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He couldn’t answer. I saw the muscles flex under the much longer length of beard, his eyes staring into mine, until finally, he shook his head. His head dropped down, his breath coming in gasps, as he fought whatever he was going through.

“Hawk, I’m here,” I said.

“But you might not have been! You ran right into…” He pushed away from me, but I caught his arm and hauled him back.

“Hey…hey…” I tried to look into his eyes, but he kept them resolutely down, so I took my cues from my pack and wrapped my arms around him, closing my eyes and then letting something happen that I hadn’t since we got back. I settled.

Not a good word for it, but it was the only way I could think to describe it. It was as if all I was popped and fizzed like water droplets on a hot pan, and then the heat was turned off. My breath, thoughts, all slowed down, and I just was.

For a while, there was just the faint hiss of the water until someone turned it off, the feel of the rivulets running down our forms, the heavy weight of our bodies as we clung to each other.

It was the sound of Hawk’s breath coming to match mine, growing slower, more measured, and then there was just quiet.

It should have been no surprise that the bathroom fell away to be replaced by the radiant light of our shared psychic space. Everyone stood within it, as did the White Wolf. She regarded us all with those inscrutable green eyes, just sitting there, waiting.

“This better not be another bloody quest,” Jack said, striding forward, putting his body between us and the goddess. “You’ve had enough from us.”

“That’s the goddess,” Brandon hissed.

“I don’t give a shit what she is. We just got home. We’re done with this,” Slade said.

“Let's find out what she wants,” Finn said.

You must choose.

Our heads jerked up at the sound, Hawk’s hands tightening around me.

“Choose what?” Aaron said. “Is having no more divine intervention in our lives an option? Because I choose that. You’ve tugged us from pillar to post, you’ve been playing games with Brandon since he was born.

You pulled us together into a pack, and now we finally get a moment to ourselves, you come back for more? ”

You must choose.

“Choose what?” Slade said. She didn’t answer, just waited implacably. “I choose us, our pack.” He looked back to the rest of us. “We’ve done enough.”

“Me too. I can’t watch the people I love go through that shit again,” Aaron said.

Hawk’s grip tightened.

“I’ve made my position clear on what I want,” Jack said. “Only words that start with F apply, and for you, that’s fuck off.”

“Jack!” Brandon hissed.

“No, no, I’m done with all this ‘it has been foretold’ bullshit. We came, we saw, we kicked Lonan’s arse?—”

“That was Sylvan more than us,” Finn said.

“Nonetheless, we’ve done enough.” Jack turned to face the lot of us.

“No one asked us, no one told us what was going on.” Brandon blanched at that, but Jack surged on.

“No one felt like they could tell us without stuffing things up, right?” The other man nodded.

“We’ve done it all. Someone died… Well, lots of someone’s died, but someone sacrificed himself so we could have this.

Have Sanctuary, have our pack, our house. ”

“Our footy, fucking, food, and beer?” I said.

Jack laughed at that, but I could see the tears shining there. Hawk’s hands moved restively around my waist at that.

“I just want us to have a chance to enjoy it.”

“I never thought I’d say this,” Finn said with a shake of his head. “But Jack’s right.”

“Really?” his cousin said. “Finally, Prince Perfect sees my side of things.”

“Brandon? Jules? Hawk? You’re the deciders here,” Finn said.

Brandon stepped forward, away from the pack and into the space between. “What of Sanctuary? What of the refugees? If this is what we choose, what happens to them?”

You must choose , was the Great Wolf’s only reply.

“But what will happen? Will everyone be safe? Will the Black Wolf come for us? What will happen to any children we have?”

And then I knew what the right decision was. I lifted Hawk’s hand and kissed it, then started to pull away but dipped in to kiss his cheek and take a deep breath of his woody pine needle scent first.

“We won’t ever know,” I said as I took up my place by Brandon’s side. “That’s what the vast majority of people do. They take a chance, leap off that cliff, dive into that wolf’s mouth, and hope for the best. That’s what I choose—hope.”

The White Wolf nodded, then turned tail and disappeared, and the bathroom came flooding back.

“That’s what worried you, wasn’t it, Hawk? When I leapt into the fray, you thought I was choosing something else.”

“I…” His hands balled into fists, and then he consciously, slowly released them.

“I choose you two every fucking time. You’re what I think about when I wake up, I go to sleep covered in your scent, fucking wallowing in the two of you.

In all of you, in a lesser way. It was fucking weird, talking to my brothers in the Mess.

They’re my family, I’ve grown up with them all my life, but I realised just today, it's this. This is my family now, this is where I belong, and I will protect it with everything I have. From gods, from other people, from the matriarchs, I don’t fucking care. ”

Silence fell over the bathroom, until finally Jack said, “Fucking Silent Bob. Never says anything, and then when he does, everyone thinks what he says is profound.”

Slade snorted, but I walked past all of them and into Hawk’s arms, relishing every minute as the weight settled around me.

