My throat was more choked now than it was before. “Who are you?”
“I am the spirit of the Mother.”
My brow puckered. “The spirit?”
“I am the totem. My name is Lidai.”
I froze.
A stick of wood was talking to me.
I reached up and rubbed my temple, pretty sure I was either having delusions or, I don’t know, I needed to go to the hospital or something.
A wind whispered out of nowhere, brushing over me, cosseting me in its warmth.
Like a hug.
From a gust of wind.
Kali Sara, what was happening to me?
“This is normal,” the totem murmured. “I speak only to my children twice in their lives, and you are hearing my voice at a moment that is slightly earlier than should be, but your power was a little—” The wind danced around me again. “You needed help seeking control before you had all my children collapsing with distress.”
My eyes widened. “I meant them no harm.”
“You didn’t mean to do anything, I know this, but it wouldn’t have stopped you from doing it. You are ignorant of your strength, but I am not. You are needed in this pack. My child, Eli, has done his best to carry on in his father’s image, but Paul wasn’t the alpha Eli is.
“I see all, I take note of all, and neither the previous omega nor alpha did right by their people. You will help Eli to right those wrongs.”
My throat tightened. “Why?”
“Because of the children you will carry.”
“I’m important because of my womb?”
Well, if that wasn’t disappointing to hear!
The wind danced around me again, and I sensed that was the ‘spirit of the Mother’s’ way of showing me she was amused because the temperature was perfect.
Neither too cold, nor too hot like those winds that could whip off the desert, making you feel even sweatier than you felt before the gust hit you in the face.
“You are more important than your womb, but you bring change. Quite naturally. Each person to roam the Earth does this, and each human who is tied to this life has more power than usual.”
Warily, I questioned, “What power?”
“The men who are you mates. All brothers. Do you know how rare that is?”
“I know it’s strange to be in a relationship with three—”
“No, not with a female of your power. I speak of their kinship. One child per mated pair. This was so for a reason. The Mother, for I am only her voice, not her mind or will, decided that we were too strong to populate the Earth as the humans do.
“She controlled the numbers—”
And I understood.
“To the point of extinction?”
The wind whispered around my hair, making it twist and writhe like it had a life of its own. “Indeed, child. Indeed. The second the child is born from your womb, you and your mates will be the pack’s future.”
I scowled. “What does that mean? I can’t have children—” My mouth worked. “I was in an accident.”
Heat surged inside me out of nowhere. It burned in my veins, but it centered itself in my belly. The energy was incredible as it rattled around inside me. Explosive and excruciating. I screamed with the agony of it, and my body felt like I was torn in two as I was ripped apart and knitted together again.
The second it was over, I dropped to my knees, panting as I tried to catch my breath.
“The Mother can fix all ails, child, even the one she herself created long ago.
“Your child is not the means with which the Mother will bring change, for no one child can bear such a divine burden, but they will be the catalyst.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.”
And that was all the answer I received because, just as swiftly as I’d been dragged into this tornado, I was wrenched from it.
In seconds, my men were around me, and I didn’t blame them. As far as they knew, I’d been standing at their sides, and now I was on my knees, panting like I’d been running for my life.
The pain had gone, the heat had dispersed like it had never existed, and my body was filled with an energy that was unlike anything I’d experienced before.
When they were at my sides, I rasped, “I’m ready to claim you, but I won’t do it in front of the pack.”
My voice, even though I whispered the words softly, roared through the circle caught on the wind, and dropped into every pack member’s ear.
They grumbled at first, but then they sensed my resolve, and maybe something else, maybe something from the totem, from Lidai, as they started to shuffle away, not even waiting on my edict to be confirmed by Eli.
I didn’t have to move from my position to know they’d gone.
I didn’t need to shift around and turn to look at the circle to know we were alone.
I felt it.
Felt their absence, and also felt the way they moved away from the totem.
Maybe they’d watch, maybe they could still see, but I had faith in my powers that they wouldn’t do that.
For whatever reason, I’d been able to bend them to my will, and I didn’t want this incredibly private moment to be shared with anyone.
Even men and women who were, technically, my people.
A hand slipped over my shoulders and down to the bottom of my back. “Are you well?”
Austin.
I closed my eyes, bit my lip, and whispered, “The totem spoke to me.”
Eli’s surprise was clear. “Already?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t that the stick of wood had spoken to me that surprised him, I noted. It was the fact that I’d been spoken to ahead of time.
“When should I have had a conversation with the spirit?”
Because, apparently, that was a pretty normal question to ask in this situation.
Although…
Wasn’t this nicer?
All my life, I’d prayed to Kali Sara, who, in my culture, was the conduit to God himself. I’d never heard her voice, never heard God’s.
But a week in this world and all of a sudden, I was chitchatting with a spirit.
That was pretty damn cool if you asked me.
