Chapter 36: Shifting Emotions, Growing Feelings, and Bothersome Elders

| | ARES POV | |

Blankness. Coldness. Emptiness. Numbness.

It's all my heart has ever known and felt in my long life.

While it particularly hadn't been anyone's fault but my own, too focused on my goals and ambitions to give way to feel something else.

I simply couldn't afford it. Not with the hovering danger over our heads. Not with the constant threats. Not with the lurking enemies.

The coldness I had frozen my heart with, I believed for it to be ever lasting. I thought nothing would change even after meeting my 'mate'.

I was proven terribly wrong.

As her chest rose up and down, her soft puffs of breath brushed my fur with soothing warmness, and her cold body lay sprawled on top of me. I knew I was a goner.

I had overestimated the temperature of the chilling coldness, and her presence easily melted it all with one touch. One smile. One glance.