It made sense when this was the center of their community, and what a community. Because I made it a habit to study people, to watch their features, to take note of their expressions and to read their auras, I noticed the instant someone walked into the invisible circle.
And it was invisible.
That I couldn’t see.
But I knew from their response when it happened. They all froze for a split second, then they shuddered as they moved in.
It was strange, like the magic was…scanning them as well?
If they were of the pack, then why did they freeze for that split second?
I knew my mates had to be hearing my thoughts, because, for whatever reason, I couldn’t shut them off, but they didn’t answer, and I figured these were more questions that would receive a response when I was claimed.
Kali Sara, I was looking forward to that moment, just for this instantaneous knowledge I was about to receive.
It felt like I was on the brink of opening Pandora’s box, but instead of all the evils in the world, I’d be gaining a universe worth of information.
Eli jerked me from my dazed thoughts as he stepped forward.
The clearing itself was around eighty feet wide, and now that I was here, I could see how there was a natural decline on the ground.
It was so slight that when you walked upon it, you didn’t feel it, but it meant that the people at the back were on higher ground than we were.
Which, I registered, also meant that the totem was higher than my initial impression had allowed me to believe.
People gathered around like the old-fashioned amphitheaters of the Roman era, and as they froze at Eli’s movement, I realized they were all tied to him in some way.
Did he talk to them mentally?
Or was it something the magic did?
Was there a magical loudspeaker or something?
Before I could wonder much longer, he called out, “Beta Brandon Wright is here today to fight the challenge from Ethan Carter. This fight will be until first blood. If either competitor takes it beyond that, then it will be until death.”
My mouth dropped open at that horrendous declaration, and when I flinched in Austin’s hold, he hushed me, and I noticed everyone else looked just as surprised.
Brandon Wright too.
Eli arched a brow at him, and the beta hunched his shoulders, ducking his head slightly, and I figured out what was happening.
My mate was shrewd.
He knew Brandon was going to lose. He knew pride would cause Brandon to carry on fighting when he should stop, and this was a means of discouraging the challenge from devolving.
Eli was, essentially, preventing Brandon’s child from losing its father.
Of course, it could go wrong, but I knew why Eli had done as he had.
I couldn’t say I loved my mates. I didn’t know them well enough. This claiming was going to be phenomenal, and I couldn’t wait for the union to deepen, but at that moment?
I knew loving them would be easy.
A man like Eli, so strong, so powerful, so proud, and yet so thoughtful. Protecting a child from a man’s ego.
Unlike Brandon, Ethan appeared neither pleased nor displeased by the alpha’s announcement.
Maybe he knew that was going to happen, or maybe he was just unaffected.
Of them all, even Eli, Ethan had the best poker face. I just wasn’t sure what he was hiding.
Maybe he was hiding a flood of emotions, or maybe he was just cold.
Like he heard my thoughts, he turned his expressionless face to me, and when our gazes clashed and held?
Kali Sara!
My body turned molten at the heat blazing in his eyes.
No way was this man cold.
Dear Lord!
I gulped, staggered back at the sight, and was grateful when Austin was there to catch me. He tucked me closer into my side, and in my ear, snickered. “You thought Ethan was cold?”
I bit my lip, feeling like a dumbass too, even though Austin didn’t exactly phrase my ignorance that way.
My heart was still pounding when Ethan turned away from me, and I realized Eli had told the crowd something else because, out of nowhere, the men began undressing. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Ethan naked, thanks to how they all would shift and could reappear sometimes nude, but my eyes definitely widened at the sight of Ethan’s bare back being revealed to me in front of this large crowd of people. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth at the sight, and I almost moaned when I saw his ass flexing as he pulled down his jeans.
Brandon was a handsome guy, I guessed, but his ass and dick held no interest to me.
What did?
Ethan and his nakedness, but not just the fact that I was attracted to him. But the fact that other women were too.
I had no idea how I knew for sure, I mean aside from the fact that he was gorgeous like a Hollywood movie star and there were women with pulses in the vicinity, but something else—
“You can scent their arousal,” Eli told me matter-of-factly.
The soft remark had me gulping.
“You can also feel their arousal because of what you are,” Austin stated calmly.
Both of them were so fucking serene that it made the anger burning in me, the sudden wrath, feel all the more ridiculous.
I stepped forward, but it wasn’t of my own volition. I hadn’t wanted to move, but I had anyway—the she-wolf made me.
Austin grabbed me, Eli took hold of my other arm, and then they dragged me back, and it was definitely dragging.
They had to hold me back, because the thought that these women could see my man’s swinging dick? Pissed. Me. The. Fuck. Off.
Especially when they hated him for being a twin!
Hypocritical bitches!
I snarled under my breath, and it echoed around the circle. People flinched at the sound and began cowering like I’d waved a gun at their faces. I jerked back when Eli, who’d been at my side, was suddenly in my face.
“Calm. Down.”
The words were stony, but I saw sympathy in his eyes, even if he had to control me.