“Normally, after you’ve been claimed and are stronger, more ready to deal with the power of the spirit as she comes into you.”
Ethan told me that, and he was crouched at my side, so close I could scent him. So close that I could feel his heat.
“You knew Brandon wouldn’t stop fighting until he almost got himself killed, didn’t you?” I asked Eli softly.
“Yes. In his position, I’d have done the same. I spared his pride.”
“And made sure his child has a father tonight.” I hummed, then shot a smile at Ethan. “And you gave him the least painful way to beat him. I’m proud of you both.”
“What about me?”
“You didn’t do anything,” I teased, grinning at him, finally able to rock back onto my knees so I could stare up at him and see he was pouting.
It suited him.
My lips twitched wider, and the sight had his eyes sparkling at me.
Goodness, he was handsome. They all were. And now I saw the link between them, the familial tie. I supposed it was creepy, but I’d let myself be caught up in the creepy if it meant getting to sample these luscious men. They were better than three scoops of pistachio ice cream in the heat of a summer’s day, that was how delicious they were.
And now was our time.
I moved my gaze from Austin, drifting it to Ethan, and then to Eli. They were all watching me, their focus purely on me.
I knew I’d had people’s attention in the past, but never with this depth of intent.
It was like I was all they saw, and I understood that, because they were all I saw too.
Around me, above me, below me, it was a blur. They were the only things that came into sharp focus, and I saw them with such an excruciating amount of detail that it was almost painful to behol
d.
“What did she say to you?” Ethan rasped.
“Am I supposed to tell you?”
Eli shrugged. “You don’t have to.”
I bit my lip. “She said that the wolves’ population was too small to sustain themselves.”
Eli’s eyes widened at that. “She said that to you?”
Before I could ask him what was wrong, he shuffled over to the same step I’d lost Ethan on, and when he was there, his hand on the totem, my heart did that weird thing again.
I felt like I was in the last phases of dying by drowning.
I gulped, trying to regulate my air, but the act had my eyes shuttering to a close, and when I did? I saw that the green and orange were bouncing around in my soul, the orange hounding the green like he was teasing him—seemed fitting for Austin to haunt Ethan—but the maroon had disappeared.
Eli.
Because he was on the totem.
Just like Ethan had disappeared when he was on there.
“Why do I feel like I lose you when you go on there?” I murmured, raising a hand to my chest in a stupid effort to calm myself.
“You do?” Austin queried, his brows high, as he turned back to Eli. “You can’t sense him?”
I shook my head. “No.” I frowned at my mate, and asked, “The spirit said she only talks to people twice in their lives.”
“Apart from the alpha. She can convene with him whenever he wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because he leads from her will.”
My brow furrowed. “You mean, he does as she asks? She makes the law?”
“Exactly. He just enforces it, and we, in turn, spread that law to the pack.”
“Does every pack have a totem?”
“Yes. But this is one of the oldest and one of the largest in the world.” Ethan peered up at it, and when his head rocked all the way back, I understood, because that was how tall it was.
It felt like it was never-ending.
Reminding me, almost, of those weird mirrors in the Hall of Mirrors that elongated things to unnatural lengths. The totem was beyond unnatural, and yet, it felt so incredibly natural at the same time that it was confusing.
The chokehold on my chest released all of a sudden, and I flashed a look at Eli, who was scowling at us as he walked over.
There was something so powerful about his stride, about his walk, that I was instantly taken aback.
At that moment, he was all alpha, and I felt like an underling in the face of his power.
“What is it?” Ethan questioned, and Austin turned his attention to Eli too.
He tucked his hands into his dress coat—who dressed for a business meeting in the forest? Eli, that’s who—and stated, “Through our union, when Sabina births her first child, she will sow the seeds of fertility when she buries her placenta beside our totem.”
My eyes flared wide. “She never told me I had to do that!”
“Because she knew I’d ask the questions that needed asking,” he replied drolly, but he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose like the Mother’s conversation had made him grow weary. “Why can nothing be simple? Why can’t we just be fortunate to have found each other? Why must there always be a purpose?”
“Because you’re an alpha,” Austin responded, and while there was sympathy in his tone, there was also resolve. As well as a hardness that told me he wasn’t going to let Eli wallow in self-pity, because from his tone, and from his posture, that was where my mate was taking this.
“We’re a vehicle for a solution to a problem that wasn’t ours to rectify,” Eli snarled.
Ethan shrugged. “Aren’t we always? We’re not on this Earth for our will, but for the Mother’s.”
That had the tension drifting out of Eli. His shoulders slumped. “I suppose.”
“Do I really have to bury the placenta here?” I asked, curling my nose up at the thought.
Austin laughed. “That’s the part you focused on, huh?”
I shrugged. “Better that than remembering you were willing for us to have sex in front of the pack.” My scowl was back. “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me about that—”
“There was nothing to warn about,” Eli rumbled. “I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
My mouth formed an O as he took the wind from my sails at that declaration.
