With the promise of change coming, and even though this part was unplanned, I knew it was time to take a stand against these pricks, so I declared, “I challenge Brandon Wright.”
A flurry of gasps gusted around the room, and the council members gaped at each other as though they couldn’t believe their ears.
I was a powerful wolf in my own right—I hadn’t shifted at eight like Eli, but ten was pretty damn impressive—so I wasn’t sure why it came as such a shock.
That was the problem with these assholes.
All privilege and no common sense.
“You can’t challenge me!” Brandon spluttered, his mouth working like a goldfish as he gaped at me.
“Just did,” I told him calmly.
“I sanction the challenge,” Eli intoned, his words dark with warning that Brandon had better not argue.
His nostrils flared with outrage, but he raised his hands in surrender—to Eli, not to me, I assumed.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Eight AM.”
Brandon narrowed his eyes. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
“So will we all. This has more ramifications than a regular challenge. All the council will attend.” Eli folded his arms across his chest. “Now, in other news, as you are aware, my enforcer is Austin.”
A lot of huffs made an appearance then.
“Charming,” Austin grumbled in my head, making me smile.
“We are well loved.”
Sabina snorted. “Really sounds like it.”
Eli cleared his throat, and I got the feeling he wanted to laugh. Sabina, despite everything, wasn’t frightened of us. I figured it made sense, considering she was the omega, powerful in her own right, but newly transformed creatures were always timid for a little while. It took their creatures some time to accept who they were in the pack, took them longer to find a place for themselves.
Sabina?
She’d already done that.
And she’d barely met anyone yet. She was bizarre—in the best possible way.
“As of this moment, the role of enforcer will hold a place on the council. He will be titular, as important as the alpha, omega, and beta on the ranks.”
People stared at him wide-eyed, and I knew, when they cast quick and furtive glances at Brandon, they realized that Eli fully expected Brandon to lose.
Seemed they weren’t total morons after all.
I thought Brandon even figured that much out, the douche.
He shot me a glare, but I shrugged. “That’s how the cards fall.”
He snarled, “The challenge isn’t a formality—I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”
I smiled at him. “Just try.”
His eyes flashed, his wolf coming out to party, but I cocked a brow at him. I wasn’t, never had been, under his control.
Why would I be?
I was more powerful than him.
His mouth tightened at my lack of reaction, but Eli was kind and let him off by stating, “Austin, would you come in please?”
He didn’t speak all that loudly, just enough for his voice to carry. The council twisted around, trying to see which way he was coming from, like he was sneaking around, hiding in a cupboard or something, but the doors opened, and together, Austin and Sabina walked in.
The council stilled as her scent permeated the room. It was like a florist had just arrived and brought with her a thousand different blossoms.
I sighed, appreciating the scent of lily of the valley and orchids in bloom. She was exotic. Everything about her, from her fragrance to her appearance, and she didn’t fit in. Not among this council loaded down with rich white pricks.
Eli extended an arm to her as they walked down the side of the room toward his desk.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t appear to be concerned about being at the center of attention of a bunch of people who looked like they’d just trodden in cow manure. If anything, her smile was warm, her glance just as heated as she looked at me and then Eli.
She drifted from Austin’s arm to Eli’s, and he tucked her in at his side.
Her scent was deeper now, more intense, and I knew that was because she was with us. Knew it and marveled at it. Her essence ripened, growing richer and powerful, until my cock was hard, and the need to claim her was a powerful throb in my blood.
I’d moved from my leaning position against the desk to a standing one when she’d arrived, and the look she gave me, the smile? It made me want to take her in my arms and hold her and kiss her and give her all the affection I’d never had in my life and, sadly enough, that I thought she hadn’t had in hers either.
“Soon,” she breathed, the words whispering into my mind, making me realize she’d spoken them to me and me alone.
I sucked in a sharp breath and clamped down on what I was feeling. I didn’t need to transmit what she inspired in me, not in this den of boors.
So I slouched back against the desk once more, even as Austin moved over to stand at my side.
When she was looking up at him, Eli declared, “Meet your new omega.”
It was shock after shock tonight for these people. For a second, there wasn’t even a single reaction. Not a mouth held agape, no wide eyes, no gasps or sharp exhalations.
Nothing.
Then, almost as one, it started.
The questions as they surged forward and instantly began fawning.
The people who had looked at her like she was less for her unusual coloring, were suddenly all up in her face, wanting to know more, needing to know because of Eli’s declaration.
“Pricks.”
“Agreed,” I muttered back to Austin, and we both received a little snicker of amusement from Sabina, telling us she was on the same page.
Wholeheartedly.
Eli growled when Brandon approached, and his eyes flashed in surprise. “Alpha?”
“I’d back off, buddy,” I warned easily. “You know what it’s like when you’ve just found your mate.” I bared my teeth. “You don’t like other men around her.”
My words caused several frowns.
“But Austin brought her in,” was a frequent and repeated whisper.
“Two points for you,” he retorted smugly.
