Page 52 of Chosen Beta

“Once he meets Lana, though, he’ll have to realize fate brought him out here.”

“Hopefully, that’s how he’ll see it.”

I’m not sure it’s going to be that simple.

He’s going to have to deal with his past to get to a place where he can see Cressidan City differently. I know if things were reversed, it wouldn’t be an easy transition.

“Lana’s something special,” Shadow reminds me. “He’ll know this is where we’re meant to be as soon as he meets her.”

“She is, isn’t she?” I ask, making him smile.

“You know she is, otherwise, you wouldn’t have kept her to yourself like this for three whole weeks. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you found another mate.”

He slips out of the bed, shaking his head as he starts to move around to where his clothes were discarded on the floor. He doesn’t sound mad, exactly, but he’d have every right to be.

It is kind of messed up that I didn’t tell the rest of my pack about her.

“Why didn’t you tell us, anyway?” Shadow asks, as he tugs on his underwear.

Guilt hits me instantly, and I don’t have a good answer for him.

“I don’t know. I thought I should tell her before I called to let you guys know, but we were both so busy with work, so that chance just never came up. Then I started to second guess how Owen might react, and I wasn’t sure what I should do.”

I push myself up against the pillows, knowing I’ll have to get back to work soon.

I don’t relish that thought. As much as I want to know how my patients are doing, with my mates here it feels like I should be prioritizing their needs.

“I get it,” Shadow says, as he starts to slip into his pants. “I know it’s kind of a weird situation, and you both seem tohave that work-aholic hero-complex going on, but it’s been three weeks, Ezra. You could have asked us to come visit you. We could have come out here much sooner.”

Clearly, he’s hurt over my careless lack of decision making.

I’m supposed to protect him from pain, not cause it.

“I’m sorry, Shadow. I didn’t mean to keep it from you.”

“It’s a pretty big thing to keep to yourself for this long. It changes everything for all of us.”

“That’s what made it so hard to do anything about it.”

He sighs. “She has no idea she’s ours. That feeling you gave her when you met, the instant connection. She’s going to think she’s just into you because you’re an Alpha, or because she’s physically attracted to you. She’s written it off already as a crush or something.”

He’s probably right. I didn’t tell her what it meant, so she brushed it off as something less potent than a connection between two people fated to be together as mates.

I have to remind myself he doesn’t know the whole story, and that’s when I remember an important point that isn’t going to just disappear.

“There is one other thing.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “One other thing?”

“She’s sort of already involved with someone else.”

He blinks. “What?”

“It’s not a regular relationship, and I don’t know the full details, but she has feelings for an Omega who already found her pack.”

He frowns and then his expression relaxes. “An Omega? That doesn’t mean anything. She probably just smelled her perfume and got all intoxicated.”

“No, it’s more than that. There are mutual feelings between them, despite the Omega already having a pack of her own.”

---