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“We need to deal with immediate threats,” Ophelia said, all business now. “Bec has taken Tirian form to hold Branwen back, and I’m still not entirely sure what threat she poses. Wasn’t she the founder of our community? Everything I was taught put her in a completely positive light.”

“And doesn’t that concern you?” Arelia said with a frown.

A low hiss started in the back of my head, but it got no further than that.

“She was the force that brought Sylvan to Sanctuary, that threatened to bring the Volken down on your heads. The only thing you can trust is Branwen’s self-interest.”

“You sound bitter.”

I watched the red-haired woman’s facial muscles fight, between scrunching up in frustration and smoothing to calm. Calm eventually won.

“Bitter? Perhaps I am. I didn’t have the benefit of growing up under her auspices, but I was a victim of her machinations.

” She stared openly at Sylvan now. “I saw her effect on Sylvan, the way she twisted him. If her interests and Sanctuary’s coincide, then all will be well.

But what if they don’t? You’re alpha here.

Your head will be the first one on the block.

You’d have to be aware of your opponents, others in the community that wish to take your position. ”

For the first time, I saw Ophelia’s serene facade crack as she shifted in her chair.

“She’ll use them, all of them, head hopping until she’s built up support for her way of doing things, until she has everyone exactly where she wants them to be.” A thread of fear now coloured Arelia’s voice.

“She doesn’t need to, not when she possesses the priestess here.

The four of them broadcast their hijinks to the whole community before,” Flora said.

“Made me feel things I thought I was well and truly too old to. Why bother persuading individuals when she can sweep up everyone to orgiastic heights?”

That’s where the power comes from. Branwen’s words came back to me. Give this to me, and I will make your existence one long libidinous dream. No pleasure will be out of reach. I’ll make you experience things beyond your wildest dreams.

That was what she intended—to keep us all swooning with pleasure, too horny and swept up in what was going on to care about anything else.

That was exactly what had happened to me.

What had I done since I’d gotten here but get off?

Over and over, caught up in the ways the guys came together, the way we did.

“So what do we do?” Ophelia asked the table, a shade below a demand. “We do not drive one of our own out of Sanctuary.”

“Except we did,” Flora replied. “We did at some point. Someone, some alpha forced Bec’s forebears from the community. Why, alpha?”

“Why, indeed,” she muttered, an echo of my own thoughts previously. “I must consult with the other matriarchs and search the records.”

“You do that,” Flora said almost patronisingly. “In the meantime, I’ll take missy here and her merry band to the shrine.”

“No!” Arelia said, shooting to her feet. “You’re arming her, not neutralising her.”

“And I’ll need young Kailee too.”

“No.” Arelia’s hand went to her daughter’s shoulder, clamping down, but the little girl rose to her feet and pulled free without too much effort.

“Mother, you know I have to.”

They used the term mother in a formal sense as well as a personal one, so it was hard to tell in which context Kailee was using it, and then I realised it didn’t matter.

I’d been familiarised with the triple goddess and her forms by my nan and understood what this meant.

In some ways, we were all the maiden, the mother, and the crone at different periods of our life, after different experiences.

Right now, Arelia was every inch of the mother.

She looked down at her preternaturally strong little girl and wanted to protect her with everything she had, invested emotionally in a way the more dispassionate crone, Flora, couldn’t be.

Flora was watching her life slip away, knowing she had one more thing to achieve before she could rest—resolving the situation with me.

“You are always welcome to join our workings, Arelia,” Flora said gently.

“I…I can’t. You know that. It has never been my strength, only Kailee’s.”

The old woman shook her head and then rose to her feet, casting an eye over us. “Pack your gear, my pretties, because you’ll be residing at the shrine until this is resolved.”

“The shrine?” Shaun said. “Where the hell is that?”

“I lived here my whole bloody life,” Axel said. “I’ve never even heard of such a place.”

“You wouldn’t, would you?” Flora replied, her lips thinning. “It’s a place for women, not you, but we’ll make an exception this time. Needs must and all that. Now gather your stuff, because we will be going somewhere you won’t be able to nick home and grab something.”

“We’re…we’re going through the portal?” Ethan asked.

She snorted, then nodded.

“Just a little foothold we keep on the other side. Well, that and the mines we use to keep this place running. Come along, those that are coming.”

