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I gasped, tears forming in my eyes. "He killed her?" I cried as anger and betrayal tore at my heart.
"Yes," he replied solemnly, his gaze filled with sympathy.
I might not remember anything about my time with Alistair, but the rage within me felt old, like it extended for far longer than what I’d just learned.
For the first time, the idea of killing my mate didn’t seem so insane.
I took a few deep breaths, trying to let go of the bloodlust.
I finally got a hold of myself and glanced up at Ares. I could tell there was more to the story.
The smart thing to do would be to get everything I could out of him, but it had been a freaking hard month.
"How about you show me why everything smells like apples on the street," I say quietly, watching a woman push a baby carriage down the sidewalk.
"Are you sure?" he asked softly.
I couldn’t speak then, I felt too choked up because I could feel how much he cared about me. So I just nodded.
He pressed another kiss against my hand and stood up, leading me to a small café on the other side of the fountain. Every step we took towards it, the apple smell grew stronger, until I was salivating.
Ares opened the door for me and I stepped inside, immediately in love with the quaint café. There was a line at the counter, and I could see a beautiful display of desserts and sandwiches sitting behind the glass. There were small wooden tables set up around the room, and most of them were full. I liked that people didn’t automatically try to allow Ares to go first, it spoke to the ease that he had with them.
It hit me then…I was pretty sure that Marcia was human. Staring around the room, I was pretty sure that they wereallhuman.
"Do they know you're a vampire," I whispered.
"Don't say it out loud," he practically screamed, making sure that every person in the room was staring at us. "They can't know that I'm a vampire," he continued theatrically.
The couple in front of us snorted and rolled their eyes, shaking their heads fondly at Ares’s antics.
Everyone else was laughing, and then they went back to what they’d been doing…eating their delicious food.
My cheeks were on fire. "You're an idiot," I murmured, my wolf agreeing inside of me.
Ares winked, and his arm slid around my waist until I was plastered against him.
But again…it felt so right.
"Everyone has known that I'm a vampire from the very beginning. I met them when I was out on a mission for a vampire group…‘The Hunters’. They already knew that other creatures existed, since the Fae King was set on torturing them. So a vampire’s existence wasn’t a huge shocker. And then when I showed how much I wanted to help them…I guess they stopped caring aboutwhatI was, and focused more onwhoI was." He examined me closely, because apparently this was knowledge I would've had before, but I was just drawing a blank about now.
"And they weren't scared of you at the beginning?"
His face darkened. "They were terrified at first. They'd already been tortured by another fantasy creature, so they had high doubts that I wasn't just going to go on a rampage and eat them all. But eventually they saw…" He shook his head, his eyes looking lost in the past. "The Fae King rules a completely separate kingdom from the bitch who took you. He makes Daria look like a pussy cat.”
I grimaced at the thought of someone worse than her.
“Their community was attacked soon after I arrived…and I was wounded. They could've just left me there to die. But they didn't," he said softly as we moved up in line. "Instead they set up a blood bank, so they could nurse me back to health. I guess we owed each other our lives, and that was the foundation for a beautiful friendship."
I stared around the room at the happy people, finding it surprisingly easy to picture them nursing Ares back to health.
"Where do you get the blood you drank this morning?"
"Oh, you noticed?" he said, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck.
I scoffed, thinking it would be impossible not to notice that someone was drinking a coffee mug filled with red blood.
"It's part of our supply runs. We get blood from a blood donation center, saying we order it for a hospital entity we made up. And it ensures that I always have food while I'm here."
