and murmured, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Eli tensed. He hadn’t spoken since Austin had dominated the council. Ethan had smoothed things over, using more diplomacy than I expected of him, and had invited them to partake of the refreshments.
Ever since, we’d been standing in silence.
Awkward?
Yup.
Still.
Better than having to talk to the bunch of asswipes who’d wanted to fawn over me, even though the second I’d walked through the door, I’d known I was different than them.
With my golden, tawny coloring, the rich black hair that my ancestors were renowned for, the Creole earrings swaying about my neck, and the colorful clothes I wore—gotta love one-day shipping, especially when you had a millionaire’s credit card to buy stuff with—I was as unlike them as night was day.
In their designer slimline tailoring, and their stuffed shirts and trim forms, I was round and curvy and everything the other females weren’t.
Did that matter?
I wasn’t alpha female, after all. I was the omega. A power in my own right.
Eli squeezed my hand. “Not much longer now.”
He found it the hardest to speak telepathically, but he was getting better at listening to us all talk, so that was something.
Poor Eli, he hadn’t anticipated any of this.
As far as I knew, his mother had killed herself in a ritual sacrifice the same night I’d been transformed, and even as he dealt with her death, the overwhelming grief that sometimes made him stonily silent and had pain radiating out of him with such force I wished I knew how to work my powers, he had everything else to deal with.
And here I was, being selfish. Wanting reality to beat fiction.
I nestled into him, grateful that I was his mate, grateful that, if I had to be a part of this strange new world, he was at my side, with Austin and Ethan all around me.
A tight-knit little circle.
Four of us against the world.
My lips curved as I thought about my father. How he’d hated me for dating a gadji, how that hatred had turned into loathing when I’d married him and gotten pregnant. When loathing had turned, twisted, morphed into poison, I’d paid for that in blood.
What would he think of me now? Strangely content, even after my conservative upbringing, to be with three men. Three non-Roma.
I sighed, oddly pleased by how disgusted he’d be. In a weird way, totally childish of me, I knew, but I appreciated the rebellion.
More than that, I appreciated the nascent links that were spreading from me to the three men who looked at me like I’d dug my heel into the ground and had discovered water.
That was powerful.
So powerful.
Sure, they hadn’t ravished me, but they gave me that.
I needed to stop being greedy.
“Be as greedy as you want,” Austin rasped, deep in my mind.
I shivered at the tone of his voice and cut him a look. There was fire in his eyes, more so than before—had he heard me?
“Yes,” Ethan rumbled.
I gulped, my pussy turning molten at the heat they radiated. I wanted them. Fuck, I did.
I’d never wanted any man since Kian. Had never wanted to experience the ties that bound a woman to a man ever again.
Yet here I was, overwhelmed by three of them.
Only, they weren’t just men, were they?
Eli squeezed my arm. “Later,” he growled.
At first, I thought it was a promise, then I realized Brandon Wright, the beta, had approached.
He was staring at us all with anxiety radiating from him, and I murmured, “All is well, Mr. Wright?”
“Brandon, please,” came the immediate reply with a bow, deep at that.
My brows rose, because I hadn’t anticipated that, and when he straightened up, I muttered, “I thank you for the greeting.”
He blinked at me, then stated, “It is an honor to have met you, Omega, but, Alpha, I think I must leave. I have to prepare for tomorrow.” His chin tipped up, and he cast a dark glance at Ethan. “Tomorrow, at the totem.”
Ethan nodded. “See you there.”
He sounded like he was agreeing to meet up for a workout at the gym, not a challenge that could mean life or death.
I blew out a breath as Brandon wafted past, and, slowly but surely, over the next thirty minutes, everyone followed Brandon’s path, leaving the packhouse with the promise of a gathering at the totem.
I’d yet to see this totem, but it had been explained to me.
Ethan and Austin weren’t that great at explaining, however, so I wasn’t really sure what the totem was.
I mean, totems were