for a full-blood wolf, like myself, Austin, and Ethan. The first time we shift, we are taken to the totem once we return to our skin, and there we stand upon the pedestal, and the Mother judges us. She decides what we will be in spirit—alpha, beta, will we be leaders or soldiers, teachers or healers. It is her will, and she decides that at that moment. She also grants us a mate.”
“Sometimes, there are people who aren’t lucky enough to be given that guidance. We weren’t,” Austin stated, and for the first time, he sounded sober. Serious.
I knew the disappointment of not being given that guidance was a mutual pain.
Even if, now, it made sense.
“But…I’m your mate, aren’t I? I exist,” she asked warily, concern bobbing in those gemstone-like eyes.
“You exist now that you’re a wolf child,” I rasped. “Human mates are not shown to us. The Mother and the Father do not cross paths in this.”
“Seems shortsighted to me,” she grumbled, making me smile, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching over and starting to fiddle with a couple of strands of hair that had clung to the silk backing of the sofa.
I could scent her from over here. Flowers and sin.
My new favorite combination.
My cock hardened at the scent, her essence, but like I’d been doing all week, I pushed it aside. There was no point in thinking about it. Nothing could be done about my arousal yet, even if it was fucking painful.
“So, because you weren’t given that guidance, you knew your mate was human?”
“Either that, or we were to be given no mate at all,” Ethan murmured, his pain bleeding through, even though he knew, now, that he wasn’t fated to walk his life alone.
Our woman was sitting here, before us, asking questions. Trying to understand our culture.
We’d never be alone again.
For myself, I shuddered with relief. “We are the lucky ones.”
She swallowed, and her eyes were big as she cast each of us a glance. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh. You are more important to us than you could ever imagine,” I told her, my voice husky.
Her eyes were wide with emotion. “I can see that,” she whispered.
“We are always taught to err on the side of caution. To not have hope because, where the Father is concerned, there is no hope,” Ethan rumbled.
“We are the lucky ones,” I repeated, and she charmed me further by blushing.
I smiled at her, curled a lock of her hair around my finger, and murmured, “It gets more complicated, unfortunately. Someone, like us, who has no mate, can simply have a relationship with another who is not blessed, or they can have a union with a human. There is no pressure on that scale. We are realistic creatures, of the Earth. Even without that blessing, we need a home and hearth of our own, and we will go and find one for ourselves.
“But for myself? I am alpha. All alphas are granted a mate at their covenant, for their mate is the pack’s omega.”
“When Eli wasn’t given a mate,” Austin inserted, his tone still serious because this subject was no laughing matter, “there was a huge fight over whether he would be alpha. Normally, alphas inherit the role from father to son. If twin births are rare, so is an alpha not producing the next alpha.”
“But challenges exist for a reason, don’t they?” she queried.
“Sure, but they don’t happen often, and only under dire circumstances where leaders are cruel and vindictive. But even then, that doesn’t happen often. We would be punished by the Mother if we were to abuse our position of power.”
“How?” she asked, her voice soft, her interest clear.
“I’ve never been punished, so I don’t know,” I admitted. “Some say the Mother reaps sickness on alphas who shame her.”
“Or their loved ones.”
I nodded at Austin’s statement. “Or their loved ones, who get cast out from their pack. It happens rarely, Sabina.” I didn’t tell her that it had just happened to our neighboring pack—she didn’t need to hear that yet.
She blinked. “So, when you didn’t have a mate shown to you at your covenant, it caused a crisis?”
“Yes. Without a mate, an alpha can’t reign, but then when Eli was so strong, everyone knew he’d never have a position in the pack that wouldn’t be alpha. He was ten times stronger than all the kids his age, and that was when he was eight.”
She eyed me. “I thought you said the first shift happens at thirteen or fourteen.”
“It