Page 295

Initially, that took the form of a conversation.

We all decamped to the couches in the living room, wrapped in blankets and each other.

That was my first challenge. They all reached for me when I went to sit down, then pulled back, seeming to know what kind of predicament that put me in.

Shaun had just claimed me, surely he had priority, but Axel looked a little hesitant when he put his hand out, something that felt like it physically hurt.

He was always such a confident guy, so seeing hesitancy in him seemed wrong.

But if he was reluctant, Ethan was doubly so.

We hadn’t had much time together, since this was all so bloody rushed, and I saw his body tense before he even raised his arms, and then there was Shade.

He sat down apart from everyone else, obviously feeling like he wasn’t part of the pack, so I settled down beside him, his arm going around me on automatic. Then I told them everything.

What I’d seen, what I’d heard and experienced, what I’d heard Branwen say, which of course made them stiffen. They all looked at each other, as if the answers could be found there, but it took Ethan to say it.

“We have to get the alpha involved in this. That’s…”

“Jules said she used to hear Sylvan in her mind, before shit went down,” Shaun said, then shrugged. “Things have gotten weird since he came to Sanctuary.”

“Another person to speak to, but not yet, not for a while. Not until the afternoon I’m thinking,” Axel said.

He stretched, a big cat of a man, and now he was lazy with it.

“We need sleep and a lot of it.” Shade’s arm tightened around me, something that Axel noted with a nod.

“None of this is urgent, unless this Branwen is telling you to axe murder us in our sleep.”

He shot me a silly grin, but a cold finger slid up my spine, now I was fully present and in the moment.

I’d spent my life talking to a voice inside my head, but hers?

Maybe because I’d always been bonded to my Tirian, maybe because her advice, while grumpy, always served me well.

But Branwen? There was something…insatiable about her, putting my own need for more to shame, wanting and wanting in a kind of indiscriminate way that would get people hurt.

My eyes slid over the guys, the fear spiking higher as I considered that.

No , my Tirian growled resolutely. She will not harm our mates.

“Sleep would be good,” Shade said, moving closer, pressing his lips to my neck in a slightly tentative way. “Dunno about you blokes, but I feel like I’ve been up for hours.”

“In more ways than one.” Axel chuckled and then got to his feet, reaching out a hand, but I wasn’t sure who for.

When I took it, he smiled, making me think I’d made the right choice.

He moved in closer, smoothing the hair back from my face.

“But we need to rest, recharge, relax. Try to recoup some energy before it all starts again.”

Which was a good plan, one my body well and truly stood behind, which, of course, meant it wasn’t to be.

We wandered down to the main bedroom, to a bed that spanned the back of the massive room, my feet feeling like lead.

I wavered at the edge of the bed, wondering how we were going to do this, but ended up just flopping back onto it, no longer caring.

This was beyond more. Way, way beyond more.

Bodies fell beside me, everyone pulling blankets around themselves, then snuggling in tight.

That was all I felt as I dropped into sleep—that deep pressure on my body and exhaustion.

But that soon changed.

We stood upon a dais, a dozen beautifully clad women working madly on the dress that hung from our body.

“You look radiant, my lady,” an older woman said, though she didn’t speak in English.

I’d never heard that language, a small frown forming as I considered what the hell I was doing, translating words I couldn’t understand.

The woman saw that response and grew flustered.

“Come, Jaya, see how our priestess comports herself.”

She gestured for a slip of a girl, also dressed in a rich gown but not as fancy as ours, something we noted with a smug smile.

She was all slender limbs and big brown eyes, staring at us with what we felt was the requisite degree of awe.

While that was entirely appropriate, it said something about the girl.

“You will do the same, at the ascension rite.”

We watched the older woman, Hara, clasp the girl around the shoulder and give her a hug. A hug. This was to be our replacement, the next conduit for the goddess? She looked like she was barely able to tie her own shoes unsupervised.

Something she seemed well aware of. She just stared with the wide-eyed look of someone who knew they were outmatched.

“Lady Hara, are you sure? I fear ? —”

“Don’t fear,” Hara said with false cheer. “What will happen at the ascension ritual has been written in the stars themselves.”

It had.

“You and Lonan will ascend as conduits, and Branwen and Fearn will step down. We have known this since you first came to us as a small child. Every conduit has their time, and now is yours.”

It wasn’t.

“Lonan is your true mate and a fitting consort.”

He wasn’t, and we would snatch the girl bald if she tried.

Lonan certainly hadn’t got the message about the true mate thing, from what I could see. The faint flicker of memories that came to mind all showed Branwen and Lonan locked together like snakes, rutting as the Great Black Wolf’s actual conduit, Fearn, looked on.

“Your time has come, my dear, you must embrace it.”

