolette’s father?”

Ares growled, “That hound did nothing to father her.”

Ruffles meowed at me to pick her up. When I grabbed her, she did her infamous look someone up and down and then look away gaze, giving Marcel a sassy attitude, like she did with almost everyone who wasn’t Ares.

“The hounds are raising their army, one dead wolf at a time,” I said with a breath.

Marcel furrowed his brows, creasing his forehead. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The hounds—”

“What is your damn problem, Marcel?” Charolette shrieked, storming down the creaky wooden stairs. Gaze fixed on Marcel and thin arms crossed over her chest, she turned her body toward Ares. “You want to know what he said to me during practice? He said—”

Ares growled to silence her, the sound echoing through the small red-lit dungeon. “The only thing I want to know is when you’re having your surgery,” he said to her.

Everyone in the room fell into a deafening silence; even the mice that Ruffles liked chasing around at night didn’t squeak.

Fuming with anger, Charolette balled her hands into fists and stormed back up the stairs. Liam glanced at her departing figure through the cell bars. When she slammed the door, unused cuffs and t*****e equipment attached to the ceiling by silver chains clattered against the side stone wall.

Though I wanted to ask her why she didn’t want the surgery done, I couldn’t get myself to follow her.

I’d asked her about twenty times to have the surgery to insert the stone in her spine, and I was tired of hearing the words, “No, I don’t want it.”

Strongly against using any sort of divine rock in her back, she either had already accepted her death or just really wanted to piss off her brother. It was important for her to live, but it was even more important to protect this whole pack from an unavoidable war that could kill us all.

Ares stepped toward the exit and sighed. “Can you talk to her?” he asked me.

Ruffles meowed in response for me, hopped out of my hold, and walked up the stairs. I rolled my eyes at her more dramatic than usual a*s and followed her toward the heavy stone door.

“You should call a meeting with the other alphas in the region. We need more than our pack for this war,” I shouted before I left the prison.

After shoving the door open, Ruffles and I hurried after Charolette. “Wait up!”

“Please don’t try to convince me, Aurora. I’ve made up my mind. I just need someone to support my decision,” she said, refusing to turn around.

Once I caught up to her, Ruffles looked at her and meowed.

“Stop it, Ruffles,” I said down to her. I grabbed Charolette’s hand. “Why are you against it? I talked to Elijah and his doctor. They’re willing to do it to help you get better.”

Charolette stared at me with a blank face. “Why don’t you use the stone to shift more easily? I don’t need it. It won’t even help me,” she said as if she already knew the outcome. “Ares looked for that thing for years when I told him not to. I don’t want it.”

“It might help you,” I said, desperate for her to consider using the stone. If Ares lost his sister after losing his mother, he might just break. And I honestly wanted Charolette to be able to live a worry-free life. “You might be able to grow older with Marcel and have pups and—”

She gagged and scrunched her nose. “Marcel? Are you serious? I would never date him. He’s a man-w***e; he f***s anything with a freaking pulse.” She looked at her socks, stained with dirt from practice, and clenched her jaw. “It’s not like he wants me anyway.”

“Oh, come on. I know you two are mates.”

A breeze blew slightly, making the first withering leaves of autumn break off the trees and fall to the ground. Ruffles ran ahead to swat at the brown leaves with her paw and then jumped on them, listening to the crunch.

Charolette snapped her head toward me. “Did he tell you that? He’s such a—”

“No,” I assured. “He didn’t tell me anything. I can just tell.”

Suddenly, she fell quiet and looked down at her feet, shoulders slumping forward. “We’re never going to be together, so it doesn’t even matter.” She waved it off as if it were nothing, even though I could feel the desperation in every one of her words.

She wanted there to be more, and I knew there could be if she took the stone.

After another moment of silence, she grabbed my hand and intertwined our fingers. “Soooo, the Luna Ceremony is soon!” she said, changing the subject and squealing. “Are you excited to officially become our luna? I cannot wait for it! We have to go dress shopping! I’ve had this day planned for Ares’s mate since I was seven.”

