Page 134 of Chosen Beta

“About what?”

“Me,” he blurts. “I’m mad at myself.”

He sits down on the path and kicks a pebble into the plants.

Sitting down next to him, I make sure I’m still blocking the exit so he can’t rush off again.

Not that he’d try to actually lose me. He’s been keeping me in sight, being the protective Alpha he always is. He’s just also been keeping his distance, clearly because he’s going through something.

“What happened?”

He sighs. “I spoke to Ezra about Lana. I like her, I felt what you guys felt when I met her.”

“It’s this place, isn’t it?” I ask, knowing it the second it’s out there.

“I promised myself I’d never come back, and here I am.”

“For a good reason.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugs. “I’m here.”

“Why does that bother you so much?”

He looks at me. “All this time, I thought I hated my parents.”

“You don’t?”

My question comes out in shock, because it’s a universal truth in our home.

The sky is blue, baby animals are never not cute, and Owen hates his parents with the fire of a thousand suns. We hate them, too. Anyone who hurts one of us, hurts all of us.

“It’s my fault they disowned me. I wasn’t who they wanted me to be. I was the problem. Me.”

“No, that’s only what they made you think, Owen. They saw you as the problem, because they were narcissistic assholes who never spent time raising you to have their values, yet theyexpected you to somehow develop them on your own. They were the ones at fault. Not you. You came out right.”

He laughs. “I came out right? I’m so fucking angry right now, and it’s because I hate myself.”

“No. You don’t. You hate how they made you feel about yourself. It’s not the same thing.”

His shoulders slump. “It feels like the same thing.”

“Well, that’s probably because you’re not used to dealing with your emotions.”

He blinks at me. “I deal with them.”

“No, you don’t. You … find ways to burn your anger off. You don’t ask yourself why you’re feeling it. You don’t try to resolve anything. You just burn it off and you do the same again when it comes back. It’s a vicious circle.”

And he’s been trapped inside it for at least a decade, probably longer.

It’s not a shock that he seems so defeated right now.

“It’s time to slow down, Owen. You can’t keep going the way you have been. It’s not healthy for you, and it only makes the rest of us worry.”

He leans back, looking up at the academy’s main building.

“Why did she have to be working here?”

I shrug when he looks back at me, as if I should have the answer.

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