Come Here, Kitten: A Steamy Greek Mythology Fantasy Romance

AURORA “A urora!” Mom shouted from downstairs. “I don’t want you sneaking out tonight while your father and I are gone.” I pulled Tony’s Sanguine Wilds sweatshirt, which I’d stolen from him, over my head to mask my scent and opened my bedroom window. “I know!” I said. She’d told me that every night this week, and I definitely hadn’t left the house once—or so she thought. As far as she knew, I was the perfect little girl who she had been shaping for years to take her place when she stepped down as alpha; the girl who trained relentlessly during the day by herself because her mom didn’t allow her to train with the bigger wolves; the girl who just sat in her room all night, studying textbook after textbook about the most successful alphas in history. Their strengths. Their weaknesses. Their every move. “I’m being serious, A,” she said, her voice stern and powerful. “Don’t leave this house.” I gazed at my cat, Ruffles, who stopped mid-lick to give me a sassy eye roll from her side of my bed while I crawled out of the window, hanging on to the wooden windowsill with just my upper body. “I won’t!” Moonlight flooded in through my window, illuminating Ruffles’s gray fur. I blew her a kiss and let go of the window, falling two stories to the ground. With a thud, I landed in a pile of blue blow-up rafts from the lake, which I’d strategically placed right under my window for this exact reason. Mom knew I was training to become alpha, but she didn’t know that a woman like me had needs. And those needs required me to be at the lake every night at eleven p.m. to meet Tony for our midnight swim. I brushed off some dirt and lifted my nose to the air, inhaling a whiff of ash, charcoal, and marshmallows from the house next door. All I wanted to do was sink my teeth into a s’more and— The front door of the pack house opened, and I ducked behind the bushes in the front yard. Mom and Dad walked out of the house to attend some urgent meeting they were hosting with the other packs in the area. And apparently, I wasn’t invited. I watched them impatiently, tugging some berries off the bush and popping them into my mouth. With brows furrowed up in fear, Mom grasped Dad’s hand tightly. “Ares is coming,” she whispered. I rolled my eyes. Ares is coming. Ares is coming. Ares is coming. That was all they’d been whispering about the entire week. The oh-so-great alpha of the east was burning up the lands, slaughtering the innocent, taking the weakest packs, and creating an empire for himself. And we were next. Supposedly. Dad closed the front door. “What are you planning to do when he comes?” he asked. I sighed to myself, wishing he’d grow a backbone. I loved Dad more than anything, but sometimes, he couldn’t think for himself. Since my brother Jeremy had died—I frowned at the mere thought of him—he hadn’t been the same. He’d lost his purpose to lead this pack with Mom, and he let her run this pack however she wanted—even if her decisions weren’t always the most informed. If she listened to me, I’d tell her not to worry about anything. Alphas like Ares were easy to get rid of as long as we had the right resources—beautiful women, a night he wouldn’t ever forget, and a few drinks spiked with wolfsbane. “He’s slaughtered every pack in his wake,” Mom said, her voice hushed. “We’re not as strong as we used to be, and”—she looked toward my window, and I ducked out of the way, so she wouldn’t see me—“Aurora can’t fight.” I broke a branch off the bush and clenched it in my fist, a wave of shame washing over me. Aurora can’t fight. Her words hit me hard, struck me right through the damn heart. Aurora can’t fight. I’d heard those words my entire life. Everyone in our pack had heard those words, too, and they all knew it to be true. A misfit like me couldn’t fight, not after Jeremy had been murdered in cold blood by those feral rogues. Aurora can’t fight. Dad hushed Mom and opened the door to their white sedan for her. After ushering her into the car, he backed out of the driveway and sped down the street. I stood back up, throwing the stick to the ground, and hurried through the lush green forest with my arms wrapped around myself. Damn her. I tried so hard to make her happy, to be strong for our pack, to be someone they could be proud of, but … I would never live up to their reputation. I wouldn’t be the first female alpha to grace these lands, like Mom was, and I didn’t possess any of the qualities of the adored and honored warriors of Dad’s family who had won the War of the Lycans centuries ago. I was just Aurora, the nineteen-year-old girl sneaking out of her parents’ pack house to f**k Tony at the lake. Sanguine Wilds Forest stretched for thousands of miles across this continent. And while Mom only owned about twenty miles in each direction, warriors prowled through the thick brush for miles, looking for rogues. There were more guards in the forest compared to the last few nights, which meant one thing. Mom expected Alpha Ares to be here soon. I sighed and took the hidden route to the lake. I shimmied through a deserted cave, climbed down a slight cliff, and walked right off the property without anyone seeing. Nobody knew about the secret pathway, except me. After a few moments of surveying the area to make sure nobody was following me, I walked around one of the larger mountains that Jeremy used to always take me to and headed straight toward the lake. The air smelled fresh tonight, a sweet yet unfamiliar scent drifting through the woods. My fingers brushed against the gnarled tree bark as I walked out from the forest and toward the small opening of the lake. The moon glimmered off the water, lightning bugs floating above it. I frowned. I guessed Tony was late. I sat down on some rocks and dipped my feet into the water, splashing them around and creating ripples. All I had been craving for the past twenty-four hours was Tony playfully pushing me into the lake with all of my clothes still on, watching me get soaked through the tiny pink tank top that I had worn for him, pulling off his shirt and showing me all that thick muscle underneath.