I strained to hear his thoughts, but wasn’t altogether surprised when they weren’t there.

Was that the issue?

I thought about how to resolve that, because with Eli and Austin, each time had been different. Just claiming Austin had connected him to me, but with Eli, only when I’d shifted had I been able to hear his thoughts. So for Ethan, I had no solution.

Which sucked.

So, because I didn’t know what to do or what to say, I sighed and just hugged him as much as I could in the twisted embrace I was sitting in.

The scent of desperation escaped his pores, and it was so powerful, I had no alternative but to whisper, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“The truth is hard to hear,” he rasped, making me tense in his arms.

The truth was always the hardest option, in my honest opinion. No one ever said that the truth didn’t hurt.

“I can take whatever it is you’re feeling.”

He sighed, his breath making my hair gust a little, and as the ends tickled my skin, prompting me to shiver, he tucked me tighter into him and murmured, “It’s better now.”

When he squeezed me, I figured out why.

Because I was awake.

Plus, Austin?

While he was the more ebullient of the two twins, he also hadn’t had to deal with Ethan’s almost death as well as my almost death too.

Shit.

If anything could have prompted me to move, to shift out of the odd position I was in, it was that. I scrambled, shoving away from his hold until I could straddle him, until my arms could slip around him and I could embrace him with my entire body.

The second he understood what I was doing, sensed that I wasn’t trying to get away from him, he squeezed me back.

“I’m sorry.”

My words had him tensing. “Why on Earth would you be sorry? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I’ve brought chaos—”

“Fuck chaos. Fuck it in the ass.”

His statement had me snorting, but it was his vehemence that made me pull back to peer at him so I could giggle up at him.

“Fuck it in the ass, huh?”

His grin was slow in coming, and when it did, it was sheepish as hell, but that didn’t stop it from making an appearance. Kali Sara, it was better than the sun coming out in this place’s endless twilight.

I wanted to bathe in the rays of that smile.

Wanted to dance in it, for God’s sake.

Something about my most serious mate smiling at me, playfully, his words nearly a joke in themselves, hit me right in the ovaries.

Not the most ideal moment, perhaps, but hell, he was mine.

I was his.

And this place?

Even though it was apparently an ‘almost’ death trap, it was for us.

Constructed for us, to bring us closer together.

Unable to stop myself, I pressed a kiss to his lips, then moaned when he kissed me back.

I almost hadn’t expected him to do that, had thought whatever he was going through was too much, but evidently not.

I sighed as he took it further, his hands moving up to my hair to hold me in place, even as one coiled the ends into a rope and used it to arch my head back.

His tongue thrust between my lips, dancing with mine a few times, but within seconds, he was on the move, and I wasn’t about to complain.

He nipped down my throat, sucking and suckling along the way, his tongue dancing as it moved across the hypersensitive skin.

I moaned, shuddering against him, and I started to arch my pelvis. His cock, of course, was there, growing harder against me. I could feel the heat of him, the thickness, and the fact that he was responding to me so quickly filled me with hope that I could push past the shadows that overwhelmed the start of our journey as mates together.

I hated that he was last, but somehow, everything was happening for a reason, and I knew he was meant to be with me, here and now, to deal with whatever challenge was heading our way.

It was almost like entering a level in Super Mario or something. There was no point in having Luigi with me when I really needed Bowser.

Still, now seriously wasn’t the time for me to get my nerd on, and instead, I focused on what he was doing. On the way he tasted me, on the way he savored me.

Oh Kali Sara, I was so grateful for each of them.

They didn’t just hold me, they made me feel real.

Like I wasn’t a doll for their pleasure, but like, without me, they’d have no pleasure at all.

I wasn’t something to fuck. I was something to savor.

And I so badly wanted to be savored.

I moaned when he nipped at the base of my throat. My stomach tensed, and my back arched as I let my head fall back, allowing him to taste wherever he wanted, but not unsurprisingly, that wasn’t enough for him.

When his hands came to my tits, I started to grind down against him. A harsh snarl escaped him, and fuck, it set my she-wolf off.

Everything inside me both clenched and released, desperate for what that snarl represented—his loss of control.

Not unlike Eli, I sensed he had control issues too, but I didn’t have to worry about Ethan as much. He wasn’t in a jail cell he’d made for himself. He was just not as cheerful as his brother.

That, I could deal with.

Still, he surprised me when he twisted us around, and suddenly, I was on my back in the water. The shore, thanks to the cascading waterfall, lapped against my skin like a thousand fingers and tongues, and he loomed over me, looking like some kind of sex god.

His muscles were already big, but adrenaline had them pumped up like he’d just been challenging Brandon, and while technically, he had, the challenge having occurred less than a goddamn half-hour ago, I knew that wasn’t how time worked here.

For however long I’d been unconscious, he’d been coming down from that adrenaline buzz.

So the sight of him like that, ripped and ready to fuck? To rock my goddamn world? Made me cream.

Hard.

I arched up, loving how my pussy collided with the water, my heat and the temperate liquid merging for a handful of seconds, before he grabbed my legs and flipped me onto my front.

I swear, I was just a frickin’ ribbon stick to these guys, but I wasn’t about to complain, not when the move put me on my belly. He shaped my butt with his hands, then slipped his finger down the crack.

“I’d prefer to fuck you in the ass than chaos,” he rumbled, making my lips twitch.

“Maybe when we have KY jelly,” I teased, and loved how he laughed before he nipped my ass, hard enough to sting, but Kali Sara, what a sting.

I squealed, arching up onto my hands and knees, which had been his intention, I assumed, because within a heartbeat, he was there.

His tongue.

Sweet fuck.

He slid it down the folds of my sex before he thrust it inside me. Every part of me jerked to life in response, my body jolting, every muscle tensing sharply before releasing as I turned into a vat of goo in the water.

My hair flopped over my head, trailing on the surface, my elbows dug into the soft sandy shore, and I just planted myself there, not about to lose out on this moment.

This, the first time Ethan savored me.

And this was savoring.

He ate me out like I was the first meal from Popeye’s after a diet.

He took me higher than I’d ever been before with just how fucking satisfied he sounded. He hummed and groaned, and I knew, from the slight slap of the water, that he was jerking off.