I growled, “They can see him.”
Austin assured me, “They can, and you’re his, he’s yours. He doesn’t want them. He wants you.”
His rationale, this time, didn’t come in handy.
I wasn’t feeling logical.
If anything, I was feeling all kinds of things I’d never felt before!
It was so confusing, but more than that, it was exhausting.
Eli reached up, cupped my chin, and his thumb drifted across my cheek. “Let them carry on with the challenge, and the second you do, it’s over, and we can cement the ties between us. You’ll feel better then. You’ll know what we’re saying is the truth, and you’ll be living it rather than hearing it and having to believe in it because we told you.”
My throat felt thick with emotions, and I had to admit, it was a strange sensation because I wanted to cry, while also wanting to tear someone’s hair out.
The only saving grace?
The arousal I’d scented in the air—whatever it was that tied me to these people—it abated and was replaced with fear.
I hated that.
I’d been controlled through fear.
Been made to cower before it.
And that, more than my mates’ words, more than the logic they were trying to feed me, worked.
I’d been a victim. I’d been the underdog. I had no intention of making these people feel that way.
So, I relaxed.
I forced myself to do so.
I let the tension drift out of my shoulders, inhaled several times, and only when, after staring into my eyes for a good thirty seconds, Eli stepped back, did I realize he was satisfied.
The crowd was no longer jubilant or thrilled with the idea of the fight ahead. If anything, they were cowed, and they were eying the ground before shooting me wary looks.
Apparently, they’d just r
eceived their first taste of their new omega, and the last thing I’d done was impress them.
I wanted to close my eyes with disappointment. As a first impression, it couldn’t have gone much worse.
Austin’s arm tightened around me, and he hugged me into his side. “Don’t worry. They’ll understand when we claim you.”
Something about his words had my shoulders straightening again.
“Why will they understand? Will they feel a connection?”
“They’ll watch—”
My mouth dropped open at that. “No way in fuck.”
Eli cut us both a look, and I stopped talking, because I felt the alpha in him crowding me.
Crowding the she-wolf.
Demanding I obey.
Demanding silence.
I shut my mouth, even as I was well aware defiance blazed in my eyes, but he turned from me after his lips curved into a quick smirk, then returned his attention to the crowd.
“Let the challenge begin!”
I knew he made that call because he figured he’d best do so while I was being quiet and before I started another war.
Not that I was going to feel bad about that.
No way in hell was I going to have sex in front of these people—
Then, Brandon leaped at Ethan and all thoughts of sex, in public or not, disappeared as I was forced to focus on the fight.
I could feel that the two sides of me were at war now, more than before. It was discordant, like I wasn’t at peace, and I didn’t particularly like it.
Though I was used to violence because of my past, I’d never wanted to be around it, and I wanted to turn away. Wanted to ignore what was happening in front of me.
But the she-wolf? She was hungry for the fight, hungry to see her mate claim the role of beta and, more than that, she was feeling what the two men were experiencing which was beyond odd.
Ethan’s mind wasn’t on sex anymore. He was focused on the challenge too. But where Brandon Wright was antsy, edgy, and trying to find chinks in Ethan’s defense, my mate was bored.
I sensed that was his strategy—he was playing a waiting game. Brandon was dancing around like a fly who’d found a fresh pile of shit, while Ethan merely moved out of his way, never letting him score too many hits.
It was the strangest fight I’d ever seen in my life.
They punched like they were boxing, but when they kicked each other? And their dicks swung? I winced each time.
“This is why jockstraps exist,” I grumbled under my breath.
My mates heard me, but though they snorted, their attention was on the fight.
I sensed Brandon’s fatigue, just like Ethan’s strategy had predicted, and when that happened, he went from trying to uppercut Ethan’s nose into his brain to shifting into a wolf.
It happened so fast, in the blink of an eye. I knew my shift was still a little slow, a lot torturous, but for him? It was easy. Just like walking was, I guessed.
I thought about whether it would be that easy for me, but then I switched focus when Ethan didn’t shift.
My mouth dropped open, and I lurched forward, heading closer to the small ring the men were fighting in. The trees around the outer circle whistled around us, the wind whipping them and the branches around as though they were in a different city, not mere feet away, from where we were standing, and Eli grabbed me and jerked me back into his hold.
“Why isn’t he shifting?” I cried out, terrified the snarling wolf would hurt my mate.
“A point of pride,” Austin stated calmly, and I heard, more than anything, his own pride for his brother.
When Brandon moved from a crouch, where he was snarling, head bowed, chin to the ground, fangs bared and drool dripping from his mouth, and leaped at my mate? I shrieked, but not even that broke Ethan’s control.
His reaction was incredible.
He seemed to cement himself into the ground, making himself at one with the circle in which he was standing, then he braced himself, and when Brandon went for him, his teeth snapping at his throat?
Ethan caught him.
Caught him.
