“Why would she agree to do that?” Sabina growled. “That’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever fucking heard, and trust me, I’ve heard a lot of shit in my time.”
“I’ll bet,” I rumbled, and then I raised my hands. “I’m only the messenger. I don’t have all the answers, and I shouldn’t even know what I do.”
“How do you know anything?” Sabina queried.
“I heard them arguing way too many times over the twins. My dad hated them with a passion. I think that’s why she had to give you to Rebekkah, because she feared what he might do to you.
“I distinctly remember my father changing when I was a kid. He was a good man, a decent father, and a fair leader. Then he changed.”
“Didn’t you know about the second mate? The babies? She must have been pregnant?”
“She told me she lost the baby she was carrying.” I rubbed my brow. “I remember her being very upset and going away for a while.”
“Bet your damn ass she’d have been upset. I can’t imagine having to give up my kids because my partner was such an asshole.”
“Multiple partners don’t often come along, and when they do, it’s with omegas,” I tried to reason, even though there was no reasoning in this situation. When I’d figured out what had happened, I’d always been wary around them both. To know they were capable of… Well, it didn’t inspire trust. I could love them as my parents without respecting them, and love without respect meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Still, in my position now, things were a tad different, and I could view things from Father’s side. “Usually, the mates appear before the claiming, because the Mother knows these situations can happen.
“After forty-six years with my mother, after all that time together, how do you think he’d have suddenly felt, having her heart cleaved in two and her love for him being split with another man? I can already tell you right here, right now, that I’m okay with Ethan and Austin being your mates because we’ll be claiming you together. But if they came along after we’d been together for decades? I’d want to slice them from chin to ass.”
Austin released a shaky breath. “I hate to agree, but I know what you mean, Eli.”
His eyes were intense, but no more so than Ethan’s, who raked Sabina with a glance that would have probably scorched her.
“I concur,” he ground out.
“So even though my father was an asshole, it should never have worked out the way it did.”
“Why did it? If the Mother is always right and never does shit wrong, how did she get shit wrong in this instance?”
I could feel her umbrage all the way over here, and I was touched for the twins because it was on their behalf, and they deserved that. They truly did.
“Because we still have free will. I think, and I could be wrong, that your father, Austin and Ethan, got out of prison. Another reason mine didn’t like him, and didn’t declare him to the pack.”
“You don’t think your father did something to theirs, do you?”
“I don’t think my mother would have stayed with him if he had,” I told her honestly. “She loved him right until the end, and each day without him after he passed was hard-won and done only because she was scared about the pack’s future. I don’t think she’d have done that, would have strived so hard if she hated him. Or had a reason to hate him. But equally, I wouldn’t put it past him if he could figure out a way to do so without her knowing about his involvement.”
She plucked at her bottom lip, and I could sense her need to comfort the twins, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not as an omega and not as a mate, because we had stupid rules that needed to be abided by.
Goddamn those rules.
“So, we’re brothers?” Ethan asked.
I nodded.
“That’s why you’ve always been nice to us?”
Ethan’s tone was too wooden for my liking, so I murmured softly, “Yes, but mostly because I like you too. It isn’t your fault you were born as twins, and it isn’t your fault that the pack is superstitious to the point of idiocy. Your ethos matches mine, you’re hard workers, you care about the pack and will go to another level to aid people who hate you. You’re kind, good men, and I’m honored that you’re my friends as well as my brothers.”
Sabina shot me a look, and I saw something shining in her eyes that filled me with warmth. I hadn’t said that to impress, though, I’d said it simply because it was the truth.
“Where do we go from here?” Ethan rasped.
“We go nowhere. Nothing has changed. The pack doesn’t need to know, especially if it will confuse things, and I think it might.
“By your own right, tomorrow, you’ll beat Brandon Wright and become beta, Ethan. Austin, you will take over as enforcer, and I’m going to shore up your position so that all enforcers in the future have a council role. I think it’s stupid that they haven’t, and I know, down in the South, enforcers have held a damn sight more power than in the North for decades.
“We’re going to share our omega, we’re going to ground her because she needs us, and you’re going to live a happy life where you prove, day by day, that you’re not cursed by the Mother. If anything, you’re a gift to the pack because you keep our omega safe.”
Ethan’s voice was choked when he croaked out, “Got it all mapped out, huh?”
I smirked at him. “I’m the alpha. It’s what I do.”
Six
Sabina
I was nervous.
I’d spent the second night in a room fit for a duchess, with a duvet on the bed that I’d seen in furnishing shops before and had drooled over—four hundred dollars for a duvet in a guest bedroom?
Who had that kind of money?
Apparently, my mate did.
Or soon-to-be mate.
I wasn’t sure how that worked. Was there a fiancé phase with wolves?
An engagement period?
I figured there was, but I was still a little disappointed.
Where was the passion?
The sparks?
They were under the surface, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
I wanted to burn in them. Wanted to start a fire that we’d never be able to put out, because the promise?
