the act had my eyes shuttering to a close, and when I did? I saw that the green and orange were bouncing around in my soul, the orange hounding the green like he was teasing him—seemed fitting for Austin to haunt Ethan—but the maroon had disappeared.
Eli.
Because he was on the totem.
Just like Ethan had disappeared when he was on there.
“Why do I feel like I lose you when you go on there?” I murmured, raising a hand to my chest in a stupid effort to calm myself.
“You do?” Austin queried, his brows high, as he turned back to Eli. “You can’t sense him?”
I shook my head. “No.” I frowned at my mate, and asked, “The spirit said she only talks to people twice in their lives.”
“Apart from the alpha. She can convene with him whenever he wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because he leads from her will.”
My brow furrowed. “You mean, he does as she asks? She makes the law?”
“Exactly. He just enforces it, and we, in turn, spread that law to the pack.”
“Does every pack have a totem?”
“Yes. But this is one of the oldest and one of the largest in the world.” Ethan peered up at it, and when his head rocked all the way back, I understood, because that was how tall it was.
It felt like it was never-ending.
Reminding me, almost, of those weird looking glasses in the Hall of Mirrors that elongated things to unnatural lengths. The totem was beyond unnatural, and yet, it felt so incredibly natural at the same time that it was confusing.
The chokehold on my chest released all of a sudden, and I flashed a look at Eli, who was scowling at us as he walked over.
There was something so powerful about his stride, about his walk, that I was instantly taken aback.
At that moment, he was all alpha, and I felt like an underling in the face of his power.
“What is it?” Ethan questioned, and Austin turned his attention to Eli too.
He tucked his hands into his dress coat—who dressed for a business meeting in the forest? Eli, that’s who—and stated, “Through our union, when Sabina births her first child, she will sow the seeds of fertility when she buries her placenta beside our totem.”
My eyes flared wide. “She never told me I had to do that!”
“Because she knew I’d ask the questions that needed asking,” he replied drolly, but he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose like the Mother’s conversation had made him grow weary. “Why can nothing be simple? Why can’t we just be fortunate to have found each other? Why must there always be a purpose?”
“Because you’re an alpha,” Austin responded, and while there was sympathy in his tone, there was also resolve. As well as a hardness that told me he wasn’t going to let Eli wallow in self-pity, because from his tone, and from his posture, that was where my mate was taking this.
“We’re a vehicle for a solution to a problem that wasn’t ours to rectify,” Eli snarled.
Ethan shrugged. “Aren’t we always? We’re not on this Earth for our will, but for the Mother’s.”
That had the tension drifting out of Eli. His shoulders slumped. “I suppose.”
“Do I really have to bury the placenta here?” I asked, curling my nose up at the thought.
Austin laughed. “That’s the part you focused on, huh?”
I shrugged. “Better that than remembering you were willing for us to have sex in front of the pack.” My scowl was back. “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me about that—”
“There was nothing to warn about,” Eli rumbled. “I wasn’t about to let that happen.”
My mouth formed an O as he took the wind from my sails at that declaration.
On either side of me, Ethan and Austin tensed, and I gathered that his statement was more than unusual.
Maybe it was also unheard of.
I guessed if that was standard practice in the pack, then it was weird.
But I was damn glad for the weird. Bring on the weird!
“Why?” I inquired softly, wanting to hear his justification with my own ears.
“Because I’m not about to share you with everyone. They’ll already have too much of you, and I want every other piece for ourselves.”
That he included Ethan and Austin made tears prick my eyes.
This morning had been incredibly stressful thus far. What with learning magic existed, talking to deities, or whatever the totem was when she called herself a ‘spirit,’ then watching my mate fight a wolf, and having to deal with a bunch of people seeing his