Well, that and the fact Hara was a leader of one of the powerful factions in the town and Jaya was her niece.

We knew the drill, how really anyone could be a conduit for the Great White Wolf, the goddess herself.

It was what was in your heart that determined who was chosen, and us?

We had a great ravening wolf there, wanting and needing more.

Oh.

At this point, there was a degree of lucid dreaming about this, my awareness sharpening, starting to put two and two together, right when I wanted to lose myself to unconsciousness, but Branwen wasn’t having any of that.

People in Oemis played at pack politics, but they rarely let the Tirian within them loose. Too domesticated by affluence and plenty, too caught up in the machinations of our human minds, rather than our wolves. Instincts, hunts, mates, all were shoved aside for this.

Hara pushed the girl forward, started ordering around our seamstresses, redirecting them away from our dress to her niece’s.

She pushed her up onto a dais, where swatches of fabric were held up against the girl’s sallow skin, trying to find some colour that would flatter it.

We smiled, feeling my beast’s panting tongue and sharp teeth in my mouth as I did so, then reached up and flicked open the clasps that had been released every year at the high of midsummer when performing the Great Rite, but the cries now were of distress and even anger as the fabric pooled at the remaining seamstresses’ feet.

There was something all terribly exciting about being Branwen, which I couldn’t let myself experience when I was conscious.

She was a grade A bitch, but she stepped on and over the fabric, and I could hear the crack of beads and the pop of stitches as she did so.

If she wasn’t the centre of attention, then she wouldn’t lower herself to hanging around and playing second fiddle.

We stalked out of the room to the increasingly loud complaints and shouts of the women.

“Leave her,” Hara said. “Her time is over, and she knows it. If she wishes to wear a gown with feet marks on it and torn embroidery, then we shall permit that. Jaya is the one who must shine.”

We paused for a second, a long slow smile spreading across our face before we slid out the door, perfectly naked.

“I take it that went well.”

There he was, tall, dark, and full of pure fucking devilry. He held out a robe, a nice contrast to his usual actions, when he stripped us bare. Just like then, his gaze followed every curve, every swell of our body, seeming to want to eat us up whole with just his eyes.

“Your little bride to be is all aflutter, getting ready for the big day.” Our grin was his, hard and cruel. “She’s so excited.”

“Well, good,” he replied, “because she’s going to be so disappointed.

We are the true born conduits of the gods.

No accident of birth or factional support can change that.

The roles have become largely ceremonial, little more than figureheads to rubber-stamp their increasingly more labyrinthine plots.

” He moved in close, running his finger up the fine line of our chin.

“But we’re about to put a stop to all of that, to bring our people back to where they were always supposed to be. ”

“Survival of the strongest and fittest,” we said, tilting our head, readying ourself for his kiss.

“The best float to the top, and those below serve,” he agreed before moving closer, ready to take our lips, when the door opened.

“Milord Lonan…” a seamstress said, emerging out of the same door we’d exited, the both of us using her deep curtsey as a moment to reluctantly pull apart.

We tied the robe tightly around our waist and stepped back from him, our true mate.

It was him, when we first met and we felt it, a bolt of such intensity, it had taken our breath sheer away, and mid rite as well.

We’d seen him across the crowd, smirking that devilish smile of his, and forgotten the bloody words, some of the lesser priestesses forced to pick up the slack as we’d just gaped. That was when we’d known.

When Fearn went to touch us, our skin had crawled and we’d jerked free of his grip, moving through the ritual with him but not a part of him.

We’d never be a part of anyone else ever again.

Not after Lonan slipped into our house in the middle of the night as we slept, sliding into our bed like a thief in the night, stealing our kisses, then our heart, then us.

I’d seen it, felt it then, what had passed between the two of them, as they had that kind of sex I now knew well.

So intense, so amazing, that it took on a sacred air, becoming more than just two people bumping uglies.

Beyond even making love, your brain fought to comprehend what was going on, how someone could pull such incredible feelings from your body, you were sure that there must be something more.

Some reason why everything they did sliced through your natural boundaries to the core of you, laying you bare.

He was a mistake , she said finally, Branwen.

I thought he was the one that I sought, my equal.

I now know that will never be achieved. That’s why we have multiple mates, Bec.

I heard the smile in her voice. Why we must glut ourselves on all these beautiful men.

It’s only when they combine their powers to serve us that they come anywhere near close to what we need. We are the goddess’ chosen children.

I saw her now, a rapid flicker of views of a woman with bright red hair and grass green eyes, as she strode through plazas, writhing bodies, through battlefields and birthing rooms, and then finally, through a portal, out into a strange new world. One she sought to rule.

And you are my conduit, just as I was hers. You are the means I will use to claw back what was mine, and in the process, you will have everything—every single thing you ever wanted.

Why did that feel like a threat more than a vow?