The Luna Ceremony—the night I would officially be announced and recognized as Luna of the Ironmane Pack to others in Sanguine Wilds—was in less than two weeks. And neither Ares nor I had time to even prepare for a party, especially not amidst a war with divine intervention.

“I don’t think you should get too excited,” I said, tucking some hair behind my ear. “We might not be able to have it. We spotted hounds today—too many hounds to take much of a break.”

Charolette grasped my hands and held them to her chest. “We’ll have it, no matter what. Don’t you worry. Ares is going to want to properly introduce you as his luna. Mom always dreamed of it. He won’t let her dream die with her.”

After Charolette had easily weaseled her way out of using the stone, I bought some chips from Mad Moon Grocery for Ruffles. She had been eating more than usual lately, and I thought she had even hooked Ares on them.

I readjusted her blue hat and swung the pink plastic bag by my side as we walked back toward the pack house. Preoccupied with thoughts about how we could defeat a growing number of hounds, I almost missed when Ruffles came to a sudden stop at the head of an alleyway.

A Siamese cat popped his head out of an empty Pringles can and glanced over at Ruffles. They looked at each other for a few moments, until he finally walked over and sniffed her butt. Ruffles glanced back at him. After allowing it for mere moments, she batted him across the face with her paw and then walked away, swaying her a*s from side to side, like she did with Ares.

The Siamese cat meowed at her. She looked back at him, gave him her signature don’t f**k with me stare, and continued walking back home. I smiled at the cat, watching him return to the Pringles bottle before I continued the walk home with Ruffles.

“So, Ruffles,” I said, shutting the pack house doors behind us. “Did you finally find your own man?”

Instead of answering me like she normally did, she sprinted up the stairs to her bedroom, like a teenager would after being confronted about dating someone for the first time. I smirked at the empty wooden stairs and crossed my arms over my chest, smelling Ares’s sweet aroma drifting through the house.

Ares wrapped his arms around me from behind and stuck his nose into my hair. “Are you jealous of our cat?” he asked, his voice all rough and edgy. It made me warm in all those sinful places.

“No.”

Maybe.

Wrapping his hand around the front of my neck, he pushed me against the wall. “I’m all yours, Kitten.” Ares sucked on my mark between his lips and drew his tongue over the small scars from his canines, making me shiver in delight. “Especially after this morning.”

“After this morning?” I asked, digging my claws into the wall until the white paint chipped.

“You don’t know how turned on I was when you took out this little dagger of yours”—he pulled my silver knife from my back pocket and tossed it onto the side table—“and killed those hounds with me.” He pressed his hardness into my backside, slipped his hand into my pants, and gently teased my clit. “It made me want to take you right then and there.”

Heat gathered in my core. I pushed him away and walked backward up the stairs. “What happened to you, Alpha? The Ares I met at the lake would’ve taken me right then and there. He wouldn’t have waited.”

Ares growled lowly and stalked up the stairs toward me with darkening brown eyes. “Kitten, don’t taunt me.”

Wanting to tease him just a bit today, I shrugged my shoulders and tried to suppress a giggle. “I guess that man is gone,” I said, and immediately sprinted up the rest of the stairs, knowing that Ares would catch me and make me his.

Before I could make it into the hallway, Ares caught my wrist, twirled me around, wrapped his hand around my throat, and pushed me down the hallway. I stumbled backward and stared up into his glowing golden eyes as his hand tightened around my throat.

He let out a guttural growl from deep within him and roughly brushed his thumb over my jaw. “Keep talking, and you’ll end up on your knees.”

I’d take kneeling in front of Ares as punishment any day.

I seized his wrist, my cheeks flushing, and said, “So … weak.”

After shoving me onto my knees in the middle of our hallway, Ares clutched my chin and forced me to look up at him. He stepped closer to me, so his bulge in his gray sweatpants was inches from my mouth. “I don’t have to tell you what to do, do I?”

Deciding to play with him, I innocently stared up at my alpha through my lashes, my core clenching in anticipation. All I wanted was for him to take me savagely, like he had the morning he marked me in the prison.

