I glanced over at Ares, watching the sunlight flood in through the curtains and light every single angle of his perfect face, those godlike features all coming alive. The man, the myth, the wolf that the goddess blessed.

"This isn't over," Ares said, looking at me. "The Hounds will stay away for a little longer, but we need to find a way to keep this pack safe from their attacks. They're only getting stronger."

"We should build underground tunnels to keep pups safe during attacks," I said, remembering the exact system I had come up with almost fifteen years ago. It needed improvements, but I was sure I could figure it out with the help of Elijah's pack and their intelligence. "And we need to understand them."

"Capture one and torture the shit out of him."

My lips curled into a smirk, and I rolled onto my stomach, booping his abdomen with my finger. "No." I took a deep breath, knowing that this would sound so mad. "We should capture him, study him, and pick him apart if we need to."

Ares raised a brow. "Your father was right," he said. "I am rubbing off on you."

"Sometimes it's good to be a little bit crazy." I hopped off the bed and shrugged my shoulders. "Now, get up. We have one more thing to do before we even think about preparing this pack for another Hound war."

After throwing on Ares's t-shirt and tucking it into my jeans, I opened Ruffles's bedroom door. "Do you want to come with us?" I asked. She looked at me and then toward the window, as if she was ignoring me.

"Ruffles," Ares said behind me, placing his hands on my waist. Her head snapped in his direction, and she stood to her feet, purring. I stared at him with one brow arched. Damn, this cat loved him more than she loved me. Ares smiled at me. "Get your hat. It's sunny outside."

"Her hat?"

Ruffles jumped off the bed, disappeared under the bed, and came out with a tiny little blue hat between her teeth. She pulled it by it's string all the way over to Ares, who leaned down and fastened the cap on her head.

I crossed my arms and stared at him.

"What?" he asked. "I brought her to the store yesterday, and she picked it out."

"Ruffles has you whipped." I curled my arm around his and let Ruffles lead the way to the front door. We walked through the forest, letting the sun hit our faces. I retraced my steps to Mom's pack and then to the cave, listening for any sign of rogues or Hounds, but there weren't any.

"Jeremy told me to come here," I said when we reached the cave. "This is where he had dragged me away from the Hound attack at my mom's property." Though the cave smelt much worse than it had when I was here, it looked the same. Ruffles walked into it and immediately started sniffing around the perimeter. "He told me to dig."

Dressed in her little sunhat, Ruffles stopped in the corner of the cave, put her nose right to the ground, and sniffed hard. I walked over and crouched by her side, digging my claws into the dirt underneath her fingers. "Do you smell something?"

She continued to sniff as I pulled and tossed dirt behind me into a small pile. Every inch I dug, the stench became worse and worse. I sat on my knees, creating a larger and wider hole, hoping to find something.

And that's when Ruffles's eyes widened and her tail puffed out. She hissed down at the hole and hurried over to Ares, standing behind him in fear. I furrowed my brows at her, my heart rate slowly starting to quicken.

Ruffles wasn't afraid of just anything...

Ares walked closer to me and sat on his knees, helping me, while Ruffles stayed right by the exit to make a quick dash if anything happened. We continued to dig, our hole becoming bigger and bigger.

Sweat dripped down Ares's forehead, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. "We should get a shovel or something." He looked over at me. "You sure, your brother told you to dig here?"

"I'm positive," I said, leaning over the edge of the hole and digging some more.

Ruffles grabbed the back of my shirt with her teeth and tugged on it, trying to pull me back. When she had no success, she latched her teeth into Ares's forearm and pulled. He swiftly shook her off, telling her that he'd play with her later.

We must've dug three feet into the ground, the hole at least four feet wide. I was just about to give up when I heard Ares's claws scratch something relatively hard. He tensed and leaned over, kicking back dirt faster than he had before.

I squinted down into the darkness, and that's when I saw it. My eyes widened, and I scrambled backed on my hands and heels. What... what was that? Heart pounding, sweat forming on my neck, all my arm hairs sticking right up. It... it couldn't be.

Ares suddenly stopped digging and stumbled back.

"Oh, my Goddess..." I breathed out.

Though Ares had always been so strong and so fierce, a look of terror crossed his face. "We need to leave," he said, grabbing my wrist in one hand and Ruffles in the other, and staring wide-eyed at the hole. "We need to leave right now."

And in that moment I realized that Jeremy was right. There was something much worse than the Hounds coming for us. Something much, much worse.