"I will not be summoned like some mongrel pup!' Cyrus bellowed, shoving the double doors to Ares' office and the clanging sound had augmented to the significance of his sudden dramatic arrival, not to mention his vexation.
He stood like a rock in his doorway, stubbornly refusing to walk in until he was acknowledged. He hadn't always been like this to him, so piqued and bothered to be in his presence. But when he had explained what happened with Skyler and him, he got crossed.
Especially when he told him Skyler had been trying to warn him beforehand.
And if he could, he wouldn't have concerned himself in coming to see him anyway, but at the end of the day, Ares was still his Alpha and he had to obey him. It was apparent to Cyrus that he had been communicating with someone on the other side of the telephone just before he had entered, so he waited until Ares was settled.
"I'm beginning to think that knocking is a foreign concept to you" Ares stated, minutely annoyed at him for causing such disturbance and acutely aware of why he was behaving the way he did.
He couldn't blame him.
So instead he ignored his little flare-up.
"Well guess what Ares" He paused to make sure that his attention was nowhere else but on him before he continued by saying. "It is. It is a foreign concept and thank you for noticing"
Ares scowled in spite of himself, slightly regretting that he had told him everything that happened, otherwise he wouldn't have to be dealing with a sass-induced, cheeky Cyrus, and Ares knew he wouldn't stop until Skyler had awoken from her coma.
It has already been a week, and she was still showing no signs of consciousness.
And that fact made him anxious-a feeling he rarely if ever felt.
"Why have you called for me Ares," He asked formally, sashaying his way over to one of the leather-padded mahogany chairs that were in front of Ares' desk, but before his derriere could touch the soft surface of the cushions, he was already back on his feet at Ares' admission, staring at him wide eye.
"Frederic is on his way here" He confessed looking unbothered and oddly calm, which equally pissed off Cyrus. 'How could he be so nonchalant when that dribble of piss was coming here to take what was not his to that rotten court'
He had known Ares from a very, very long time and if he was just going to sit there and do nothing, worse, let them take her then he would not forgive him for that.
"So you're just going to sit around and wait until they take her-
"Do not blind yourself with such deluding thoughts Cyrus" He retorted, irked that he would utter such waste of words. "If I was going to let them take her, then keeping her a secret up till this point would have been pointless wouldn't it?" He argued, yet it was more of a rational statement than a question.
And he was adamant to stay by his words, he knew for a fact that Skyler would suffer there, all because of him and the sins he had committed two decades ago. He was a criminal after all and all criminals had to atone for their sins one way or the other, unfortunately, he would have to do so by giving up his mate.
But he wasn't going to let that happen.
Cyrus plopped down in the chair in front of his desk, unashamedly gawking at Ares with a satisfied smirk. It was just the thing Cyrus had wanted him to say and now that he had admitted it there was no denying it now.
"You care about her don't you?" He asked with an encouraging edge to his tone and Ares averted his eyes from his piercing gaze fully ignoring him.
"You do don't you, and here I thought you were never capable of feeling anything, other than being a total asshole" He joked and Ares removed himself from behind his desk to stand in front of his ceiling-to-floor glass window.
"First comes the care and concern, then the love and romance and before you know it-
"Could you shut the hell up" He interrupted, getting tired of Cyrus's sudden explosion of words. "It's not romance... Its penance" And if Cyrus wasn't aware of what Ares had been doing in the past week he would have been asking himself what the heck he was talking about.
'By penance you mean visiting her three times a day to oversee her getting her medicine on time not to mention the four guards that you have stationed outside of the ICU she's in, are you sure you really want to call that penance or maybe its kindness?"
Again he didn't respond. Deep down he knew that Cyrus was right, but kindness was a thing that would never associate itself with him, so even if it was kindness indeed, he would always mask it as penance, for his sins.
-------------------------------------
Following day
"How is she doing?" Ares asked, his voice barely above a mumble. He was watching her from a distance outside her hospital room, as he always did and as was recommended by the doctor himself, he couldn't bring himself to go inside and actually see the state she was in.
He just couldn't, or he would lose his control along with his mind.
And if that were to happen again, then a long string of misadventures would follow suit, starting with those undead maggots.
Ares clenched his jaw to calm the raw whirlpool of anger that was stirring within him, refusing to let his dark side consume him and stopping himself before he continued to indulge with that line of thought.