On either side of me, Ethan and Austin tensed, and I gathered that his statement was more than unusual.
Maybe it was also unheard of.
I guessed if that was standard practice in the pack, then it was weird.
But I was damn glad for the weird. Bring on the weird!
“Why?” I inquired softly, wanting to hear his justification with my own ears.
“Because I’m not about to share you with everyone. They’ll already have too much of you, and I want every other piece for ourselves.”
That he included Ethan and Austin made tears prick my eyes.
This morning had been incredibly stressful thus far. What with learning magic existed, talking to deities, or whatever the totem was when she called herself a ‘spirit,’ then watching my mate fight a wolf, and having to deal with a bunch of people seeing his penis? Throw in my child being a catalyst when I’d never thought I’d be able to have kids again, and the fact that I’d have to bury my placenta in the circle?
I wasn’t a happy bunny.
But those words?
They whipped all that away, they turned everything back to its most basic form, and that consisted of us.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Us.
I cleared my throat. “Does what happened today change things?”
“What do you mean?” he rumbled, his eyes darkening as he stared at me.
“Aren’t you going to claim me now?”
His smile was wicked in the best possible way, and he growled, “Mate, there was never a doubt in my mind that you were leaving this circle anything other than bound to us.”
Austin
The way he included us made me feel relieved. Horny, too, but more than anything, relieved, because this all felt like a dream still.
Somehow, I was living in a world where I had two brothers, not just one, and one alone was weird.
I was also mated to an omega, I was a loathed twin, and I’d just watched my brother become the beta of one of the oldest packs in the country. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the largest or the strongest, that a twin had risen to such a position of power was unheard of.
Today was always going to be a strange day, but the things that had happened that were extra to what should have gone down?
They made it even crazier.
Sabina should never have spoken to the spirit, and we should never have learned her destiny, not for a few more days at least.
I understood Eli’s agitation—we should have been allowed to enjoy the claiming without fear of anything attacking us, yet here we were with everything up in the air.
A part of me felt sure I was destined for a life, for a future, that was always like this, but I wasn’t about to complain, not when I somehow had a mate to get me through all the craziness ahead.
“How do we do this?” she asked nervously, for the first time showing a little anxiety.
She peered around the spiritual clearing like there were boogeymen around the corners when, I knew, categorically, there was no one present.
I wondered when that would kick in, those senses of hers. Not even a rabbit was watching us, nor a bird. The magic in the clearing ensured that, but also, everyone knew the big bad alpha lingered around the totem, and that meant nature came to a halt.
This was the Chernobyl of the forest, and every living creature was avoiding it and would do so until Eli was gone.
“What do we do?” Ethan questioned, and I rolled my eyes at him, because he couldn’t have sounded any primmer.
I swear, the man should have been a teacher. Bossing people around all the time.
“She was
n’t talking rhetorically,” I snarked at him, snickering when he just shot me a stony glance. “How long’s it been, love? You got cobwebs down there?”
Sabina released a gasp, and her head whipped around to glare at me. “Austin!”
I chuckled. “Yeah? What?”
“You did not just ask me if I had cobwebs—” Her voice turned hushed. “In my vagina.”
I grinned. “Sure did.” I winked. “Don’t worry, three mates? They won’t be sticking around for long.”
Eli snorted, but Sabina slapped her hand over her eyes. Ethan was as stoic as ever in the face of the stuff I sometimes came up with, and didn’t even crack a smile.
Grinning at her when she peeked at me through her fingers, I grabbed a hold of her and tugged her close. I didn’t stop until she was on top of me, and we were roughhousing until I was lying flat out on the ground.
Her legs pinned me down, and that was the only place I wanted to ever be.
Glued in place beneath this woman.
Her hands came up to my shoulders and she slipped them down to my pecs as she loomed over me. “You know I don’t have cobwebs down there, don’t you?”
I’d been teasing, but her earnest question had me tilting my head to the side. I’d already…
Fuck.
I knew a lot more about her past than I’d really like to know, and what I’d picked up on was that she came from a very sheltered background.
Joking about sex might have broken the ice for her, but I’d never meant to make her question herself.
I cleared my throat. “I know, sweetheart.”
She clenched her fingers around my shirt. “I haven’t—I mean, I haven’t done this in a long time though, you were right.”
I’d known I was—not because of what I’d picked up on in her file, but because of the way she was around us.
It was like…
Back when I was a teenager and I’d discovered what my dick was actually for. Closed bedroom doors at all times, because I’d discovered the miracle that was the erection.
Sabina looked at us with so much promise that it reminded me of that. Like we were her penises and it was the first time she’d ever get to use them.
My lips twitched at the thought, and I reared up and slipped my arms under hers so I could draw her down with me.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 16