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I sent Slade a text on the way, as it was his messages that were the most angry.

I asked if everyone could meet us in the main bedroom and then shut my phone off when it started to ring.

I didn’t want to. Cutting your partner off when they really needed to talk to you was shitty behaviour, but I couldn’t do this more than once.

I held Jack’s hand as we walked down the hall to our wing.

No doubt, he was feeling the same as me, like we were facing a firing squad.

Everyone was sitting on the bed, leaned up against the wall, or sitting on the floor when we arrived, even Sylvan.

I nodded to him, and he looked oddly pleased.

“I’m sorry for taking off. I’m sorry I bailed on the plan you were putting together, Aaron, but there’s something I had to do.

I’m sorry if it worried you taking Jack away, Hawk.

” He waved his hand, but I shook my head.

“No, really, he’s your mate, you love him, and we waltzed off without talking to you.

Jack and I talked about some stuff, and it made me realise something.

Ever since I bit Slade, it's been all about packs and mates and petitions and stuff I don’t understand, but I know now I don’t need to.

I’m telling you how it’ll be for me. All of you are in my pack.

Let’s scrap petitions and other bullshit, I think you all know I’m connected to each and every one of you.

“That vision made it clear—our Tirians see each other as mates, and we are. But what that means for us humans that spend the most time walking the earth might be different. Some of us might connect sexually, some emotionally, some both. I’m not going to let archaic processes or vague prophecies dictate that.

We’ll find our way, because there’s not one person here I don’t want to go on that journey with.

But to do that is going to require communication, a lot of communication.

There’s going to need to be ridiculous amounts of checking in to make sure we’re all moving forward together in a way that works for us, but as of now, we act as a pack.

We accept all its members, we protect them with whatever resources we have, and we give them all we’ve got to give, because that’s what packs do.

I hope you’ll decide to do this, stay, be a part of this, but I’ll understand if you don’t.

I wish I could.... talk this through, compromise a bit, but this is absolutely how I feel. I can’t give ground, I’m sorry.”

I stopped filling the room with my words and let them settle, let everyone process.

I felt hollow as a bell, like the speech had taken everything I had and just drained it all.

Even if they walked out that door, unable to consider what I said, I’d still love them, I realised.

It wasn’t yet romantic love for some, but there was love nonetheless.

A flurry of little memories of their hands, their words, the laughs had, the way they washed their bodies, the jokes, the comments, the touches.

I was drowning in them, all that they were and all that I was.

We were one big insane kaleidoscope of moments melded together.

No, the truth was shorter than that. We were one.

Strangely, it was still a surprise when I felt the first touch.

I jerked my head up to see Slade had wrapped an arm around me, his touch soon joined by Finn’s.

I stood within the safe harbour of their bodies for a moment and just breathed.

Then, the next one came. The guys shuffled over to let Aaron in, his arm thick with muscle.

Then Hawk and Jack came, two twins—one light, one dark—creating a circle around me.

I was held within their interlocking embraces, my breath coming when theirs did.

“It’s time.”

I looked up to see Brandon standing at the edge of the group, and even though my view of him was over someone’s shoulders, I could see the tears in his eyes.

“Now?” I said, feeling the venom surge in my mouth.

“Now.”

The group parted to let him in, and surrounded by the lot of them, I gave Brandon my mate mark. His fingers clawed at my back as my fangs pricked my gums. I fitted my jaws carefully over the juncture of his neck and bit the sun.

Or that’s how it felt as my venom sank into him.

Light exploded, filling the room with a radiance that blinded the lot of us, but I could not let go.

I surged through him, and we surged through all of them.

We ran as a pack on a plain of white, with one heart and one mind, arrowing towards the same point on the horizon, paws moving in perfect unison.

Everyone’s fur grew wispier and wispier as we ran, until the forms grew fuzzy and indistinct.

Rather, balls of grey and white light gambolled across the featureless plain, spinning around each other, faster and faster until we fused.

Then, it all stopped. She stood there, the Great Wolf, looming on the horizon and looking out on all she surveyed with a gentle eye.

She nodded, and we looked down. We were the same, a Great Wolf of grey, sitting on our haunches, panting lightly.

You are ready now , she said. Come for us.

And then I blinked. I pulled my fangs from Brandon’s neck, licking the blood and venom there, and he held me so tight. “I love you, my mate,” he said.

“I love you too.”