Reminding me, almost, of those weird looking glasses 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 wasn’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…