penis? Throw in my child being a catalyst when I’d never thought I’d be able to have kids again, and the fact that I’d have to bury my placenta in the circle?
I wasn’t a happy bunny.
But those words?
They whipped all that away, they turned everything back to its most basic form, and that consisted of us.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Us.
I cleared my throat. “Does what happened today change things?”
“What do you mean?” he rumbled, his eyes darkening as he stared at me.
“Aren’t you going to claim me now?”
His smile was wicked in the best possible way, and he growled, “Mate, there was never a doubt in my mind that you were leaving this circle anything other than bound to us.”
Austin
The way he included us made me feel relieved. Horny, too, but more than anything, relieved, because this all felt like a dream still.
Somehow, I was living in a world where I had two brothers, not just one, and one alone was weird.
I was also mated to an omega, I was a loathed twin, and I’d just watched my brother become the beta of one of the oldest packs in the country. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the largest or the strongest, that a twin had risen to such a position of power was unheard of.
Today was always going to be a strange day, but the things that had happened that were extra to what should have gone down?
They made it even crazier.
Sabina should never have spoken to the spirit, and we should never have learned her destiny, not for a few more days at least.
I understood Eli’s agitation—we should have been allowed to enjoy the claiming without fear of anything attacking us, yet here we were with everything up in the air.
A part of me felt sure I was destined for a life, for a future, that was always like this, but I wasn’t about to complain, not when I somehow had a mate to get me through all the craziness ahead.
“How do we do this?” she asked nervously, for the first time showing a little anxiety.
She peered around the spiritual clearing like there were boogeymen around the corners when, I knew, categorically, there was no one present.
I wondered when that would kick in, those senses of hers. Not even a rabbit was watching us, nor a bird. The magic in the clearing ensured that, but also, everyone knew the big bad alpha lingered around the totem, and that meant nature came to a halt.
This was the Chernobyl of the forest, and every living creature was avoiding it and would do so until Eli was gone.
“What do we do?” Ethan questioned, and I rolled my eyes at him, because he couldn’t have sounded any primmer.
I swear, the man should have been a teacher. Bossing people around all the time.
“She wasn’t talking rhetorically,” I snarked at him, snickering when he just shot me a stony glance. “How long’s it been, love? You got cobwebs down there?”
Sabina released a gasp, and her head whipped around to glare at me. “Austin!”
I chuckled. “Yeah? What?”
“You did not just ask me if I had cobwebs—” Her voice turned hushed. “In my vagina.”
I grinned. “Sure did.” I winked. “Don’t worry, three mates? They won’t be sticking around for long.”
Eli snorted, but Sabina slapped her hand over her eyes. Ethan was as stoic as ever in the face of the stuff I sometimes came up with, and didn’t even crack a smile.
Grinning at her when she peeked at me through her fingers, I grabbed a hold of her and tugged her close. I didn’t stop until she was on top of me, and we were roughhousing until I was lying flat out on the ground.
Her legs pinned me down, and that was the only place I wanted to ever be.
Glued in place beneath this woman.
Her hands came up to my shoulders and she slipped them down to my pecs as she loomed over me. “You know I don’t have cobwebs down there, don’t you?”
I’d been teasing, but her earnest question had me tilting my head to the side. I’d already…
Fuck.
I knew a lot more about her past than I’d really like to know, and what I’d picked up on was that she came from a very sheltered background.
Joking about sex might have broken the ice for her, but I’d never meant to make her question herself.
I cleared my throat. “I know, sweetheart.”
She clenched her fingers around my shirt. “I haven’t—I mean, I haven’t done this in a