We went to bed afterwards. Of course, we did.

Sex was an integral part of being Tirian, but it was only now, as my hands slid across their taut flesh and theirs slid over mine, that I realised something.

My Tirian had said something profound through the portal—that we were their links to the physical, and they were our ability to transcend it.

There was no goddess in the room with us this time, no glowing lights, no black suns. Not even the psychic space. Everyone was here, naked, present in ways that went far beyond the physical, just as she had said.

There was a tremendous vulnerability to what we did together.

Rather than sexy scenarios and panting heat, we were just seven people, opening ourselves to each other.

We didn’t touch each other so much to arouse, but to connect.

When finally, Hawk was buried inside me, everyone else lying around us or tangled in each other, I felt it.

“What’s that?” he gasped between strokes, slowing the drag of his cock inside me.

I couldn’t answer, the feeling so strange and nebulous, I felt like describing it might destroy it.

Instead, everyone clustered closer, Jack smoothing my hair back from my forehead and dropping drugging, open-mouthed kisses, Finn’s hand instinctively reaching out to stroke my stomach.

I looked into their eyes as it built, a pleasure-pain of the sweetest kind, and tears formed in my eyes.

It was an opening somehow, that’s the only word I could use to describe it.

Like every single barrier and boundary was down, just for now.

“Hawk!” I cried, wanting, needing something, but I didn’t know what, but he seemed to know.

His face twisted, his hands digging into the bed as he forced himself on, his whole body shivering as he fucked me.

We moved together, faster and faster, the others wrapping around us that much tighter, until I felt it.

I floated on some kind of cloud of pleasure, a generous and all-encompassing thing that swept through the lot of us, wringing wave after wave of ecstasy from us.

My body felt like it was opening, blossoming, surging up like some kind of spring, until it all stopped.

Like a soprano holding onto that perfect, crystal ringing note, we were a pleasure that wouldn’t end.

And from that, she came.

Weeks later, the guys were standing in the kitchen, making coffee. None of us had gone back to work yet, and no one had made any moves to make us.

“She’s been really squirrelly lately. Maybe we should get Ophelia in to talk to her.”

“She’s been through so much. We all have. I think it's OK for her to be a little on edge. It’s only been a few weeks.”

“She’s not showing any other signs of depression and anxiety.”

“How do you know?”

“I spoke to Doc, and I looked it up on the computer. She’s a little spaced out, a bit distant, but that’s it. I say we leave it for now, see how she goes.”

I let the door creak as I opened it, holding the piece of paper Doc had just given me tightly in the other hand. The guys all looked startled at that. I’d gone for a run to get the results of my tests and had snuck in the back door when I got back.

They are your pack and they love you , I told myself, not understanding the reluctance I felt. I wanted to put a hand over my stomach, but that would have given everything away all too soon.

“I went and saw Doc, like you asked,” I said, creeping into the kitchen, my pack looking concerned as I did so. Why wouldn’t they? I was acting like I had cancer or something. “She gave me this.”

I thrust the paper out gracelessly, holding it with stiff fingers until Finn reached across and took it.

His grip faltered when he scanned the results, his eyes going to the others, which led to it being snatched from his limp grip.

I made myself watch their reactions, despite wanting to look away.

It hurt to see those brutally raw expressions that looked just like the way I felt.

“Jules…you’re…”

“You’re pregnant?” Slade couldn’t have looked any more trashed if I punched him fair in the face, but I didn’t see that for long. He swooped in and tossed me up in his arms. “My beautiful fucking girl. You’re going to be a mum! We’re going to be dads!”

And that opened the floodgates. I don’t even know who took hold of me or kissed me, my eyes were completely filmed over with tears.

All I knew was it was dizzying and overwhelming and heady.

Hands went to my belly, lips to every part of my body, until finally I was carried over to the huge couch and we all collapsed down onto it.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, totally limp within their group, surrendering to what had always been inevitable—my pack.

Then I said, “It’s a girl.”

Sylvan

You only notice nothingness when it starts to recede. The first thing I felt when the void began to drain away was pain. Every nerve, every muscle sang its own particular dirge of agony. My body, now that I could feel it again, twitched and spasmed in response to coming back into existence.

Then came the subtle changes in the black around me. Total nothingness bled away to various shades of darkness. I started to make out vague shapes and slight movements, but none of it was comforting.

Then came the voice.

You must return , it said. Calm, even, yet holding such a terrible certainty that the thought to argue didn’t even occur to me. How could it? This was a voice that remade me from nothing.

And from nothing I came. As the light formed on the horizon, slowly reaching out with its fingers of illumination, making more and more details clear, I looked down at my limbs with dumb awe. It took me a bit to remember—hands, fingers, legs, feet, but with those words came the accompanying pain.

Your task is not finished , the voice said. There is more to do. Rise, little black wolf, and serve me.