The voice had me twisting around to find its owner. I gaped at them. “Mice?” I pulled a face, then blew out a breath. My instinct was to tell them to put poison down, but ever since the other realm, I’d started changing.

I was a predator by nature now. I knew that. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t live my life by my choices.

And those choices meant I didn’t like to kill unnecessarily.

So much blood had been shed in my past, so much of it a waste of human life and love, that to be faced with a world where death was closer at hand, where the repercussions might lead to not just one death but two? Well, it wasn’t my idea of a dream come true.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t change things.

I cleared my throat. “We need to figure out a way to stop them from coming around then, don’t we?”

Elsa, the housekeeper, commented, “I’ll get some poison.”

I shook my head. “No. No poison. Something more natural.”

She scowled at me, so I scowled back as she grumbled, “They don’t work.”

“Sure they do. There are ways and means. We’ll figure it out.” When she pursed her lips in disapproval, for the first time, I called on my she-wolf.

Two things happened—the bitch from the other realm waded into the quarrel, snapping her teeth whenever someone got in her way, and my she-wolf came out to party.

The other females gasped at that, and Ariel, sadly, started gasping for air again, so I quickly dropped my hold on my she-wolf, well aware that everyone now knew that I had power to back me up.

I didn’t like pissing contests, but these people were predators too. They respected strength, so I’d shown them what I could do. And that was that.

I rubbed my hands over Ariel’s shoulders as the bitch moved over to me. When she pressed her head onto Ariel’s lap, the other woman tensed, but I reached for her hand and put it on the bitch’s head. “She means no harm,” I assured her.

Ariel’s breathing calmed, and she stopped bellowing air in and out, instead, starting to breathe a little more subtly. “Who is she?”

It figured the household staff would want to know, so I shrugged. “She’s my friend.”

That was the only answer I had, and it was the only answer they’d get, because I had no other answer.

When she was calm enough to stand, enough to wander over to a seat, I patted her hand and got her some water. When she took a sip, I asked, “Are you okay, Ariel?”

She stared at me with hesitation in her face, her eyes. “Y-Yes, Omega.”

I shook my head. “Sabina. My name’s Sabina. You know where I am if you need me.”

I didn’t wait on her to reply, just shot her a soothing smile and started out of the kitchen.

Women moved out of my way, and I let them, sensing their wariness had morphed into surprise, and I was good with that.

Everything was a learning curve, wasn’t it?

As I headed out into the hall, the bitch at my side, I heard Daniel giggling at something overhead in the room we’d given him.

Even though he wasn’t my son, the links between us were powerful.

I had no way of knowing why, just knew that to be true, and it was only one of the reasons why I’d wanted him here, close at hand.

Austin was helping him with his homeschooling, which amused me because I knew he hated books, and we were all taking it in turns to help him catch up with all the education he’d missed.

Which was a lot.

I was almost tempted to go up there and help, but I knew I’d be a distraction, and Daniel didn’t need that.

He needed his teacher focused on him, not on my ass.

Lips twitching at the thought, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my other men.

Eli was out. I hated that. I knew he was at one of the pack businesses, knew he was scoping things out for when he decided on his next plan of action.

That he was taking so long to act when he was decisive by nature told me he was nervous, and it was the kind of nervous I couldn’t soothe.

He took too much on, bore too heavy a burden, and though I could help ease the strain, I couldn’t erase it entirely.

Instead, I just tried to share it, and I figured I was doing an okay job of it because he hadn’t complained yet.

Ethan, on the other hand, was in the office where Eli worked, so I wandered in there, smiling when I saw him sitting at Eli’s desk.

“Rebel,” I called out when, after finishing his call, he put down the landline and twisted to look at me.

His grin was sheepish, but he beckoned me with his hand, and I moved toward him, easily slipping onto his lap like I’d been doing it since I was young, and not just in the past month or so.

Everything about us was as natural as night following day, and the ease of it all just settled in my soul, making everything a thousand times better.

When I rested against him, my butt against his crotch, I felt his dick harden, but mostly, I felt the way he wanted comfort and wouldn’t ask for it.

His arms slipped around my waist, and he rocked us back as he sighed. “Feels good to have you in my arms, mate.”

They were all surprisingly tactile, but I wasn’t about to complain about it. I figured they were all alphas, all manly men who weren’t allowed to show weakness…only to me.

“Everything okay?”

He shrugged. “Just a lot going on right now.”

My eyes narrowed at that, and I twisted somewhat so I could look up at him. “Who was that on the phone?”

“Uncle Frank,” he said bitterly.

“What did he want?”

“He extended an invitation for us to go down to the family pack.” His jaw worked for a second. “I have no desire to go.”

“I know you don’t. We discussed this already,” I told him calmly, accepting his choice, even if I didn’t necessarily agree with it.

He huffed, apparently sensing that, and muttered, “If anyone should understand that family isn’t everything, it’s you.”

I arched a brow, surprised by his tone. “My situation is a lot different than yours. Plus, your family wants you in the circle. There’s a difference.”

“They don’t want us,” he muttered, that same bitterness etching his voice. “They just want to see their brother or their nephew or whoever in us—”

I frowned. “You’re more than your father, and if what Eli said is true, then your father was a convict. I mean, I’m not saying that’s bad, but from what I’ve learned—and I figure Cyrilo was a pretty big lesson to be taught—a shifter has to do something bad for the pack to allow him to be jailed in human prisons.”

He huffed. “Yeah.”

“You know what Lucas did?”

“Killed someone, apparently.” His sullenness didn’t come as a surprise. But his answer did.

I wasn’t sure what to say to that, wasn’t sure how to ease this particular ache.

“You don’t like that you understand Eli’s father’s reasoning, do you?” I guessed cautiously.

He hissed under his breath. “No. Fuck, why do you always know what I’m feeling?”

I snorted. “It’s kind of what I do.”

“Yeah, but still.” He blew out a breath. “If another male came to our union and he was a convict? I wouldn’t let him anywhere near you.” He gulped. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that I’m anything like that fucker.”