He wrapped Brandon in his arms as he dropped to his knees, spinning them both around so the wolf was pinned to the ground. Ethan’s hand went to the beast’s throat, while one elbow went to the creature’s leg. The other? He grabbed the remaining forepaw, and I saw the second Brandon went slack in his arms as he registered that if Ethan split the legs apart, he could tear his ribcage in two.
As Brandon submitted, Ethan let go, and in the blink of an eye, he snapped fur from Brandon’s hide, with his fucking fingers, fingers that had sprouted claws, and I scented it.
Blood.
First blood.
He leaped up onto his feet and backed away.
Brandon didn’t budge an inch, just lay there panting like he was exhausted, and Ethan made no move to celebrate or show his triumph, even though his body was tense with it.
The crowd was silent too, and I knew this had nothing to do with me and what I’d done, but everything to do with the fight and who was now their new beta.
I cast them all a look, absorbed their uneasiness with the fact that one of the twins, one of the cursed sons of the pack, was now in a leadership role, and where before, I’d caused them fear, I worked hard to use that same heretofore unknown link that connected me to them, and filled them with ease.
With hope.
Because that was what a united leadership would bring.
Tied to me?
We’d be bringing only the best to the pack, uniting them in love rather than tearing them apart with power struggles.
When they relaxed some, when even Brandon stopped his ferocious panting, I figured it worked.
Eli shot me a look, and he practically vibrated with pride.
In me.
He was proud of me!
The thought shouldn’t have delighted me, but it did. It made me incredibly happy in fact. Almost pathetically so.
But then, when he reached up, when he touched me, his thumb sliding along my chin, he murmured, “You could never be pathetic. Nothing about what we have together could ever be that way. Do you understand?”
I gulped, touched beyond words that he could sense my unease with my joy at his pride in me.
“I understand,” I rasped, sensing he wanted a verbal response.
I licked my lips, then asked, “What now?”
“Now, Ethan is accepted into the rank of beta of the pack.”
My eyes widened at that, at the sudden formality, because Eli hauled me into his side and moved me so I was nearer to the totem.
When Ethan stepped out of the challenge circle, my heart stopped pounding so hard, and I recognized it was only racing because the competitors’ hearts were racing too.
The circle was a…what? Conduit?
Even as my brow furrowed, Ethan wandered over to us. I thought he might do something swoon worthy, like grab me in his arms and take me in a kiss that was reminiscent of a romance movie, but he didn’t.
More’s the luck.
If anything, he didn’t even cast a look at me, didn’t connect his gaze with Eli’s. He just took the six steps that would take him to the totem.
I followed his trajectory, and only because of that did I see the little wind that came and brushed along the path he took.
My eyes widened in surprise, but the wind revealed a small wooden step that had been worn smooth over the passage of time. It was dark, rich with a color that the rest of the totem didn’t share, and when Ethan’s feet collided with it, this time, instead of racing, my heart slowed down to a pace that made me feel like I was holding my breath underwater.
The sensation was strange. Like I was drowning and had reached that point where panic wasn’t necessary—yes, I’d experienced that one horrendous time in my life because that was my awful brother’s idea of playtime—and I grabbed Eli’s hand blindly, clinging to his fingers, tightening mine around them as I tried to deal with whate
ver it was that was happening to me.
I felt him tense behind me, sensed Austin’s concern, but Ethan?
Kali Sara, I knew why I felt like this!
He wasn’t there.
He was absent.
And I’d never even realized how present he was inside me. Two weeks ago, when I closed my eyes, I saw nothing other than darkness. Maybe it was tinted orange but that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.
But now?
It was like I’d stared up at the sun, closed my eyes, and the ball of light was hovering around, just waiting to fade out of my retina’s memory.
What I could see when I closed my eyes now?
Two blazing balls of light. Bigger than the sun, hotter than it too. Dazzling colors that soothed and warmed at the same time, but there was a third one missing.
I knew which was which too.
The oddly maroon ball was rich with brown and red—a man of passion and a man connected to the earth. Eli.
The other? A bright orange, bouncy with vitality, joyous and cheerful. Austin.
Where was Ethan?
He wasn’t there.
He was…?
Gone.
The mournful thought came from the she-wolf, but before I could panic, before I had too much time to worry, I sensed him.
Green.
Like grass, rich and verdant with a few shades of emerald thrown in there. A man who was calm, a man who was grounded. Connected with the Earth itself in a way that Eli, who was ruled by passions that were deeply buried, wasn’t.
When he was back, even though I knew he hadn’t actually gone anywhere, I opened my eyes and stared at him.
“You see them?”
The voice came from nowhere, but from everywhere too.
I peered around, staring at the world about me, but as I did, I noticed that nothing was the same.
No one was moving.
Not even my mates.
It was like time had been sped up or slowed down, I wasn’t sure which.
It wasn’t frozen, because I could see Austin’s eyelashes gently quivering like they were in the process of moving.
“Does it make sense for me to speed up time?”
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 15