After a few moments of my defiance, Ares grabbed me by the throat again, pulled out his hard c**k, and rubbed it against my lips, coating them in his pre-c*m. “Open your mouth and suck it,” he demanded. And when I didn’t, he slapped his d**k against my swollen lips. “Open.”

Needing it now, I parted my lips and stuck out my tongue. He slapped his c**k against it over and over as the heat built in my core.

He grasped my jaw to hold my mouth open, pushed his head into me, and then pulled it out. “You’re going to have to beg for it now.”

“Please.”

He gifted me with another inch and pulled himself out again. “Beg.”

“Please, Ares.”

Another inch. “Louder.”

“Goddess, Ares, please give it to—”

He shoved his c**k all the way down my throat until his balls pressed against my lips. And even then, he forced more of himself into me until they were in my mouth. I stared up at him through big, teary eyes, gagging and slobbering on his c**k, just like how he wanted me to.

Ares lightly smacked the back of my head with his hand, ramming his c**k even further down my throat. After pushing deeper into me, he wrapped his hand around the front of my neck and jerked himself off inside of it.

I placed my hands on his thighs to push him away, but he held me tighter against him.

“Let me see your pretty eyes, Kitten,” he purred.

I glanced up at him through my lashes, my cheeks flushing.

“You look so damn sexy with my c**k down your throat.”

Goddess, I love this so f*****g much.

“Tell me you love it, Aurora.”

When I parted my lips to get out those words, I could only manage a few throaty gargles as Ares decided to start pounding into my throat. He wrapped his hands in my hair, pulling me toward him with every thrust.

“What was that, Kitten?” he asked, taunting me like I had done with him.

I closed my eyes, trying to form coherent words this time.

He pulled himself all the way out of my throat and slapped his c**k against my lips. “Eyes on me.”

I collapsed onto my hands and looked up at him through glossy eyes. He bent down, roughly snaked his hand around my throat, and pulled me to my feet. After pinning me to the wall, he rubbed my spit and drool off my chin and then stuck his fingers into my mouth.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered, “While I watch.”

Not having to be told twice, I slipped my hand into my underwear and rubbed my fingers against my clit. My legs trembled slightly, and I curled my toes, the pressure rising in my core. He stared down at me with those hungry golden eyes and held himself back.

“Faster, Aurora.”

My fingers moved faster and harder against my clit. The pure intensity of an o****m was about to rip its way through me. I closed my eyes but reopened them when he tightened his grip on my neck.

“Please,” I whispered, my cheeks flushing.

“Harder.”

All I needed was him inside of me. Thrusting into me. Taking me. Making me his. I imagined his c**k sliding into my p***y until all of him disappeared, his c*m leaking out and running down my thighs.

Just as I was about to tip over the edge, Ares growled, “Stop.”

I furrowed my brows. “Stop?” I asked in a breathy whisper.

“Touch your p***y but don’t come, or there will be f*****g consequences for you this time.”

I rubbed my clit again, almost immediately returning to the brink of an o****m. Ares brushed his fingers against my breast and trailed it over my n****e through my shirt, teasing me. A wave of pleasure rolled through me, yet I held myself back from unraveling. When he pinched my n****e, I moaned out loud and clenched hard.

“You’re not coming, are you?”

“No, Alpha.”

He growled under his breath. “Good. Now, stop.”

After forcing myself to pull my hand away so I didn’t come without his permission, I took a shaky breath. I stood there, shifting from foot to foot, trying hard to ease the ache between my legs. “Ares, please, give it to me.”

I begged for him. Straight-up begged.

He stepped away and smirked at me. “Is my little Kitten begging for me now?”

“Ares …” I whimpered.

“I’m not f*****g you again until the Luna Ceremony.”

My eyes widened. “The Luna Ceremony? That’s almost two weeks away.”

He slapped my a*s and winked. “Better control yourself, Kitten.”

But he was the one who would have to control himself because I couldn’t wait two weeks for him to f**k me again. I would get under his skin, break his will, make him desperate to f**k my p***y again.

I stood on my tiptoes and placed a hot, lingering kiss on his mouth. “Better control yourself, Alpha.”