"She is doing fine, however, it's hard diagnose her with a fitting medication, considering that we have no idea what her sickness is" Dr. Alexandru explained and Ares went still.
Sickness?
She wasn't sick before, well, apart from always looking a little lost and sad, Ares couldn't think of anything that would put her in such a serious state. After Cyrus had placed her in the ambulance she was awake, then once she passed out, she never opened her eyes again.
Could it have been because of the mark?
But it couldn't be, the doctor had reassured that the mark had nothing to do with it, so what else could it be?
After a while both of them just stood side by side by side and said nothing, for there wasn't anything to say really. Dr. Alexandru turned his head towards his Alpha and even though it would appear that he was looking at the girl inside, Skyler, he was not.
In fact, he was staring at the reflection of the girl that was timidly staring at them from around the corner behind them.
"Oh, uhm-
He said turning to catch the eyes of the girl that was staring at them before she hid behind the wall. "That girl have come here quite a few time to visit Skyler, but the guards never let her proceed any further- what's her name again, ah yes- Millena. She claims Skyler is her friend"
"Good, no one apart from me or Cyrus is welcomed here" He answered crudely but it came off more as a command and the doctor nodded not daring to object. He remembered the first time he came here to work under him as his doctor and the first encounter he had with him made him want to turn tail and run.
At that time, it was so difficult to come around him, because he couldn't tell if the fixed stony expression on his face could be even be called a face or if it was just a mere mask, a mask cleverly made of flesh because the eyes that were shining through the holes in the flesh held no expression whatsoever.
But now-things were different.
He thought, looking between his Alpha and Luna, however it was just in time to see her flying up in a sitting position and taking a sharp intake of breath with wide, wild eyes.
She was awake!
47 minutes later
Skyler
Their bodies were crowding me and I felt suffocated, so you couldn't imagine the relief I felt when the doctor and the two other nurses left after doing what doctors and nurses did when someone had just awoken from a coma.
I closed my eyes but quickly reopened them when flashbacks of what happened came rushing into my brain but it was the same scene that seemed to repeat itself.
When Aleister stood over me after he had sunken his fangs into my neck, I couldn't seem to physically hear or feel anything, but I remember his mouth moving, and now that I was conscious and more aware I remembered exactly what he said to me after he had a taste of my blood.
'Ah I see, it appears that you are burdened with a rather interesting fate'
But from all that I have experienced, it would be quite foolish of me not to feel wary of what he said. From the corner of my eye I saw a figure moved to the entrance of the door and when I turned to look at who it was, my breath stubbornly refused to leave my throat.
I looked up at him and was startled to see that his eyes were not the usual cold and calculating but instead, the dark pools of amber had appeared lukewarm
"Skyler" He called, considerably soft and I felt my eyes prickling with tears.
Even though everything that happened to me was because of him, he was the one I was looking forward to see the most, yet with that said I was still very upset with him.
I waited with a kind of bated breath to see if he was going to come rushing in and swoop me into his arms, but from his stance and demeanor I could tell he was hesitant and it was my tears that did the honor of running, running down my face.
His gaze softened while he began to cross the room over to where I was and I shifted so that I was laying on my side with my back facing him, yet in spite of doing that he came around to the other side.
"Skyler" He called once more and I did not respond. He inched closer, standing achingly near me looking vaguely confused and concerned. My eyes widened momentarily when his intoxicating scent that clung to his skin, and dragged all the way down to the pits of my lungs.
He smelt different, it was something very masculine and potentially dangerous that I found very compelling.
"Are you thirsty?" He asked, taking up a glass of water from bedside table and inching it towards my lips. I raised up reaching my hand out to take it from him, but he retract his arm even before I could grab it.
"Let me feed you" He stated and I looked at him as if he had just grown a new pair of eyes but he carried on with his mission.
After he was finished, he set the glass back on the table and proceeded to wipe away the excess water by grazing the pad of his thumb across my chapped lips. His touch had sent shock waves rippling across the surface of my skin and a long repressed fluttering stirred inside of my stomach.
They trailed from my lips to the curve of my cheek then he took my chin into his hands where his dark sober gaze met my defiant one.
"How are you feeling?" He said and you could literally here crickets chirping in the background. "Why do you keep ignoring me?" He growled this time and his tone filling with antagonism meanwhile his irritation was ticking in the red zone.
