His face remained unemotional. “Well, then maybe you should stop pulsing with power and I wouldn’t bring them up.”“Power?” I tilted my head. “I’m not a witch, though.” At least that was what I had thought I understood before.“Witches aren’t the only ones with power,” Atlas answered. “Every supernatural has some form of it. Especially ones who rank higher on the food chain. You have a strong wolf inside you and that had to come from someone. Like an alpha people would think twice about fucking with.”My chest tightened and stomach churned. It was easy to pretend my past didn’t exist that I hadn’t been abandoned as a child but when something so specific was pointed out, there was no ignoring that fact.“How do you know?” I asked cautiously.Instead of answering, Atlas leaned closer and our eyes locked. A strength rose up inside of me, and I felt the need to sit up taller.“That right there,” he said without breaking eye contact.I wanted to blink, but something inside me wouldn’t let

Her face was still tense, but she was breathing evenly. My first instinct was to go to her and pull her into my arms, but I refrained, letting her handle this however she needed to.“I heard what you guys were talking about,” Elena started. “What do you think your mom and brother would say if they knew about me?” she asked Mark, staring him down with the alpha power I’d already been feeling from her.“My brother his name is Tristan, by the way would probably be pretty excited for a sister, and my mother…” Mark grimaced. “Well, she’s pretty broken after everything that’s happened. She doesn’t talk much anymore and hasn’t left the house in months. No offense, but I probably won’t tell her until I think she’s mentally capable of knowing that there’s physical proof walking around this House of her mate’s infidelity. Considering how much worse things are getting here, that might not ever happen. Unless you’ve come to change that.”Fuck.I had a feeling someone was going to ask that once I’d

He continued. “The other way is to fight for the role. I believe that’s why nobody has been elected yet. Jack doesn’t truly want the spot and the others who are leading the opposing factions aren’t strong enough to consistently win fights that will garner the support they’ll need to rule over a House that has been savagely led for decades.”“You’re saying Elena will need to fight these other Bears in order to garner their respect?”Atlas asked, his voice husky.I finally looked at him. His eyes were nearly black, and his fingers dug into the arm of the couch. Yeah, this was going over really well.“You can check with jack since he’s been here more than I have lately, but I would say yes, that’s correct since a current Alpha Supreme isn’t here to pass down the title,” Mark answered.Amy grinned widely at me. “That won’t be a problem. We’ll prepare her.”Elena slowly turned his head toward me. His eyes appraised every inch of me, burning my skin as he openly judged me. “Do you want to do

So if I had to get comfortable with a bunch of fucked-up shit really quickly, then that was what I’d do, because walking away wasn’t an option.“We’re more than prepared,” I answered with my chin held high.“Yeah, I’m beginning to see that.” Jack glanced at the four of us and then back at me. “Let’s figure out where we want to begin.”ATLASThe four of us followed Jack to a warehouse-type building. The outside was sided in ribbed metal with rust stains running down intermittently from exposed nail heads. White doors without windows were at the side we approached, and I was hesitant to follow this particular leader inside, but I knew that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Elena.The more I was around her, the more she talked about being okay with putting herself in danger, the more my need to mark and protect her rose.Elena was mine, but she wasn’t a woman to be claimed easily. Even if I knew she wanted me in return.No, if I was going to make her my mate officially

Elena moved to stand in front of the unicorn, who wasn’t recovering as quickly as I’d expected her to. “That’s not for us to share. If she’d like to tell you more, then she will. When she wants to.”I could sense Elena’s alpha power rising to the surface, and I wondered if she realized when she did that. Her Bear didn’t seem to like to stand down to anyone. Not even her mate.It was going to be interesting to see how that worked moving forward.Hell, all of this was going to be more thaninteresting.Elena I’d thought Bruno back at the coven in Earth and Emerald was a savage beast when it came to training in the gym, but between Jack and Atlas, I felt as if I knew nothing about my body.Well, I’d at least felt that way when we’d first started training.A week later, I was growing muscles in places where muscles didn’t normally belong, and the charge from my wolf energy made me feel like I was on crack at times. She was ready to claim this land. To take what my sperm donor had destroyed