It was inside me.
Inside them.
I could see it, feel it, but they’d yet to show me it aside from in heady looks that made my senses reel.
It was surreal to know the need was there, and yet, not be able to touch it.
In the human world, control wasn’t something I thought most people had. If anything, we didn’t have much of it. We acted on our passions, we flung ourselves wholeheartedly into them, especially when it came to sex. Where that was concerned, we were A-okay with fucking anyone because we needed an orgasm.
This was different.
Ironically, looking back and taking hold of that judgment as a human, I’d been different. I hadn’t slept with anyone since Kian. Not a single goddamn man.
I’d never wanted another.
Ever.
I’d thought he was it for me, and sure, I had urges, but I never acted on them because I wanted to burn those urges off on him. Not some random man whose only value to me was a functioning penis.
But here, now? I was realizing that my level of restraint was nothing compared to what powerful wolves were capable of.
“You’re thinking hard. Stop it.”
Austin’s teasing voice whispered into my mind, and I turned to face him, smiling when he slipped his arm around my waist. The ease with which he held me would never stop taking my breath away. It was like we’d known each other for a lifetime, when that was anything but the truth.
Wearing a pair of jeans that cupped his fine butt to perfection, and a plaid navy shirt with a white tee underneath it, he was the opposite of dressed up, but he looked hotter than a man in an expensive suit—well, aside from Eli, who in his tailored get up gave me a definite lady boner.
The blues in his clothing highlighted the blond streaks
in his hair, and in the light of dawn, with the play of shadows from the woods in which we were walking, he looked brooding. Amusing, considering he was the least brooding of the three.
I’d admit that I preferred having him walk so close to me.
Trekking in the woods wasn’t something I particularly appreciated, and this forest looked like the kind of hunting ground a serial killer would get off on. There were thousands of trees here, all on rough terrain. Red and gold leaves added color to the drab scene, but because it was so dark, they didn’t have much of an overall effect. To be honest, they were a pain too. The leaves hid the sprawling roots, which meant I had to step with caution.
Until Austin had appeared, I’d been walking behind Eli with him leading the shebang, and according to him, this was the last time I’d ever have to do that.
It amused me because, in my world, that was how it worked. The women walked behind the men. Always. That was just the way of it. Two steps behind as a standard.
Eli had been apologetic as he tugged the coat around my body, like I couldn’t do it for myself, and as he’d buttoned me into the cape-like peacoat, he muttered, “Just this once. When Ethan is the beta, and I can finally claim you as the omega, you’ll always walk ahead of me.”
Always was a long time, I’d wanted to say to him, but his earnest discomfort had touched me. I’d never had anyone be genuinely discomfited around me, and it was sweet, especially on a man as powerful as him.
As the jaunty peacoat swung around my legs now, covering me up and warming me, even though it wasn’t particularly cold, I hummed as I murmured inwardly, “I’m not thinking. Hard, or otherwise.”
“Yes, you are. That’s how I can hear you.”
His snort was mental, and it made the nerve endings all the way down my spine jump up in a tidal wave that had me realizing just how much feeling I was storing inside myself.
Their control and mine were totally different things.
But I was ready.
More than that, the she-wolf was too.
Kali Sara, that was an odd realization. The animal inside me had an opinion. Who knew?
“She’s the one who’s wanting us at the moment,” Ethan informed me calmly. He walked behind me with Brandon Wright at his side as we all marched toward this totem that the entire pack seemed to center around.
“That’s weird—”
“Is it?” Eli butted in. “You’re attracted to us, but before, had we approached you as if you were a human, you’d deal with being courted, with being interested in us. The she-wolf doesn’t want to be courted. She knows what we are to her. She knows what you are to us. She senses all that and wants to take affirmative action, because until we claim you, she’ll be restless and without an anchor.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip, registering just how fucking weird it was that we were talking about an animal like it was capable of rational thought. Opinions were one thing. Anyone who had ever owned a pet knew they had preferences and weren’t afraid of letting you know that.
But rational thoughts?
Deep inside my mind, in parts of my brain I’d never registered before, on a different channel almost to where I listened to my men, I heard a growl.
Faint, but there.
Enough to make my head ache.
Enough to tell me that, damn straight, this bitch knew what she wanted.
Like he felt the ache as well, Austin reached up and rubbed a hand over the back of my head, cupping it in his palm. His heat ruptured the ache, however, and I knew the she-wolf was satisfied that I could communicate with my mates this way. If a ‘dog’ could purr, then I’d be purring—simple as that.
“So I don’t want you at all, then, hmm?” I asked, because I wanted to talk about something a little more normal than having a wolf in my head who had opinions and wasn’t afraid of letting me hear them.
Austin grinned at me, dipped his chin, brushed his nose down my cheek, and murmured out loud, “Oh no, you want us in all our forms, but still…it’s only been a week. That’s fast, even for humans—”
“Never heard of Tinder, have you?”
