Okay, I sounded hysterical, and I was a little.

I was all over the place, and I felt winded.

I’d left this place with a broken mate in my arms, and now I was here with another, and he needed answers and wanted things explained to him, but I had no words.

I could only giggle and tell him he was arrogant.

I almost slapped myself in the face, but instead, I let myself flop backward and float in the water.

I heard him wade back to shore, and was grateful he gave me a handful of moments to get myself together.

Composed I definitely wasn’t, but I knew I needed to be. I needed this to be our time, because that was what this was supposed to be.

What the fuck was even happening here?

How had things morphed so fast?

I’d felt rested and loved, warm and happy, and now, I just felt traumatized.

This place was spoiled, and I was angry at that, annoyed and raging because this was supposed to be precious.

I smacked my hands flat against the pool, appreciating the splash and enjoying the way that the water cascaded over me.

I wanted to scream and rage my annoyance, but I didn’t.

Instead, I just took some deep breaths, floated a little, then a thought hit me.

Eli was probably stripping.

The thought made me feel terrible, especially considering how out of whack my brain was, but I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my chin forward so I could look at him.

He was dragging off his jacket now, and I caught him just in time to see him drop it on the ground.

When it disappeared, as had mine and Austin’s clothes, I laughed because he muttered, “What the fuck?”

I grinned and snapped my head back down when I knew he was going to glance over at me to ask me what had just happened.

When he grunted, thinking I was still having a ‘moment,’ I quickly peered up again and saw him strip off his tie. That hit the ground and disappeared too.

My lips twitched as he scowled, peering around him like a pixie or a sprite was there and stealing his clothes away from him. I dropped my head back into the water again when he looked over at me.

I could sense his movements in a way I hadn’t been able to before I’d come to this horrible fucking place.

Being claimed by Austin had probably done it, or maybe communing with the spirit of the totem, or perhaps it was just my becoming more comfortable with my she-wolf while I was here. I had no idea what the reason was, just knew it was the truth.

I quickly peeked up at him when I knew he was working on his pants. They were wet rags around his thighs, and I knew he was going to find them hard to drag off.

Wishing he’d turn around so I could see his ass, because that was a thing of beauty, I watched as he began to slide them down his legs, revealing long, strong muscles that made me think shit I shouldn’t be thinking right now.

Not when I was in the middle of commuted hysteria.

Still, he was so fine that I just wished Austin was here and Ethan too, because then I’d know everything was well. I wouldn’t have to worry about a pack of wolves coming out of the trees to attack us.

Maybe we’d been short-sighted staying close to the pool. Maybe we should have gone and explored, but there’d been no ants, no bugs, no fucking anything. Not even birds.

Why the hell would there be none of that, no rabbits or mice, but there’d be wolves? Didn’t the wolves frickin’ eat here?

As I started to get worked up again, I watched him and had to admit that just viewing him was enough to right my mood. Not only because he was hotness personified, but because he was inadvertently funny.

Plus, he gave me the show I was asking for. When his pants were around his ankles, and he toed off his shoes and socks, which miraculously didn’t disappear, he leaned up on tiptoe, then somehow did this quick swipe so the fabric didn’t brush the grass. It worked. He didn’t lose them.

I sensed his triumph, and as I wondered what his next move was, I watched him pull off the other pant leg too. He kept the fabric bundled in his hands, holding it off the floor like it was a crocodile’s mouth or something.

The sight of which, of course, made me want to laugh.

When he turned around, he finally gave me a glimpse of that fine naked butt. He was also commando, which meant, had I known earlier, I could have pulled down his fly while he was dressing me up like I was a child and grabbed a hold of the good stuff. Yum.

Holding that thought for another time, I watched as he strode over to a nearby tree. This one had dark green leaves with a petrol blue sheen that reminded me of when gas was on the road, gleaming iridescently when the light hit it at unusual angles. He went to hang out his pants, trying to keep them all neat like, and then he hung them over a low-lying branch.

I couldn’t stop myself from snorting when the magic immediately snatched them away from him.

He heard me, naturally, and grumbled, “What is it with this place?”

“It wants us to be naked.”

That had him scoffing, “Why? What’s wrong with clothes?”

“Clothes maketh the man?” I teased.

“Yes. Exactly. What is this place anyway?” he asked, scowling around, evidently finding no beauty in the glorious pond, on the hunt only for threats.

I got the sense he was at the end of his patience, and that he needed answers about this world he suddenly found himself in.

I had to admit, his tolerance in the face of where we’d landed, and what had happened in the run up to his popping in here like he was a genie in a bottle, had been far more extensive than I’d thought him capable of.

Amused and touched and grateful, I stopped floating and righted myself so that my feet touched the bottom of the pond. There, soft pebbles greeted my toes, and I curled them around the smooth stones, anchoring myself as I kept my chin dipped in the water.

“It’s another time, another place.”

That was what Austin and I had taken to calling it.

“Another time and another place? This isn’t The Wizard of Oz, Sabina,” he said drolly, peering around as he began to unfasten his last remaining item of clothing—a shirt. Yep, he’d been walking around Risky Business style, only without the socks. “I mean, where is it?”

“I don’t know. We never found out.” I turned my head to the side a little and mused, “I never would have taken you for a fan of The Wizard of Oz.”

He stilled at that, then sighed. “I left myself open to that one, didn’t I?”

I grinned, hidden by the water line, and bounced up only to shrug and say, “Well, I mean, we have nothing else to do other than get to know one another.”

“My mother loved it. I hated it. That’s pretty much all there is to that conversation.” He arched a brow, like he was daring me to continue talking about this subject and, naturally, because I was difficult, I had to do that. Had no choice but to test him and tease him.

It hit me then, that unlike Austin, who needed me to shore him up, who needed to believe he was special to me, unique when he wasn’t in his own eyes, Eli had none of those issues.

He was self-assured to the max, and maybe with another person, he’d come across as a dick, and I guessed, even to me, he was slightly, with his habit of trying to command every situation, but I figured that was my role…to prove to him that he didn’t always have to own every moment. There was more to life than being a leader.