Conrad, for all he still had a wet patch on the front of his pants, was the first to work it out. “She has more than one mate?”
“Three points!” I retorted.
“Bullseye,” Austin tacked on.
“Enough,” Eli growled. “Mother’s sacrifice was not in vain. We have been granted an omega, my mate is here, at my side, and a pack with a mated alpha is a blessed one.” He sucked in air through his nose like he was finding it hard to stay calm. I empathized. Newly mated males always found it hard to have potential enemies around their females.
Weak enemies or not, they were bound to agitate him. They’d have done the same for me and Austin, but we were used to being agitated by these bastards. Exposure therapy worked sometimes, it seemed.
It didn’t come as any surprise to me that Sabina cuddled into him, pressing her head to his shoulder, and the delicate touch, the tenderness, had Eli sighing, his shoulders drooping like the aggression he was feeling didn’t need to exist anymore because she was there, capable of making everything better.
Her power over him interested me. Everyone knew how strong he was, what he was capable of. Even though he’d made very few new rulings on his own, without his mother’s input for fear of contradicting his father and hurting her, his wolf was beyond strong. To the point where it was a relief for most of the pack that they saw him so infrequently.
Eli had that kind of presence where, in the middle of a crowded room, he could pop up from out of nowhere and instantly, everyone would know where he was without having to turn their heads. Their wolves would sense it, and they’d whine at his presence.
I was impressed, as I’d always been by that. Never scared, never cowered, because I was strong too, but he had something I didn’t—diplomacy.
He was meant t
o be a leader.
I wasn’t.
I was meant for more than enforcing though. I’d known that for a long time, but with the status quo after Paul’s death not changing that much, I’d been happy to have Eli’s ear period. Now? I was going to be in a position to help both Eli and the pack, and that pleased me.
“The enforcer is the omega’s mate as well?” Larissa, Conrad’s wife, asked.
“As is Ethan.” Eli didn’t say the new beta, but Brandon flushed like he had.
“This is most unusual,” Conrad rasped. “I’ve heard of another mate, but two?”
“They’re twins. They’re freaks of nature,” Sarah Yves muttered. “Everything they do is unusual.”
My eyes flashed at that, outrage filling me, but I didn’t let it show. Austin, on the other hand, did. His arms bunched up, his shoulders straightened, and he stopped slouching. The snarl that escaped him, the power behind it, surprised even me.
Austin was ever the joker, the playful one. The charmer. At that moment, he wasn’t playing.
The charm had left the building.
And in its stead?
A furious alpha wolf who was making himself known to the council.
Five
Sabina
The council meeting had either gone as planned or it hadn’t. I wasn’t sure.
Most of them were still looking at us like we were freaks—only, not like I remembered from high school. Freaks weren’t feared. Freaks were gaped at like they were zoo animals stuck in cages.
Here? Now? These people were scared of us. Scared of me.
Considering my role, something Austin and Ethan had been explaining to me, I didn’t feel that was right.
As their omega, I was supposed to soothe them, but even though I could feel their agitation, I had no desire to ease it. Even if I’d known how.
Eli told me things would make sense once the claimings had occurred, and while I was stronger than I’d been since this entire ordeal had begun, today was the first day I’d felt like I was at full strength.
In the books, of which I’d read many, alpha males couldn’t wait for their mates. They were overcome with passion, need, and desire. They couldn’t breathe until they’d claimed their woman. The one woman who was made for them.
I couldn’t exactly say made for them and them alone, because apparently, I had three mates. But still, I was surprised by how calm the three of them were.
Maybe a little disappointed too.
I guessed I wanted to be taken, to be ravaged and ravished, even if I understood their attention was split.
Someone had forced the transformation on me.
Someone had intended for me to hurt dozens of humans at the carnival. Someone had intended for the shifters in this county to be revealed to the humans.
That was a lot of shit to have to deal with.
Still…
A girl could dream, couldn’t she?
It amazed me that I was bothered, to be honest. After my experiences and with my past? Yeah, romance was dead, and below the waist, so was I.
But not anymore.
Not since I’d awoken in a clearing with Eli standing guard over me. Not when he’d helped me onto my feet, had tried to teach me how to walk. Not when two scamps, Austin and Ethan, had bounded in, scenting me and rubbing their bodies against mine in friendship and affection.
Everything had changed that day.
I was no longer in pain, which was more liberating than knowing my father couldn’t hurt me, even if he did get his mitts on me. The pain had been ever present, lingering in my bones. In my being. To wake up and be rid of it was something I was thanking Kali Sara for every day!
But the three men were a complication.
I wanted them.
I knew they wanted me.
I just wanted to be ravished too.
Would that happen?
Or was that just fiction?
I gnawed on my bottom lip as I watched the council watch us.
It was weird, and I didn’t understand why Eli was going ahead with this. There was overflowing wine and cheese boards for them to eat, and though they were making full use of his hospitality, they weren’t really talking, were just muttering about the new changes while they watched us.
If I hadn’t felt Eli’s power, Austin’s strength, and Ethan’s force, I might have been scared.