He wafted a hand at that. “They’re hookups. When you want someone for more than just a fuck, things don’t progress as swiftly as this.”
And he was right.
Most women wouldn’t put out on the first date because they thought it gave the man a bad impression, so my needs for the three of them, the urge to be razed to the ground in the desires flooding me… it made sense with the uniqueness of our bond.
I calmed down instantly at his rationale, and I felt bad because if anyone would have calmed me, I thought it would be Eli or Ethan.
I never thought Austin would be diplomatic.
“Ouch,” he muttered, but his lips twisted into a wry smile.
My nose crinkled. “You heard that too?”
His grin was sheepish. “Yeah, I heard that too.”
“I need to figure out how to switch this off and on.”
“Things will make more sense when you’re claimed. Your she-wolf will be calmer.”
“Is it this way for all newly turned shifters?” I inquired after I half gnawed my lip off.
Austin nodded. “It is. They’re only supposed to be transformed because they have a mate to anchor them.” He squeezed my hand. “Everything will make sense shortly.”
I gulped, relieved by the thought of having more control over this beast inside me whose power was brewing—deep in my being, I could feel how strong she was—and then, my mind was swept clean of all concern when I saw it.
The totem.
Dear Lord, it was massive.
As massive as…
I saw with my own two eyes how this was magical. That magic truly existed, because there was no way something that was essentially a stick could be thrust out of the ground with nothing tying it in place, yet it was able to stand there, so proud, protruding hundreds of feet into the sky like some kind of wooden skyscraper.
I gulped, suddenly overwhelmed and overawed at the sight.
Maybe my mates sensed it, because everyone stopped.
We were at the head of a conga line, dozens of people behind us, who’d apparently heard about the beta challenge and wanted to witness it.
While it seemed gory to me, to want to watch two animals fight it out, I came from a background where humans did the same so, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t unsettle my stomach that much.
However, what did?
That totem.
It was majestic.
Incredible.
Awe-inspiring.
Even from this far away, I could see the level of detail in the carvings. I figured that was a mixture of my newly attuned senses, but also a testament to the majesty of the monument before me.
Wolves’ heads, at least four of them, decorated the totem, each of them in a different pose. Snarling, calm, ears alert, head tipped down… Different shades of fur, different emotions conveyed.
Epic.
Absolutely epic.
How hadn’t this been found and captured on Instagram? Hell, why weren’t there a million tourists jostling into me as I took in the majesty of this incredible obelisk?
“Mate?”
I blinked at Eli, who’d turned around to look at me. “Yes?”
“Are you okay to move forward? The pack is growing restless.”
I couldn’t hear a word of dissent, but that Eli could, and that Austin gently nudged me into moving told me he sensed it too.
What could they hear?
Were people just rustling around or complaining about the abrupt standstill?
Embarrassed, I shuffled forward, and even though I had questions, I didn’t let them slip out, because there was no need.
I knew, instinctively, that there were no answers to my questions.
How could there be?
This was divine.
This was goddess gifted.
Something merely to accept and appreciate, rather than t
o question and query.
The height of a sequoia tree, even as the others around it swayed as the wind whipped around us, it remained still.
Frozen.
In both time and place.
The air around it was different, like it was turbocharged. Hot and cold, all at the same time, scenting of the ozone and earth, throbbing with a power that was anything but of this world.
We approached, edging ever closer, and as we did, my heart began to pound. I almost wanted to stand back again, to stop before I moved any closer to the overwhelming monolith, but just as I felt the deepest urge to run, to get away from this place, something snapped into place.
Into being even.
Kali Sara!
It was like…
“Your she-wolf is responding,” Austin told me quickly, his hand moving to my lower back. “The disturbance in the air is for those who do not belong to the pack,” he rumbled, the whisper of his breath dancing over my ear as he kept me in the loop.
“I’m not pack yet,” I rasped.
“And that’s why you felt the disturbance.” His lips brushed over my temple, loading me with warmth. “All will be well.”
His sudden formality made sense as the sheer power of the moment had us both responding. There was a gravitas in this place, that was for sure.
I could feel the magic sliding through my body, penetrating me almost.
I felt—
It was strange. But it was like the time when I’d lost my virginity.
Something alien, not of me, had thrust into me, causing me pain but pleasure at the same time.
This wasn’t painful, even if it was discomforting.
It was like…
The totem was welcoming me. The magic was testing me.
How was this possible?
How was any of this possible?
Somehow, this felt a thousand times crazier than the fact that I could shift into a wolf.
And that was the only way I could describe how awestruck I was.
I gulped when Austin tugged me deeper into the circle, and when he stopped us beside the totem where Eli had come to a standstill, the pack, a group of people I didn’t recognize, but whose numbers floored me, settled into place around us too. I got the feeling that the closer you were to the totem, the more power you had in the pack.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 14