I slapped his arm away and swung my legs to the edge of the bed trying to get off but he stopped me by shifting to stand in front of me while simultaneously placing both arms on either side of my body, effectively seizing me in my spot.
"I won't ask you again" Was his subtle response and on normal occasions I would feel scared but at the moment I didn't care.
"Hmm" I murmured turning my head to the side and darting my eyes anxiously, not wanting to look at him even though my nerves were bobbing and throbbing with excitement. I had thought that just being around him wouldn't be so bad after quite a few circumstances, but what a fool I was.
"Why are you being so difficult?' He questioned titling his head to the side, a notion that I found weirdly seductive and I snapped my head in his direction so fast I swore I would have had a whiplash.
"Oh trust me, I have just started getting difficult with you- Ares" I replied unremorseful and he furrowed his eyebrows. For a moment we went silent, with him drinking in my features and my body shivering with anticipation.
I followed the angle of his high prominent cheekbones, then to his straight, noble nose and then to the square of his jaw until my eyes rested on his full lips noticing the curve and fullness of his lower one.
I looked up and realized that he was doing the same thing which only added to the desirability that I didn't know I had for him.
"If this is about what-happened, then you should know, you have no reason to fret" He comforted, reaching out to smooth his long cool fingers on the healed area that Aleister had bitten as if he was trying to apologize to my skin and I steeled myself for his touch.
"You say that, but you won't even trust me to tell me what happened with you and those people years ago. Not only did you hurt those people but now those people are coming back into your life Ares, when are you going to realize that the consequences of your actions are going to hurt me and only me?"
"Some things are just better left unsaid" He said, taking a step back away from me and his voice hardening like concrete.
"Yeah right, I bet you killing my friend with your semen back at the estate, better be left unsaid as well shouldn't it" I countered matching his tone and I watched as his eyebrows met in the middle with genuine confusion and repugnance.
"Skyler, what the fuck are you talking about"
"Don't act dumb Ares, I know you did it, I also know that your curse wasn't just a rumor and I can see it now. I knew the witch was right about everything. She told me told me that this crap with the vampires was going to happen and I was dense not to listen to her!" I shouted now standing in front of him.
"The witch?" He said with humid detest. "You knew this was going to happen and you didn't tell me?"
"I tried telling you Ares" I started and I felt my voice breaking. "But you wouldn't listen to me, you never trust anything that I ever have to say" And a sob tear through my throat. I expected him to comfort me but he was back to his cold and distant self, like a rock against your skin in the shade of a setting sun.
I saw him reach into his pockets to hand me a handkerchief and like life disappointments I accepted it and wiped my face yet before I could hand it back to him he was already brushing paste me, heading to the door.
"Where are you going?" I called after him.
"To find that witch" Was his sharp answer, not even stopping, and when he was at the door, he paused before continuing.
"Oh and Skyler, I do not screw humans" He said heartlessly and the cold undertones to his voice felt like hidden daggers that went directly through my heart.
------------------------------------------
I heard a soft knock on the door, and my heart picked up thinking it was Ares that had come back but I was a little bummed to see that it was Cyrus instead. He peaked from around the door and smiled before entering and saying 'hi'.
I mumbled groggily but I was positive he heard me.
"Is everything ok?" He asked taking a seat beside my bed, and I didn't bother to look over at him, ashamed to let my tears fall in front of him.
"No. Everything is not ok Cyrus. I feel like I'm walking on a tight rope across a treacherous gorge waiting for a strong wind to send me falling to my absolute death" I sniffed.
"Not to mention that Ares is still- well you know, Ares" I said and he cackled. When his laughter died down he began to speak.
"Listen Skyler, I know that Ares can be a reprehensible shit tea-bag at times, but at the same time, I can say this with every fiber of my being that he won't let anything like what happened the other day to ever happen again. He is a changed man, and what you need to know, is that the Ares you know now isn't the same Ares he was years ago. And I mean this in a good way Skyler, he isn't the type of man that is going to sit around and watch you die, because of something he did" He said, trying to put me at ease and his gaze softening while giving me a warm smile.
But it didn't.
"But I did die Cyrus" I vocalized and he blinked, tilting his head to the side as if he was confused.
"When Aleister bit me, I did die. And I think- I think I saw something..."