He smiled against my skin, and I smiled back, loving that he was a little lighter.

“Your wolf was scared, wasn’t he?” I inquired gently, slightly blown away at the thought of that beast being scared when it was so crazy strong.

“There’s only one thing in this world that could terrify him,” he admitted.

“What’s that?”

He sighed, and then broke my heart as he disclosed, “Your rejection.”

And that had me clinging to him wordlessly. I felt mute, unsure what to say, but then I realized that his wolf didn’t speak English, and all he needed from me?

To be there.

Though the man needed the words, and I was going to use them liberally to ease his concerns.

“I love you,” I murmured. “It’s going nowhere, will never go anywhere because I recognize the truth—I was born to be yours. Just like you were born to be mine.

“The Mother would never have put us together if we weren’t meant to be, Eli. You just have to have faith in me and in her. Can you do that?”

His answer was to kiss me. The softest, most tender kiss I’d ever experienced in my life, and I’d never forget it.

Not until the day I died.

Sabina

When I woke up in Eli’s arms after what, I assumed, was the fourth night here, I yawned out my fatigue.

I was exhausted, but in a good way.

My body was sore and loaded with aches and pains that I hadn’t experienced in years, but I felt good as I awoke in his embrace.

The man was insatiable. And I knew why.

If he’d been holding back all this time, I could only imagine how goddamn boring sex had been for him.

Hell, more of an exercise in torture than anything else.

We’d spent the last few days getting to know each other, and more importantly, learning how the other worked.

He was a caregiver, and I didn’t even think he knew it. In his mind, it wasn’t giving care to rule the pack. It was duty and took strength and control. But he was. I knew that from how he cleaned me every day. How he rubbed my legs and body, and how he applied lotion to my skin like he was trying to figure out how to end world hunger.

He was careful.

Every move he made, it was like he consulted some inbuilt monitor that I had no access to.

He watched the world with an eye that even Ethan and Austin, though strong alphas, didn’t.

There was something about his caution that made me feel safe. And while Austin had achieved that, Eli compounded it.

With two strong mates always willing to fight for me, I knew my past was no danger to me. Knew I was safe from my boogeyman, and that liberated me in a way I’d never have imagined possible.

If Eli was all twisted up inside, tangled in fears and concerns and dread, I was just as muddled.

But through him, I realized that if I stayed that way, he’d never be allowed out either.

I wanted that—his wolf needed to see the light of day more.

Austin had told me how Eli rarely shifted, so I knew he contained his wolf not only mentally, but physically too.

And the she-wolf?

Demanded his wolf.

There was no messing around with her either.

She knew who her mates were now. Knew the mettle of the men. Testing them with silly tricks to make them lose control wasn’t something she needed to continue doing. In fact, I knew I’d have to apologize for trying to trip Austin up that way.

It had been stupid of me and wrong.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked sleepily.

I blinked at him, taken aback by his realization that I was upset about my treatment of Austin. “Huh? Nothing.” Aside from feeling like I’d been riding a horse for ten days straight.

Which, I guessed, I had been doing. What with Austin and Eli? Sheesh.

Poor Ethan. When it was his turn, I was just going to fall asleep on him.

The thought, however, sent longing through me.

I wanted him here. I wanted Austin.

This was mine and Eli’s time, though, and I embraced that, all while longing for the moments when we could come together as a unit like a jigsaw puzzle put back together again.

I sighed at the thought, then murmured, “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Your she-wolf was grumbling.”

I loved how he knew that.

Sometimes, he knew what the creature wanted more than I did.

“She was?”

“Yeah. You sore?” He peeped at me through dense lashes that would make any woman jealous. “I can give you a massage again, if you want?”

My lips curved at that. “As kind and generous as that it is of you, mate, we both know it’ll end up with me on my back again. Or my knees.”

He grinned, and the lighthearted expression made my heart happy.

Smiles looked good on him, and I’d seen them so rarely in our recent past, but they were popping up with more and more frequency now.

Something I was definitely proud about.

If anything, I considered that a massive achievement, because if lightening his load was pivotal to keeping him sane, it wasn’t hard to make him laugh.

He had a good sense of humor. It was just knotted in the web of his control, and until here, this place, I hadn’t known that. Hadn’t seen it or registered it, and I was so happy to see this side of him.

Pleased with him, I reached over and rubbed a finger down his nose, then a strange thought occurred to me.

“Why can’t I hear you in my head?”

His brows rose, then he blinked, seeming to register he couldn’t hear me either. That didn’t come as much of a surprise to me though. Telepathic communication was the last thing he was accustomed to. “I don’t know.”

“Is something wrong, do you think?”

His smile was tender, and the sight made me melt. Before the claiming, he’d been gentle with me. But now? It was like… Shit, it was like he looked at me as though I’d set the world on its tracks for him.

Which was crazy because the world was nuts, and I wasn’t much better in the aftermath of what had happened to Austin.

The time with Eli had soothed me though, I had to give the Mother that—even if I really didn’t appreciate her throwing me into the crapper the way she had.

“Mate,” he half-crooned, reaching up to push a lock of hair behind my ear. “You needn’t worry about our connection.”

I hummed under my breath. “True.”

When a scent wafted through the clearing where we rested, strong and pungent, but not fetid, the sudden urge to be my other self hit me.

It was weird.

Like a switch clicking on and off in my head where there’d never been a damn switch before as a compulsion to act overwhelmed me. Dazedly, I murmured, “I want to run.”

He blinked at me, then stared down at my breasts. “I wouldn’t be averse to the show—”

Even though my brain was decidedly on other things, I grinned at him, because it was such a man thing to say, and Eli, while all man, wasn’t like a usual guy. Austin was quite capable of leering at me as I did a two-mile jog with no clothes on. Eli? While I was sure he’d look, he would never hoot or holler at me as I did so.

Austin?

Hell yeah, he’d be down for that.

My lips curved wider at the thought, as did the realization that I genuinely missed him. And Ethan.