I followed the guys up the hallway to the rooms we’d been staying in, watching them put stuff into their bags, when suddenly, my Tirian relinquished her control of my body. I came back to human form blinking.

“Goddess, Bec…” Shaun said, rushing over, then peering closely at me. “Are you OK?”

“Am I Bec, you mean,” I replied, glancing at the lot of them.

“You are,” Shade said. “I can feel it when you change, when she’s here. She…fluctuates. Her power is not absolute, not yet.”

“Not yet?” Axel let out a harsh bark of a laugh that was completely mirthless. “Gods above, what…? What the fuck is going on?”

“You’ll remember,” Shade said. “When you surrender, it’ll all come back then, all of it. You’ll wish it didn’t.” His expression became one filled with longing, and not for the first time did I wonder what the hell was going on with him. “All of you.”

His eyes swung around to survey the group, Shaun looking concerned, but Ethan? There was something quietly horrified there, and I needed to know why.

“Well, I guess we better make sure we pack some lube and restraints,” Axel replied.

We all just looked at him, confused. “When I surrender, I need at least those things, maybe something else.” He moved over to the bedside tables, pawing through the brand-new sex toys that seemed de rigueur in guest rooms in this place, and pulled out a sizeable dildo, hefting it in his hand.

“Gotta make sure no one’s left feeling empty. ”

“You’re bigger than that,” I said.

“I never said it was for you.” His smile was lazy, remarkably unfazed as he tossed it into his bag, along with some other stuff he dug out of the drawers. “I don’t like feeling empty when I come either.”

Which of course led us to turn and stare at Ethan, who seemed to take an involuntary step backwards.

“Dildo it is,” Axel said with a shrug and then zipped up his bag, shouldering it.

“So no one’s going to talk about going through the gate, to this…shrine?” Ethan asked. “They want us out of the picture, away from Sanctuary.”

“And why wouldn’t they? We’re a threat,” Shaun said, moving closer and wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

“If we can be safe at the shrine, I’m happy to go.

” His hand slid up my neck, digging his fingers into my hair, sending a shiver down my spine.

“We want Bec. She wants us. We’ve been barely able to keep our fucking hands off each other since we came together, and that just plays right into the hands of whoever this Branwen is. ”

He shook his head slowly.

“I remember…the bullshit with Jules and Sylvan. We want to be somewhere safe, somewhere we can’t hurt anyone else.”

“Where we play right into her hands.” Ethan bit the words off, then turned, picking up the bag next to him and shouldering it, and walked out the door.

“It’ll be all right. Everything will be fine,” Shade insisted, and I caught the strange light in his eyes, right before he followed Ethan out.

“Everything will be fine,” Shaun agreed, grabbing a bag of clothes that had been left for me and his stuff. “I won’t let it be otherwise.”

Ophelia met us at the door as we walked out, escorting us to one of two big Humvees, guys in fatigues standing by the side of the car.

“I feel like we are abandoning you right as you’ve come to Sanctuary,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders. “This is not what I would have wanted for any of our citizens.”

“But you have to protect the rest of them,” I replied. “I understand.”

She smiled slightly, but it was a sad thing.

“Trust in your strength—the strength you’ve shown in living outside of Sanctuary for so long, thinking you were the only one of your kind. You have everything you need, right here.”

She placed a hand over my heart, but when she did so, she looked across at the men clustered at my back, the feel of her palm making something shift and twitch inside me, but a growl from my Tirian stopped that. Finally, Ophelia nodded, then pulled away, leaving us to get into the cars.

I was wedged between Shade and Shaun when we went through what was apparently an interdimensional portal.

Locked up behind a high fence, there was land surrounding the whole pathway towards it, wolves running along the side of the cars as we drove up to a massive menhir, the gap between it glowing electric blue.

“Hold on, this can get a little hairy,” one of the guys in the front seat said.

That was all the warning we got as it felt like we punched through the portal, reality and existence all disappearing for a second in a mad scramble of bright blue light, no body, no car, no land, no horizon, no nothing.

Except for her.

She pushed through the light, a white wolf the size of a several story building, looking down at whatever we had become with glowing green eyes.

Trust, my daughter , she told me, mind to mind, and you will emerge triumphant.