Until Austin had appeared, I’d been walking behind Eli with him leading the shebang, and according to him, this was the last time I’d ever have to do that.

It amused me because, in my world, that was how it worked. The women walked behind the men. Always. That was just the way of it. Two steps behind as a standard.

Eli had been apologetic as he tugged the coat around my body, like I couldn’t do it for myself, and as he’d buttoned me into the cape-like peacoat, he muttered, “Just this once. When Ethan is the beta, and I can finally claim you as the omega, you’ll always walk ahead of me.”

Always was a long time, I’d wanted to say to him, but his earnest discomfort had touched me. I’d never had anyone be genuinely discomfited around me, and it was sweet, especially on a man as powerful as him.

As the jaunty peacoat swung around my legs now, covering me up and warming me, even though it wasn’t particularly cold, I hummed as I murmured inwardly, “I’m not thinking. Hard, or otherwise.”

“Yes, you are. That’s how I can hear you.”

His snort was mental, and it made the nerve endings all the way down my spine jump up in a tidal wave that had me realizing just how much feeling I was storing inside myself.

Their control and mine were totally different things.

But I was ready.

More than that, the she-wolf was too.

Kali Sara, that was an odd realization. The animal inside me had an opinion. Who knew?

“She’s the one who’s wanting us at the moment,” Ethan informed me calmly. He walked behind me with Brandon Wright at his side as we all marched toward this totem that the entire pack seemed to center around.

“That’s weird—”

“Is it?” Eli butted in. “You’re attracted to us, but before, had we approached you as if you were a human, you’d deal with being courted, with being interested in us. The she-wolf doesn’t want to be courted. She knows what we are to her. She knows what you are to us. She senses all that and wants to take affirmative action, because until we claim you, she’ll be restless and without an anchor.”

I gnawed on my bottom lip, registering just how fucking weird it was that we were talking about an animal like it was capable of rational thought. Opinions were one thing. Anyone who had ever owned a pet knew they had preferences and weren’t afraid of letting you know that.

But rational thoughts?

Deep inside my mind, in parts of my brain I’d never registered before, on a different channel almost to where I listened to my men, I heard a growl.

Faint, but there.

Enough to make my head ache.

Enough to tell me that, damn straight, this bitch knew what she wanted.

Like he felt the ache as well, Austin reached up and rubbed a hand over the back of my head, cupping it in his palm. His heat ruptured the ache, however, and I knew the she-wolf was satisfied that I could communicate with my mates this way. If a ‘dog’ could purr, then I’d be purring—simple as that.

“So I don’t want you at all, then, hmm?” I asked, because I wanted to talk about something a little more normal than having a wolf in my head who had opinions and wasn’t afraid of letting me hear them.

Austin grinned at me, dipped his chin, brushed his nose down my cheek, and murmured out loud, “Oh no, you want us in all our forms, but still…it’s only been a week. That’s fast, even for humans—”

“Never heard of Tinder, have you?”

He wafted a hand at that. “They’re hookups. When you want someone for more than just a fuck, things don’t progress as swiftly as this.”

And he was right.

Most women wouldn’t put out on the first date because they thought it gave the man a bad impression, so my needs for the three of them, the urge to be razed to the ground in the desires flooding me… it made sense with the uniqueness of our bond.

I calmed down instantly at his rationale, and I felt bad because if anyone would have calmed me, I thought it would be Eli or Ethan.

I never thought Austin would be diplomatic.

“Ouch,” he muttered, but his lips twisted into a wry smile.

My nose crinkled. “You heard that too?”

His grin was sheepish. “Yeah, I heard that too.”

“I need to figure out how to switch this off and on.”

“Things will make more sense when you’re claimed. Your she-wolf will be calmer.”

“Is it this way for all newly turned shifters?” I inquired after I half gnawed my lip off.

Austin nodded. “It is. They’re only supposed to be transformed because they have a mate to anchor them.” He squeezed my hand. “Everything will make sense shortly.”

I gulped, relieved by the thought of having more control over this beast inside me whose power was brewing—deep in my being, I could feel how strong she was—and then, my mind was swept clean of all concern when I saw it.

The totem.

Dear Lord, it was massive.

As massive as…

I saw with my own two eyes how this was magical. That magic truly existed, because there was no way something that was essentially a stick could be thrust out of the ground with nothing tying it in place, yet it was able to stand there, so proud, protruding hundreds of feet into the sky like some kind of wooden skyscraper.

I gulped, suddenly overwhelmed and overawed at the sight.

Maybe my mates sensed it, because everyone stopped.

We were at the head of a conga line, dozens of people behind us, who’d apparently heard about the beta challenge and wanted to witness it.

While it seemed gory to me, to want to watch two animals fight it out, I came from a background where humans did the same so, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t unsettle my stomach that much.

However, what did?

That totem.

It was majestic.

Incredible.

Awe-inspiring.

Even from this far away, I could see the level of detail in the carvings. I figured that was a mixture of my newly attuned senses, but also a testament to the majesty of the monument before me.

Wolves’ heads, at least four of them, decorated the totem, each of them in a different pose. Snarling, calm, ears alert, head tipped down… Different shades of fur, different emotions conveyed.

Epic.

Absolutely epic.

How hadn’t this been found and captured on Instagram? Hell, why weren’t there a million tourists jostling into me as I took in the majesty of this incredible obelisk?

“Mate?”

I blinked at Eli, who’d turned around to look at me. “Yes?”

“Are you okay to move forward? The pack is growing restless.”

I couldn’t hear a word of dissent, but that Eli could, and that Austin gently nudged me into moving told me he sensed it too.

What could they hear?

Were people just rustling around or complaining about the abrupt standstill?

Embarrassed, I shuffled forward, and even though I had questions, I didn’t let them slip out, because there was no need.

I knew, instinctively, that there were no answers to my questions.

How could there be?

This was divine.

This was goddess gifted.

Something merely to accept and appreciate, rather than to question and query.

The height of a sequoia tree, even as the others around it swayed as the wind whipped around us, it remained still.