do with me and what I’d done, but everything to do with the fight and who was now their new beta.
I cast them all a look, absorbed their uneasiness with the fact that one of the twins, one of the cursed sons of the pack, was now in a leadership role, and where before, I’d caused them fear, I worked hard to use that same heretofore unknown link that connected me to them, and filled them with ease.
With hope.
Because that was what a united leadership would bring.
Tied to me?
We’d be bringing only the best to the pack, uniting them in love rather than tearing them apart with power struggles.
When they relaxed some, when even Brandon stopped his ferocious panting, I figured it worked.
Eli shot me a look, and he practically vibrated with pride.
In me.
He was proud of me!
The thought shouldn’t have delighted me, but it did. It made me incredibly happy in fact. Almost pathetically so.
But then, when he reached up, when he touched me, his thumb sliding along my chin, he murmured, “You could never be pathetic. Nothing about what we have together could ever be that way. Do you understand?”
I gulped, touched beyond words that he could sense my unease with my joy at his pride in me.
“I understand,” I rasped, sensing he wanted a verbal response.
I licked my lips, then asked, “What now?”
“Now, Ethan is accepted into the rank of beta of the pack.”
My eyes widened at that, at the sudden formality, because Eli hauled me into his side and moved me so I was nearer to the totem.
When Ethan stepped out of the challenge circle, my heart stopped pounding so hard, and I recognized it was only racing because the competitors’ hearts were racing too.
The circle was a…what? Conduit?
Even as my brow furrowed, Ethan wandered over to us. I thought he might do something swoon worthy, like grab me in his arms and take me in a kiss that was reminiscent of a romance movie, but he didn’t.
More’s the luck.
If anything, he didn’t even cast a look at me, didn’t connect his gaze with Eli’s. He just took the six steps that would take him to the totem.
I followed his trajectory, and only because of that did I see the little wind that came and brushed along the path he took.
My eyes widened in surprise, but the wind revealed a small wooden step that had been worn smooth over the passage of time. It was dark, rich with a color that the rest of the totem didn’t share, and when Ethan’s feet collided with it, this time, instead of racing, my heart slowed down to a pace that made me feel like I was holding my breath underwater.
The sensation was strange. Like I was drowning and had reached that point where panic wasn’t necessary—yes, I’d experienced that one horrendous time in my life because that was my awful brother’s idea of playtime—and I grabbed Eli’s hand blindly, clinging to his fingers, tightening mine around them as I tried to deal with whatever it was that was happening to me.
I felt him tense behind me, sensed Austin’s concern, but Ethan?
Kali Sara, I knew why I felt like this!
He wasn’t there.
He was absent.
And I’d never even realized how present he was inside me. Two weeks ago, when I closed my eyes, I saw nothing other than darkness. Maybe it was tinted orange but that was it. Nothing more, nothing less.
But now?
It was like I’d stared up at the sun, closed my eyes, and the ball of light was hovering around, just waiting to fade out of my retina’s memory.
What I could see when I closed my eyes now?
Two blazing balls of light. Bigger than the sun, hotter than it too. Dazzling colors that soothed and warmed at the same time, but there was a third one missing.
I knew which was which too.
The oddly maroon ball was rich with brown and red—a man of passion and a man connected to the earth. Eli.
The other? A bright orange, bouncy with vitality, joyous and cheerful. Austin.
Where was Ethan?
He wasn’t there.
He was…?
Gone.
The mournful thought came from the she-wolf, but before I could panic, before I had too much time to worry, I sensed him.
Green.
Like grass, rich and verdant with a few shades of emerald thrown in there. A man who was calm, a man who was grounded. Connected with the Earth itself in a way that Eli, who was ruled by passions that were deeply buried, wasn’t.