Like he was ashamed of the admission, his shoulders wriggled as he begrudgingly divulged, “Sometimes, She won’t let me into the sacred circle if She knows what I want to talk about.”

I gaped at him. “She won’t let you in at all?”

“No.”

Ethan’s brows lowered. “Is this new?”

“Since Sabina.”

She sniffed, but Ethan mused, “That’s interesting.”

“Is it?” Eli retorted shortly. “It’s pretty fucking annoying.”

“Yes. But it’s proof She’s hiding things from us. There’s a whole game at play, with rules and laws and things we’re not privy to.” His eyes turned pensive. “Interesting.”

“Only to you,” I groused.

Sabina muttered, “I want to give Her a piece of my mind.” Her hands balled into fists at her side. “Even if She doesn’t reply, I can still shout at Her.”

“I’m sure you want that,” Ethan soothed, but I could see his mind was still away with the fairies as he tried to figure out a goddess’ game theory. “But what’s the point? You can do that here. And nothing has changed. I have to believe that Merinda would have shifted by now if she could. Her spirit is still strong inside her, enough for Lara to see, because she’s Merinda but not.” He reached up and rubbed his chin. “I wonder if the deal was for Merinda to have a second chance. We all know how devoted Berry is to those twins, and it’s quite clear the pups are—” He blew out a breath. “—incredible as it may be, us.”

“Who do you think her mate is? The male with the silver stripe?” I queried softly.

Eli cleared his throat. “I’d hazard a guess and say your father.”

I tensed at that. “What makes you say that? Why not Paul reincarnate?”

“Back at the clearing, after you claimed Sabina and dealt with the wolf attack, I scented my father. I think he was the alpha you killed.”

My mouth dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. I’m not,” he said with a tired sigh as he scraped a hand through his hair and used that as an excuse to rub the back of his neck.

I couldn’t blame him.

This conversation made me want to take a nap too.

“Shit,” I rasped, then guilt surged inside me. “I’m sorry, Eli.”

That had him snorting. “Don’t be. It wasn’t my father. It was, but it wasn’t.” He grimaced. “That makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense too.”

Ethan cleared his throat. “So Berry’s mate is our father. I wonder if Lara could see spirits inside the other wolves, or if it was just Merinda?”

“We can ask her.” Eli held out his hand. “Come, mate, we don’t need to go to the totem for this.”

She heaved a sigh. “Why are you trying to keep me from there?”

“Because she can smite us.”

Sabina’s jaw dropped open at that. “She can what?” Then, she raised a hand. “Is this like that whole invoking the spirit shit you decided not to tell me about until it was too late to back the hell away from all of you?”

I snorted at that, and though Ethan merely rolled his eyes, Eli’s response wasn’t as amused. His hackles were pricked, and he snarled at her, a snarl that was pure alpha. That, had we been anything other than alphas, would have had Ethan and I nose deep in the grass as we fell to our knees in submission.

As it was, I felt the frickin’ tingles of his dominance, and I knew his wolf was well and truly roused.

“Probably not the best thing to joke about, Sabina,” Ethan muttered. “Not when things are so testy right now.”

She glared at him. “I’ll say what I want. Invoking spirits makes it sound like you guys get possessed—am I in a reboot of The Exorcist? What with Seth as well? Kali Sara.”

“Only if you want to be,” I tried to tease, and decided to call it a win when her lips twitched and she shot me a glower that was half-amused, half-annoyed. “We can make our own film.”

“And upload it to PornTube?” She arched a brow. “No. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Shame,” I chivvied, grinning at her when she crinkled her nose.

“Shut up, you!” she wailed. “I have a right to be mad!”

“You do,” I agreed. “But why piss off Eli when he’s trying to help?”

And it was very clear to see that Eli was beyond mad.

His wolf was quite clearly engaged, his hands balled into fists, and I just knew that his claws would be poking into his palms from his ill-temper.

I got it. I did. Her even joking about not being tied to us was enough to aggravate even the lowest rank of wolves. Eli was top dog. Literally and figuratively.

She heaved a sigh, then traipsed over to him, not stopping until she shoved her face into his chest, turning it so that she was cuddling Knight and then sliding her arms around Eli’s waist. A rumble escaped him, one that had her replying with a snarl that was beyond snarky.

If it was clear Eli was beyond mad, it was just as evident that Sabina was not in a touchy-feely mood.

The snarl didn’t have Eli demanding she submit, though. If anything, it settled his temper. I knew why, too. Everyone was frightened of his wolf. Everyone apart from the three of us, and that Sabina wasn’t scared had to be like Eli’s version of foreplay.

I almost smiled when she grunted, “Now is not the time for a hard-on, Eli!”

Her rebuke had me outright snickering. “Yeah, Eli. Time and a place, boy.”

He glowered at me over her head, but I just grinned at him, unafraid and not scared to show it either.

“What does it mean when she smites you?” Sabina mumbled against Eli’s chest, her tone sulky now.

“She doesn’t smite people, she smites the pack. So, a wind might stir that causes a lot of the trees to break, which cuts down our running area until we can clear it. Or she might cause a nasty storm,” Ethan clarified, wandering over to her as I did and resting a hand on her back, while I kept one on her hip. He pressed a kiss to Knight’s head and murmured, “We’d just prefer not to deal with the aftermath of that.”

Eli grunted. “No, now is definitely not a good time for dealing with that kind of shit.”

She tipped her head back. “As bad as all that?” I wasn’t sure if she was impressed or not, but it figured that Eli’s unease would catch her attention.

He was rarely uneasy about anything, usually took most things in his stride, so for him to be wary said a lot about the last time the Mother’s shit had hit the fan.

“I was only a kid when it happened before, and looking back, I know why too,” he said with a wince.

She tensed. “When Merinda met her second mate?”

He rubbed his chin against her hair as he tucked her face into his throat. “I have a feeling it was more to do with my father… Well, with what he did to her second mate. The Mother wasn’t pleased with that, and we had one of the worst storms we’d had in decades. Twenty days and twenty nights of rain.”

“Well, if that isn’t biblical, I don’t know what is,” I said lightly, even though, deep down, it gutted me to think that my father might have been murdered by the man I’d called alpha.