Page 179 of The Beta's Blind Date

“But if you’d stayed away from him, if you’d stayed with my son and taken whatever he offered you, then you’d never have met Reid.”

“I’d have seen him at the wedding,” I point out.

“Yes, but you’d have been there with Dominic. As his date and possible future luna. That beta wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“So you manipulated Dominic into asking me to be his plus one?”

“No. That was all him. I didn’t know you ended things until you joined us for tea that day. And then I tried—I tried so very hard—to manipulate him to keep you out of the warriorsandto fight to win you back, but it was too much for me as a mere hybrid, and I had to make a choice. You being with him was more instrumental to my plan than you not being a warrior, so I focused everything I had on getting him to win you back. When that didn’t work, I resorted to desperate measures.”

I lift a brow. “Such as?”

“The alpha command and the rogues. They were supposed to attack you and Dominic—so your powers would appear—and scare the pack, not destroy it. I underestimated their bloodthirstiness and ruthlessness, and I underestimated my son’s need to play the hero and send you running instead of having you stay and fight with him.”

My jaw clenches. How dare she. How dare she take away my free will by compelling her son to use his alpha command on me in the most demeaning way possible?

Reid’s anger slams into me. Before, it had been small, inconsistent flashes making their way towards me through the bond. But now it hits me full force and commingles with mine.

Haven sends her starlight aura into me, and I take a breath, blocking out the anger—both mine and my mate’s—so I can focus on the task at hand. We’re not finished.

“Just a little longer, Reid,”I tell him through the mindlink.

“I’m going to kill her,”he says, snarling and growling.

“Not yet,”I say, sending a trickle of peace through the bond.“We still need more information.”

He growls again but I turn my attention back to Merina. “But why do all this? Why poison the pack and manipulate your son? What did you stand to gain from it all?”

“A healer, of course,” she says. “A healer I could control and get to do my bidding. I’d control Dominic, and he could alpha command you to do whatever I needed you to do.”

“But how did you know I would be a healer? And why did you need me so badly?”

“I’ve studied the family trees of healers for almost thirty years, waiting for one of the current healers to pass away so the next healer in the bloodline would be born. When your father’s very distant cousin passed away, you were the next child born, and then I spent years figuring out how to get your family back to Silver Ridge. I had to be careful and time it as close to your twenty-first birthday as possible so you wouldn’t meet your mate before coming to the pack, if he wasn’t Dominic. Which, obviously, he wasn’t.”

“But why?” I ask, leaning forward, my voice insistent. “Why did you need me? Why did you want to control me?!”

“Because I needed you to fix me!” she says, her fist slamming into the table, her finger stabbing at her chest. “I’ve spent decades like this, and I couldn’t do it anymore!”

“What? What are you talking about? Why do you need to be fixed? Healed?”

She shakes her head, her lip trembling and her eyes flooding with liquid and vitriol. “You have no idea what it’s like to be as broken as I am, as I have been since the day I met Julian!” She laughs, but it’s a cold, mirthless sound. “Julian Rivers. Alpha of Silver Ridge. Handsome and suave—and cruel. He had an image to maintain, and that image didn’t include sharing his hybrid luna with his beta.”

Everyone at the table freezes. Haven flinches back, brow furrowed, and Maya’s eyes flicker with pain and sadness.

“Share you?” Haven asks.

“Hybrids often have two mates,” Maya says, her voice tight, looking straight at Merina. “And if they only complete the bond with one, if they’re forced to be apart from their other mate with no mark from them and no rejection either, it can…” She trails off, turning to stare out the windows of the packhouse. “It’s not good for them. They end up broken. Incomplete. It’s hard to explain, but it messes with their souls.”

“Yes,” Merina says with another humorless laugh. “It does. But Julian didn’t care. He sent Paul away, commanded him to stay away from me, to never contact me, and chose a new beta, someone from another pack.”

“Why not reject Julian, then?” I ask. “Why put up with that treatment?”

“He told me he’d have Paul killed if I even thought of rejecting him.”

“But why not go to the council? The king?”

“Don’t you think I would have thought of all those options? I did, and so did Julian, and all resulted in the same ending—my other mate dead, by his hand. So, I stuck it out. I stayed by his side for the sake of the unborn pup I carried, and I succumbed to the darkness caused by the distance of my second mate, all the while waiting and searching for a healer who could fix what Julian broke. And I hit the mother lode with you.”

“I can’t fix you, Merina,” I say, pressing my lips together. “No healer can.”

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