“You’re wrong,” Eli seethed. “I want to know who dared hurt you.”

“I’ve been hurting for a long time. I haven’t slept this much in years.”

Because she felt safe?

“I’ve never been so rested,” she continued.

Something in her voice had Ethan tilting his head to the side. I wasn’t sure what he’d picked up on, but Ethan could be great at reading between the lines. “Sabina?”

She didn’t look at him, just barked slightly in response, as if to say, “Whuttt?”

I didn’t blame her. Sometimes I felt like I was dealing with a prickly teacher too. The teacher in high school that everyone hated and always gave the majority of his class a barely passing grade, except for his teacher’s pet.

Ethan had been the original teacher’s pet and had morphed into Mrs. fucking O’Grady.

“Have you been staying in this form on purpose?”

I frowned at him. “Don’t be a dumbass.”

Ethan grunted. “Shut up, Austin.”

“Boys,” Eli intoned, and though I winced at being called that in front of her, I shut up. “Sabina, is he right?”

She huffed, sucked in a breath, and then shifted.

Not only did my brain ache from the fact that she’d purposely stayed a wolf for the past seven days, but my eyes nearly crossed when I found her naked and sprawled at my side.

I mean, I should have known to expect her nude form to appear beside me, but seeing was really fucking believing, and my mate?

She had the hugest tits I’d ever seen.

They were massive. And her nipples? Fuck me. I wanted them in my mouth.

Stat.

“You’re drooling,” Ethan noted wryly, even as he grabbed a throw from the back of the nearest sofa and headed over to shield her nudity from us.

She shot him a shy glance, even as she huddled within the thick throw, not stopping until her knees were tucked against her chest, crossed slightly at the ankle in a way that, I knew, if I angled my head just right, I’d see her pussy.

So, I was a pervert now.

Great.

She needed a shower like a week ago, but the basic essence of her? Fuck, it was like nothing I’d ever known before.

Addictive.

She hadn’t smelled like that back at the carnival. Even over the undertones of blood and carnage, of the mass humanity and the various scents that polluted the fairground, I’d have tasted this on the air.

And I hadn’t.

My cock was pounding, and not just from the sight of her luscious tits. Just from the sight of her. Her face tipped down, her eyes cast away. She somehow was both elegant and demure, and her skin was a rich brown hue I hadn’t noticed back at the carnival. It was like she had a tan, a deep rich one that made her half gold.

She was, in a word, beautiful.

And even that was too pansy ass a word to describe her. Her eyes were almond-shaped and tipped up at the sides, giving her an exotic cast that reminded me of Jasmine from Aladdin. Odd reference point to be sure, but fuck. She had rich black hair, so dense and dark that it was like rippling silk, olive skin, ruby red lips that needed no paint on them to be that color, and a heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and a pointed chin so delicate that I wanted to pinch it between my pointer and thumb to maneuver her mouth my way.

I didn’t care that, undoubtedly, she had the rankest breath bar none. She’d eaten raw stag and hadn’t brushed her teeth for a week…she stank. All over. But did I give a fuck?

And that was when I knew she truly was my mate, because I. Didn’t. Give. A. Fuck.

Holy hell, was this what true love felt like?

Still dealing with the aftermath of that, I almost missed Eli’s stern, “Why did you hide from us?”

His phrasing might have seemed odd to most, but it wasn’t to me. Not to Ethan either, because he stared at her with an intentness that had that rich golden skin turning a rose gold with her flush. “I didn’t mean to.”

But she had.

“Why?” I asked quietly, aware I sounded disappointed.

Mother. This was weird.

I barely knew her, yet I felt like I’d known her for a lifetime.

Maybe I had.

Maybe, in the Mother’s eyes, that was how this worked.

You went from not knowing someone to suddenly knowing them. Inside and out.

She bit her bottom lip and muttered, “Do you know what fibromyalgia is?”

I blinked. “It’s an illness, right?”

She cut me a quick look before peering down at her blanket-clad knees once more.

Was she shy?

Or just nervous?

Holy shit, she wasn’t scared, was she?

The thought throbbed in my head like an incessant toothache that no dentist could cure without yanking something out of my mouth.

My hand snapped out and, lo and behold, she flinched. Even as I cursed myself for the abrupt movement, I let my hand fall on her knee, and I squeezed her there, gently. “Sabina?”

She frowned. “Yes, Austin?”

Mother, could she tell us apart?

My hard-on surged into life once more, making the toothache of mere seconds before disappear into dust.

“We will never hurt you. And if one of us ever did, we’d kill them.”

Ethan cleared his throat. “We know that might sound aggressive, and after how you came to us, it might sound ridiculous—”

“No. I appreciate it. I know you won’t hurt me.” She blew out a breath and whispered, “I’m just embarrassed.”

“Why? Because you stink?”

Her eyes widened at that, and her mouth dropped open for a few seconds.

“Well done, dumbass,” Ethan muttered in disgust, letting his hands flare wide until they dropped down again.

I shrugged. “Don’t worry. We’ve all rolled around in shit at one point, Sabina. We’ve all smelled worse than you.”

Eli cleared his throat, but I saw the laughter in his eyes, the bastard. “I think we should get back on track. What’s fibromyalgia, Sabina? And why would it make you hide from us?”

The accusation was there again.

Hide.

From us.

But again, I understood.

That was what it felt like she’d been doing. Denying us her presence. And even though she had the right to do that, with everything so up in the air at the moment, with all the fussing over who’d attacked her, as well as Eli’s grief over his mother’s loss and having to deal with a pack who was without an omega…all of that stress paled in comparison to the knowledge that our mate could have walked at our sides but had chosen not to.

“When I realized something was wrong with me, I had to quit the carnival and stick around… I have a trust fund, and I pulled on it for the first time so I could go to the doctors. It took them a while to figure out what was wrong with me because, at first, they didn’t believe me. They thought I was making it up.”

“Making up that you were sick?”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Why would you do that?”

My question had Ethan scoffing, “You know humans lie.”

“Now who’s the dumbass?” I retorted, when Sabina’s hands morphed into fists at her sides. I was almost grateful for my brother’s idiocy, because her tight grip on the blanket lessened and I caught a flash of her cleavage.