Those looks? I’d been on the receiving end of them before.
Whenever my family had rolled into a new town, we’d gotten them. Like villagers waiting on us with pitchforks and disgust at who we were. What we represented.
I tugged at my bottom lip, studying the disquiet in people’s faces, the concern at the change of the status quo, and murmured, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Eli tensed. He hadn’t spoken since Austin had dominated the council. Ethan had smoothed things over, using more diplomacy than I expected of him, and had invited them to partake of the refreshments.
Ever since, we’d been standing in silence.
Awkward?
Yup.
Still.
Better than having to talk to the bunch of asswipes who’d wanted to fawn over me, even though the second I’d walked through the door, I’d known I was different than them.
With my golden, tawny coloring, the rich black hair that my ancestors were renowned for, the Creole earrings swaying about my neck, and the colorful clothes I wore—gotta love one-day shipping, especially when you had a millionaire’s credit card to buy stuff with—I was as unlike them as night was day.
In their designer slimline tailoring, and their stuffed shirts and trim forms, I was round and curvy and everything the other females weren’t.
Did that matter?
I wasn’t alpha female, after all. I was the omega. A power in my own right.
Eli squeezed my hand. “Not much longer now.”
He found it the hardest to speak telepathically, but he was getting better at listening to us all talk, so that was something.
Poor Eli, he hadn’t anticipated any of this.
As far as I knew, his mother had killed herself in a ritual sacrifice the same night I’d been transformed, and even as he dealt with her death, the overwhelming grief that sometimes made him stonily silent and had pain radiating out of him with such force I wished I knew how to work my powers, he had everything else to deal with.
And here I was, being selfish. Wanting reality to beat fiction.
I nestled into him, grateful that I was his mate, grateful that, if I had to be a part of this strange new world, he was at my side, with Austin and Ethan all around me.
A tight-knit little circle.
Four of us against the world.
My lips curved as I thought about my father. How he’d hated me for dating a gadji, how that hatred had turned into loathing when I’d married him and gotten pregnant. When loathing had turned, twisted, morphed into poison, I’d paid for that in blood.
What would he think of me now? Strangely content, even after my conservative upbringing, to be with three men. Three non-Roma.
I sighed, oddly pleased by how disgusted he’d be. In a weird way, totally childish of me, I knew, but I appreciated the rebellion.
More than that, I appreciated the nascent links that were spreading from me to the three men who looked at me like I’d dug my heel into the ground and had discovered water.
That was powerful.
So powerful.
Sure, they hadn’t ravished me, but they gave me that.
I needed to stop being greedy.
“Be as greedy as you want,” Austin rasped, deep in my mind.
I shivered at the tone of his voice and cut him a look. There was fire in his eyes, more so than before—had he heard me?
“Yes,” Ethan rumbled.
I gulped, my pussy turning molten at the heat they radiated. I wanted them. Fuck, I did.
I’d never wanted any man since Kian. Had never wanted to experience the ties that bound a w
oman to a man ever again.
Yet here I was, overwhelmed by three of them.
Only, they weren’t just men, were they?
Eli squeezed my arm. “Later,” he growled.
At first, I thought it was a promise, then I realized Brandon Wright, the beta, had approached.
He was staring at us all with anxiety radiating from him, and I murmured, “All is well, Mr. Wright?”
“Brandon, please,” came the immediate reply with a bow, deep at that.
My brows rose, because I hadn’t anticipated that, and when he straightened up, I muttered, “I thank you for the greeting.”
He blinked at me, then stated, “It is an honor to have met you, Omega, but, Alpha, I think I must leave. I have to prepare for tomorrow.” His chin tipped up, and he cast a dark glance at Ethan. “Tomorrow, at the totem.”
Ethan nodded. “See you there.”
He sounded like he was agreeing to meet up for a workout at the gym, not a challenge that could mean life or death.
I blew out a breath as Brandon wafted past, and, slowly but surely, over the next thirty minutes, everyone followed Brandon’s path, leaving the packhouse with the promise of a gathering at the totem.
I’d yet to see this totem, but it had been explained to me.
Ethan and Austin weren’t that great at explaining, however, so I wasn’t really sure what the totem was.
I mean, totems were Native American, weren’t they? All these folks were whiter than sheep.
With Conrad and Larissa, the soon to be ex-leaders of the council, the last ones to leave, Eli moved with them, not stopping until he shut the door behind them.
When he stepped away, I arched a brow. “Don’t you lock the doors here?”
“Sign of his strength,” Ethan instructed. “He needs no locks to protect him.”
“Or his mate,” Austin tacked on.
“Plus,” Eli inserted, “the theory is that my door is always open to any wolf who wishes to speak with me.”
I frowned at that. “Doesn’t sound like you get much of a break.”
Austin snorted. “He doesn’t. But mostly, everyone is too scared of him to approach him.”
“That’s the difference between having a pack with an alpha who is mated to the omega, and an alpha who is only related to her,” Eli concurred with a sigh, reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck, like the tension was too much to bear.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 11