Jules stood up now, looking out over the crowd.
“I’m obviously a relative newcomer but…” She looked down the line of the men surrounding her, her mates, I realised. “But I think I’ve earned a place at the table. We earned that place.” A tall man with long auburn hair tied back at the nape nodded. “There’s no further conversations to be had about Bec and Shaun. I wear my mate’s mark.” She pulled her collar back, revealing a neat scar. “No one disputes our bond, nor would they want to. Shaun’s right—we felt what’s inside them.”
When her eyes met my mate’s, my fingers wrapped around his arm, but I needn’t have bothered. She merely nodded in our direction.
“He’s found the other part of his soul, and I, for one, am glad for that. Is the way they announced that to the community unconventional?” She shrugged in response to her own question. “Does that really matter? If Bec holds a power we haven’t seen before, then surely we find out more about that, help her learn to control it, not stage an inquisition at a time when most of us should be in bed. Want to be in bed, enjoying the afterglow.”
Her eyes grew heated, her smile cheeky before she sat down.
“Well, that appears to be a proposed plan of action,” Ophelia said. “Let me put it to the floor. Everyone in favour of Jules’ proposal?”
There was grumbling and muttering from the crowd, but a sea of hands went up, more raised than those that abstained. Ophelia nodded.
“For the time being, the four of them will stay at the alpha residence,” she told the crowd. “We will explore ways to contain—”
“Explore ways… Pfft!” The old woman who’d walked in with Sylvan, the mother, and her child stumped forward, resting heavily on the cane she carried. “You call yourselves matriarchs. Get off your bony arses and lend me your strength, and I’ll contain the girl’s power to just her chosen. Though I must admit, I don’t see why.” Her grin made her gaunt face look like a death’s head. “Made me feel more alive than I have in years. Well, now, off your butts!”
Which was how we all came to be back at the alpha’s residence, to the wing of the grand building we’d been assigned.
“I remember living in here,” Jules said, rubbing her hand along the door frame, then looking aside at a surly-looking blond-haired guy. “Do you remember?”
At her question, his face completely transformed, his eyes meeting hers, then those of the burly guy next to him with long brown hair. He reached for both of them, squeezing their hands with an echo of Shaun’s expression.
“I’ll never forget.” Then he turned to Shaun, nodding in his direction. “You’ll have a tough road ahead of you, if it’s the gods meddling in your life. Hopefully an easier one than us.”
“I’m ready,” Shaun replied, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, but that wasn’t the only caress I got.
Axel picked up my hand, holding it tight, Ethan moving in, hooking an arm around Axel’s waist but staring at me.
“We’re ready,” he said with a nod.
“Well and good, because this will happen nonetheless,” the old woman said. “You’ll have the night to celebrate, to pay the goddess fair homage for the gift she’s given you. Too many never find their true mate, the one that transcends the grasp of time, too many other things getting in the way.” She shook her head, her mouth tightening. “But when you wake, when you leave here, you’ll be just as able to influence the feelings and the mental states of the inhabitants here. Powerful thing that.” She cast a sly eye over the disgruntled faces of some of the women here. “And you’ll come to me on the morrow, rouse me from my deathbed, and I’ll teach you. I have quite a lot to pass on, priestess…”
I wasn’t entirely sure if that last bit was a term of respect or sarcasm, but she just nodded to the others.
“Women, in a circle. Men, wait outside it, down the hall, like a bunch of good fellows,” she ordered. “Join hands with your sisters.”
“But, Flora—” one woman started to say.
“Don’t but Flora me. I’m holding onto life by the skin of my teeth as it is. Took too long to find her,” she muttered in a low, creaky voice, her breath coming in faster as she waved her stick, organising everyone to her liking. “Now you, new girl, bring you and your fellas inside the circle. This won’t hamper your power, but it’ll keep it contained until you decide it shouldn’t be.”
When we shuffled into the space left in the hallway, it began to feel somewhat oppressive. Perhaps because there were so many people here in such a small area, perhaps due to the hum that began. Flora led them, her voice thready and raw, but the others, they more than made up for it, the sound becoming softer, more melodious.
“Now, priestess, no one’s going to contain your power but you. The ring of power, that’ll just help. Imagine a barrier around you and your men.”
Her voice was creaky with age, raspy and corroded, but still hypnotic. I felt the guys cluster closer, surrounding me. She nodded confidently and then smiled, baring her yellowing teeth. When she spoke next, her voice contained the power of a roaring river, a swirling storm, the great thrust of a huge tree into the sky.
“See a transparent barrier around yourselves. You can see us and hear us, but there is something as delicate as air and as hard as stone containing you, your bonds, your power.” Flora’s voice grew stronger and firmer as she spoke, so I could hear the ghost of the woman she was in it. As a result, I could see and hear everything she described. The air started to pop in my ears, as if the pressure changed.
“Feel your power, coiled deep down in your pelvis. It rests now, waiting, needing to be unleashed, but when it does, it will stay here, within the circle, within the arms, the minds, the hearts of those you choose. You will not share that power with others, not yet, not until they are ready to accept that gift.”
Then I felt it, like air filling a balloon. By containing what we created, it seemed to condense it, taking up all the available space, making the guys groan with the pleasure of it. Flora nodded, seeming satisfied, but then I wasn’t. Just as I had when Shaun made me his mate, my consciousness felt like it tore out of my head, rising, rising, searching, I later realised. I didn’t infect anyone else with my…stuff, they were all protected now by Flora’s working, but he wasn’t. I skimmed over trees and grass, over cars and roads and roofs until I found him.
I slammed down into one of those identical cabins, skating past mess and furniture, rooms and other men, until I found him. He lay on his bed, naked and resplendent, his body a deep tawny brown, long black hair partially shrouding his face—a face caught up in a mask of ecstasy. His hand slid up and down his rigid dick, his breath coming in rough pants in time with each stroke. It took him a little while to recognise me, strange amber eyes staring through the fall of hair for a few seconds, right before he erupted.
I had no idea of his name, how old he was, who he was, but I knew him. Somehow, I knew him.
Well, well, he’s quite the specimen, a strange female voice said inside my skull, my Tirian strangely silent. Rise, she told him. Rise and find your mistress.