When I’d figured out what had happened, I’d always been wary around them both. To know they were capable of… Well, it didn’t inspire trust. I could love them as my parents without respecting them, and love without respect meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Still, in my position now, things were a tad different, and I could view things from father’s side.

“Usually, the mates appear before the claiming, because the Mother knows these situations can happen.

“After forty-six years with my mother, after all that time together, how do you think he’d have suddenly felt, having her heart cleaved in two and her love for him being split with another man? I can already tell you right here, right now, that I’m okay with Ethan and Austin being your mates because we’ll be claiming you together. But if they came along after we’d been together for decades? I’d want to slice them from chin to ass.”

Austin released a shaky breath. “I hate to agree, but I know what you mean, Eli.”

His eyes were intense, but no more so than Ethan’s, who raked Sabina with a glance that would have probably scorched her.

“I concur,” he ground out.

“So even though my father was an asshole, it should never have worked out the way it did.”

“Why did it? If the Mother is always right and never does shit wrong, how did she get shit wrong in this instance?”

I could feel her umbrage all the way over here, and I was touched for the twins because it was on their behalf, and they deserved that. They truly did.

“Because we still have free will. I think, and I could be wrong, that your father, Austin and Ethan, got out of prison. Another reason mine didn’t like him, and didn’t declare him to the pack.”

“You don’t think your father did something to theirs, do you?”

“I don’t think my mother would have stayed with him if he had,” I told her honestly. “She loved him right until the end, and each day without him after he passed was hard-won and done only because she was scared about the pack’s future. I don’t think she’d have done that, would have strived so hard if she hated him. Or had a reason to hate him. But equally, I wouldn’t put it past him if he could figure out a way to do so without her knowing about his involvement.”

She plucked at her bottom lip, and I could sense her need to comfort the twins, but she couldn’t. Not yet. Not as an omega and not as a mate, because we had stupid rules that needed to be abided by.

Goddamn those rules.

“So, we’re brothers?” Ethan asked.

I nodded.

“That’s why you’ve always been nice to us?”

Ethan’s tone was too wooden for my liking, so I murmured softly, “Yes, but mostly because I like you too. It isn’t your fault you were born as twins, and it isn’t your fault that the pack is superstitious to the point of idiocy. Your ethos matches mine, you’re hard workers, you care about the pack and will go to another level to aid people who hate you. You’re kind, good men, and I’m honored that you’re my friends as well as my brothers.”

Sabina shot me a look, and I saw something shining in her eyes that filled me with warmth. I hadn’t said that to impress, though, I’d said it simply because it was the truth.

“Where do we go from here?” Ethan rasped.

“We go nowhere. Nothing has changed. The pack doesn’t need to know, especially if it will confuse things, and I think it might.

“By your own right, tomorrow, you’ll beat Brandon Wright and become beta, Ethan. Austin, you will take over as enforcer, and I’m going to shore up your position so that all enforcers in the future have a council role. I think it’s stupid that they haven’t, and I know, down in the South, enforcers have held a damn sight more power than in the North for decades.

“We’re going to share our omega, we’re going to ground her because she needs us, and you’re going to live a happy life where you prove, day by day, that you’re not cursed by the Mother. If anything, you’re a gift to the pack because you keep our omega safe.”

Ethan’s voice was choked when he croaked out, “Got it all mapped out, huh?”

I smirked at him. “I’m the alpha. It’s what I do.”

Six

Sabina

I was nervous.

I’d spent the second night in a room fit for a duchess, with a duvet on the bed that I’d seen in furnishing shops before and had drooled over—four hundred dollars for a duvet in a guest bedroom?

Who had that kind of money?

Apparently, my mate did.

Or soon-to-be mate.

I wasn’t sure how that worked. Was there a fiancé phase with wolves?

An engagement period?

I figured there was, but I was still a little disappointed.

Where was the passion?

The sparks?

They were under the surface, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

I wanted to burn in them. Wanted to start a fire that we’d never be able to put out, because the promise?

It was inside me.

Inside them.

I could see it, feel it, but they’d yet to show me it aside from in heady looks that made my senses reel.

It was surreal to know the need was there, and yet, not be able to touch it.

In the human world, control wasn’t something I thought most people had. If anything, we didn’t have much of it. We acted on our passions, we flung ourselves wholeheartedly into them, especially when it came to sex. Where that was concerned, we were A-okay with fucking anyone because we needed an orgasm.

This was different.

Ironically, looking back and taking hold of that judgment as a human, I’d been different. I hadn’t slept with anyone since Kian. Not a single goddamn man.

I’d never wanted another.

Ever.

I’d thought he was it for me, and sure, I had urges, but I never acted on them because I wanted to burn those urges off on him. Not some random man whose only value to me was a functioning penis.

But here, now? I was realizing that my level of restraint was nothing compared to what powerful wolves were capable of.

“You’re thinking hard. Stop it.”

Austin’s teasing voice whispered into my mind, and I turned to face him, smiling when he slipped his arm around my waist. The ease with which he held me would never stop taking my breath away. It was like we’d known each other for a lifetime, when that was anything but the truth.

Wearing a pair of jeans that cupped his fine butt to perfection, and a plaid navy shirt with a white tee underneath it, he was the opposite of dressed up, but he looked hotter than a man in an expensive suit—well, aside from Eli, who in his tailored get up gave me a definite lady boner.

The blues in his clothing highlighted the blond streaks in his hair, and in the light of dawn, with the play of shadows from the woods in which we were walking, he looked brooding. Amusing, considering he was the least brooding of the three.

I’d admit that I preferred having him walk so close to me.

Trekking in the woods wasn’t something I particularly appreciated, and this forest looked like the kind of hunting ground a serial killer would get off on. There were thousands of trees here, all on rough terrain. Red and gold leaves added color to the drab scene, but because it was so dark, they didn’t have much of an overall effect. To be honest, they were a pain too. The leaves hid the sprawling roots, which meant I had to step with caution.